kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Lorenzo Marcantonio <l.marcantonio@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, Oct 11, 2015 at 10:41:57AM -0400, Stefano Rossi wrote:
> I am a current user of Altium, and I think that OpenGL is necessary to use
> it. Either you have it and you can use the software, or you don't and tough
> luck.

Until a few revision ago Direct3D (not OpenGL IIRC) was the
'recommended' Altium interface, with the fallback on GDI being
deprecated. Current version may simply require shader model x (with x
being more or less the windows version:P)

My rant was more about intel lying on the supported primitives. For its
design I agree that the OpenGL canvas requires *at least* 2.0; too bad
they deprecated the logical mode, since blending is an inferior
replacement for (x)oring the layers...

Of course the big problem is us being poor :D we still have win2k
machines running happily around (the 20GB HDD generation is something
near immortal:P)

> From reading the mailing lists I have understood that using wxDC over
> OpenGL gives you a different function set to work with, such as the Push
> and Shove not working in wxDC. Has anyone thought about abstracting the
> layer on which things are drawn on? Such that you would have a KiCad
> specific library and then have it draw to the system through selectable
> OpenGL or Cairo. And if it cannot, why? Why PNS be not implemented in wxDC?

Already is. It only need a performant-enough implementation (cairo
isn't:D). Main problem is the different approach needed for a display
list dirty-rectangle engine against a full redraw compositing one.

> I have yet to use KiCad, but I would like too. I really got interested when
> I got hold of information about plans of making eeshema, pcbnew, cvpcb and
> others as plugins to a main window. Now that sounds nice. I had to work
> with OrCAD for a while (1 yr) at work and I cannot express in words how
> much I hate it's way of doing things all in separate programs.

I actually prefer them to be separate; everyone has his own workflow...

> beginners learn time but actual users time. EagleCAD is one of those that

Main problem with eagle is that it costs way too much for what it does!

-- 
Lorenzo Marcantonio
Logos Srl