kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Lorenzo Marcantonio <l.marcantonio@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Having to draw a new package since a long time I decided to give it
a try... first of all, at last, the layer toolbar. Really useful, of
course.

A couple of buglets: stuff isn't correctly initialized on open: the
layer (top silk, as default) is not shown initially as selected and for
some reason the default entity width is 0.2mm. Entering and giving OK to
the sizes dialog fixes it. 99% that's something that could be fixed on
the OnOpen event of the frame.

As of the size dialog: that could be usefully put on the toolbar. There
is the absolutely useless print button so the size button would fit
nicely near the pad setting one.

In the zoom combo what is the 'auto' setting for? if it was intended to
work like pressing 'home' it doesn't:P also it is not updated when
zooming with F1/F2 (neither is the zoom value on the status bar; maybe
some event is not firing). OK, actually I never had any use for the zoom
value... it's simpler to judge cursor movement with actual coordinates.

While on the zooming behaviour: it could be considered to add the
recentering behaviour of the zoom (as an option, like in the standard
mode). It's way faster to use, I don't care about that "never warp the
cursor dogma" (and *all* CAD programs have their UI quirks anyway).

That's also for the main pcb frame. Example: I want to center on component
way to the right. 

Traditional recentering behaviour:
1) Zoom out (wheel, some steps depending on how far I want to go)
2) Move cursor on the object (small movement to the right)
3) Zoom in (wheel, as before in the other direction)

That's two wheel moves and one cursor move. With the non recentering
behaviour:
1) Zoom out, as before
2) Move cursor as before
3) Zoom in as before
4) *Pan to recenter the object* <<< Useless step :D

Of course the beginner user would pan all the way right, but I hope he
will learn the technique... by the way the border pan is really slow
(and I find smooth scrolling tiring on the eye, anyway) so he better
learn fast :D

On the tools: at last the arc tool is complete (applause). Line tools
has a break vertex function (another applause). However I really miss
the keyboard cursor motion. Also it seems that pressing the arrow keys
break the keyboard handling. Like in "ESC and space don't work after
pressing an arrow". Probably wx interpret the arrows as focus change and
keyboard events go to another object.

Still I find the OpenGL nearly usable on the tungsten/intel GPU. Aside
of drawing speed, proper dialogs visibly flash when popping up. It's not
a kicad/X issue, I think it's a performance limitation of the tungsten
(which, by the way, except for the latest X series have no fragment
shader support in hardware... you can be OpenGL compliant even with
a fully software implementation). And even on windows you *don't* want
to use altium with one of these, it really sucks:P

-- 
Lorenzo Marcantonio
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