kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[jp charras <jp.charras@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Le 11/02/2015 20:26, Lorenzo Marcantonio a écrit :
> Found this during my merge today... (lot of time since the last one)
> The text drawing routine didn't compile :P
> 
> For some reason from EDA_DRAW_MODE_T the LINE mode was removed. In fact
> it degenerated to a boolean, in many spots.
> 
> Why was that done? I agree that having tracks in LINE mode is completely
> useless but working with text and module lines in LINE mode reduce
> considerably visual clutter (i.e. I want to see the tracks, not how fat
> is my silk screen). OTOH having text in sketch mode is... questionable,
> but maybe someone has some use for it :D
> 
> I consider it a significant loss of feature. Unless, as I hope, true
> means 'FILLED' and false means 'LINE' for text and 'SKETCH' for tracks;
> but what about module lines? these are usefully shown in all the three
> modes...
> 
> I hope there is a *very* good reason for that, I rely quite a lot on
> that functionality.
> 
> Also, were all the plot engines checked for correct functionality?
> Expecially DXF which is most useful in line mode (IIRC sketch and filled
> are the same in DXF, but it was a long time ago...)
> 

Yes, there is some reasons:

* This mode does not exist in eeschema, and was poorly supported in cvpcb.

* The only one plotter which was actually using this mode is HPGL, now
outdated (using sketch instead of line mode gives good results).
DXF is not related to this change.
The way DXF works has changed a long time ago. It does not use plot
modes. It has its own mode.
Other plotters do not know the 1 pixel line mode.

* This mode is not supported by the GAL mode, and does not give good
results in anti aliased drawing engines.
In fact it uses a 0 (or 1) pixel lines thickness, which works well only
in the basic wxDC engine, which does not exist anymore in wxWidgets
based on GTK3 (Well, wxWidgets based on GTK3 is not yet usable due to
very serious bugs, but this is the default version in some
distributions, and our GAL mode will be the only one mode usable on
Linux in the next future)

* So, to simplify the drawing/plotting code, already complicated, I
removed the "LINE" mode.
The main drawback is the loss of the line mode for footprint texts and
outlines.
But the new (more powerful) GAL mode could give a better solution than
the line mode (no need to add a line draw mode option in GAL).
For drawing engine, we have to think GAL, not old wxDC.


-- 
Jean-Pierre CHARRAS