kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 1/5/2015 9:43 AM, Adam Wolf wrote:
> Thanks for the insight, Wayne.  This is exactly what I was hoping to get
> out of my too long email.
> 
> I will investigate what happens now in that case.
> 
> In the case of "kicad was opened without a path/to/project.pro
> <http://project.pro> and doesn't have a valid history entry we can
> open", what do you think should happen?
> 
> Should we just not open the error box?

Some users might prefer not showing the error dialog and just create the
dummy noname.pro file.  I don't have a strong preference one way or
another.  Interestingly, LibreOffice removes all files that don't exist
from the recent list so you cannot select a non-existent file.  On the
other hand, MS Excel give a error message stating that you may have
moved or deleted the file.  In either case, the next action is to open
an empty file which would be noname.pro in our case.

> 
> Should it open the "new project" dialog?  If it does that, how would
> people start a new project from a template?  Should it have a different
> dialog with three buttons, "new project" and "new project from
> template", and cancel (which would just open the normal interface but
> with no project file opened)?

I think this might be overkill.  If the open from last project history
fails, I would just show the dummy noname.pro and let the user decide
the next course of action.

> 
> Adam Wolf
> 
> On Mon, Jan 5, 2015 at 8:33 AM, Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx
> <mailto:stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
> 
>     On 1/4/2015 8:42 PM, Adam Wolf wrote:
>     > Hi folks,
>     >
>     > Right now, when a user installs KiCad successfully on an OS X system,
>     > and they start Kicad, the first thing they see is an error box.
>     >
>     > It states
>     >
>     > 'Error
>     >
>     > Project file '' not found'
>     >
>     > I do not think new users should get an error immediately upon opening Kicad.
>     >
>     > I tried to fix this today, but I ran into some conceptual issues, so
>     > hopefully I can get them cleared up and submit a patch for this.
>     >
>     > First, there appears to be code to prevent this from happening.
>     >
>     > in kicad/prjconfig.cpp:
>     >     wxString prj_filename = GetProjectFileName();
>     >     xString nameless_prj = NAMELESS_PROJECT  wxT( ".pro" );
>     >
>     >     // Check if project file exists and if it is not noname.pro <http://noname.pro>
>     > <http://noname.pro>
>     >     if( !wxFileExists( prj_filename ) && !prj_filename.IsSameAs(
>     > nameless_prj ) )
>     >     {
>     >         wxString msg = wxString::Format( _(
>     >                 "KiCad project file '%s' not found" ),
>     >                 GetChars( prj_filename ) );
>     >
>     >         DisplayError( this, msg );
>     >         return;
>     >     }
>     >
>     > (NAMELESS_PROJECT is set to "noname" in include/common.h).
>     >
>     > This checks to see if GetProjectFileName() exists as a file, and if it
>     > doens't, it checks to see if it is "noname.pro <http://noname.pro>
>     <http://noname.pro>", and
>     > if not, it pops up an error.
>     >
>     > In kicad/kicad.cpp,
>     >
>     >     if( App().argc > 1 )
>     >         frame->SetProjectFileName( App().argv[1] );
>     >
>     >     else if( GetFileHistory().GetCount() )
>     >     {
>     >         wxString last_pro = GetFileHistory().GetHistoryFile( 0 );
>     >
>     >         if( !wxFileExists( last_pro ) )
>     >         {
>     >             GetFileHistory().RemoveFileFromHistory( 0 );
>     >
>     >             wxFileName namelessProject( wxGetCwd(), NAMELESS_PROJECT,
>     >                                         ProjectFileExtension );
>     >
>     >             frame->SetProjectFileName( namelessProject.GetFullPath() );
>     >         }
>     >         else
>     >         {
>     >             // Try to open the last opened project,
>     >             // if a project name is not given when starting Kicad
>     >             frame->SetProjectFileName( last_pro );
>     >
>     >             wxCommandEvent cmd( 0, wxID_FILE1 );
>     >
>     >             frame->OnFileHistory( cmd );
>     >             prjloaded = true;    // OnFileHistory() loads the project
>     >         }
>     >     }
>     >
>     >
>     > we check if we have any command line arguments, and if we don't, we
>     > check to see if we have a history, and if we can't load the top history
>     > result, we set the project filename to the current working directory /
>     > noname.pro <http://noname.pro> <http://noname.pro>.
>     >
>     > I see two potential issues here:
>     >
>     > 1) The situation where we have no history isn't handled explicitly,
>     > which is part of what causes this issue for new users, I think.
>     >
>     > 2) When there is a history, but it can't find the top result, it sets
>     > the project filename to the current working directory / noname.pro <http://noname.pro>
>     > <http://noname.pro>.  Over in prjconfig.cpp, when we check for
>     > noname.pro <http://noname.pro> <http://noname.pro>, we check if
>     the whole string is
>     > "noname.pro <http://noname.pro> <http://noname.pro>".
>     >
>     > My gut feeling is to do something like the following:
>     >
>     >     if( App().argc > 1 )
>     >         // if there was a path specified, i.e. "kicad
>     > path/to/project.pro <http://project.pro> <http://project.pro>"
>     >         frame->SetProjectFileName( App().argv[1] );
>     >
>     >     else if( ! GetFileHistory().GetCount() )
>     >     {
>     >         // if there wasn't a .pro specified, and there is no history
>     >         wxFileName namelessProject( NAMELESS_PROJECT,
>     >                                     ProjectFileExtension );
>     >
>     >         frame->SetProjectFileName( namelessProject.GetFullName() );
>     >     }
>     >     else
>     >     {
>     >         // if there wasn't a .pro specified, and there is a history
>     >
>     >         wxString last_pro = GetFileHistory().GetHistoryFile( 0 );
>     >
>     >         if( !wxFileExists( last_pro ) )
>     >         {
>     >             GetFileHistory().RemoveFileFromHistory( 0 );
>     >
>     >             wxFileName namelessProject( NAMELESS_PROJECT,
>     >                                         ProjectFileExtension );
>     >
>     >             frame->SetProjectFileName( namelessProject.GetFullName() );
>     >         }
>     >         else
>     >         {
>     >             // Try to open the last opened project,
>     >             // if a project name is not given when starting Kicad
>     >             frame->SetProjectFileName( last_pro );
>     >
>     >             wxCommandEvent cmd( 0, wxID_FILE1 );
>     >
>     >             frame->OnFileHistory( cmd );
>     >             prjloaded = true;    // OnFileHistory() loads the project
>     >         }
>     >     }
>     >
>     > But on the other hand, I don't know if this breaks assumptions other
>     > places by having the ProjectFileName just be "noname.pro <http://noname.pro>
>     > <http://noname.pro>".  Would it be better to change the check to
>     see if
>     > the project filename ends with "/noname.pro <http://noname.pro>
>     <http://noname.pro>"? I hope
>     > to get a better feel for things like this as I gain familiarity with the
>     > extensive codebase.
>     >
>     > Also, Wayne, March 16th 2014, we discussed something like this on the
>     > list, and you mentioned you use a custom default project file and want
>     > to be alerted when that isn't found.  I am not familiar with how that
>     > workflow works.  Would it be broken by this fix?
> 
>     What used to happen was if a new project was created, the kicad.pro
>     <http://kicad.pro> file
>     saved in the /usr/share/kicad/template folder was copied to the new
>     project folder using project_name.pro <http://project_name.pro> as
>     the file name.  This allowed
>     the user to create a custom kicad.pro <http://kicad.pro> file for
>     project customization
>     purposes.  A failed attempt to open an existing project is a different
>     behavior.  The noname.pro <http://noname.pro> file used to trigger a
>     file save as dialog to
>     allow the user to rename the project file and save it to a preferred
>     path.  Since the kiway work, I'm not sure how this changed or if this
>     has always been broken  Changing the fail to open existing project
>     behavior should not impact the new project project file behavior.  The
>     file code paths may be the same so you may have to do some testing.
> 
>     >
>     > Adam Wolf
>     > Cofounder and Engineer
>     > W&L
>     >
>     >
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