kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Jon Evans <jon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I can think of a few ways to approach it:

1) Don't change how color works in the UI of pcbnew for now.  Change to
wxColour under the hood, but keep the current color selections -- no user
visible change, no problems, but also no new feature in pcbnew GAL.

2) Allow using the new color picker in GAL canvas of pcbnew.  When user
changes from legacy to GAL, no problem.  When user changes from GAL to
legacy, now there is the question of what to do.  We could:

2a) Reset layer colors to the legacy defaults
2b) Set layer colors to the "closest" legacy default to what the user set
in GAL (how to define "closest" requires some testing I think) --
optionally give a notice to the user that their colors have been modified
because of the switch to legacy.
2c) Warn the user that they have changed to colors that won't work right in
legacy canvas, and advise them to manually reset their layer colors.
Things will look weird until the user does so.

Any preference for the above?

-Jon

On Tue, Feb 7, 2017 at 11:20 AM, Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

> I'm not sure how you would prevent "bad" legacy colors from being
> selected without limiting the color selection in the gal canvas.  If you
> can pull it off without the code limiting colors in gal, still be useful
> in legacy, and have a reasonable design than I'm OK with it.  Given that
> we are nearing a feature freeze for the next stable release, if you
> cannot have this ready reasonably soon (next month or two), then it will
> have to be pushed back to the version 6 release.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Wayne
>
> On 2/7/2017 10:27 AM, Jon Evans wrote:
> > Would you accept the patch to move to wxColour if it were not possible
> > to choose "bad" colors in the the layout tool?  It would be easy to
> > restrict the colors to the current set in the pcb/footprint editors and
> > just allow user selection in the schematic/symbol editors for now.
> >
> > On Tue, Feb 7, 2017 at 10:19 AM, Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx
> > <mailto:stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
> >
> >     On 2/7/2017 9:00 AM, Chris Pavlina wrote:
> >     > On Tue, Feb 07, 2017 at 08:57:23AM -0500, Jon Evans wrote:
> >     >> Hi Simon, JP,
> >     >>
> >     >> I understand the issue with the colors chosen for OR-mixing.  I
> thought a
> >     >> good first step would be to set the framework for the future when
> that is
> >     >> no longer relevant (i.e. when there is no legacy canvas
> anymore).  It can
> >     >> be a "under the hood" change only in pcbnew, until the legacy
> canvas is
> >     >> removed.
> >     >>
> >     >> BTW Chris, I also have some ideas for improving the visualization
> of very
> >     >> busy (dense and high layer count) boards, I will play with them
> soon...
> >     >
> >     > Nice! I look forward to that. Definitely an area we can improve on.
> >
> >     Since the schematic editor canvas doesn't support transparency, you
> >     could make the colors anything you want.  In the board editor, the
> layer
> >     managers handles colors for both legacy and gal canvases so I'm not
> sure
> >     it makes sense until the legacy canvas is deprecated.
> >
> >     >
> >     >>
> >     >> -Jon
> >     >>
> >     >> On Tue, Feb 7, 2017 at 6:32 AM, Chris Pavlina
> >     <pavlina.chris@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:pavlina.chris@xxxxxxxxx>>
> >     >> wrote:
> >     >>
> >     >>> Let people choose. Have the default colors be wxDC-friendly.
> >     Trust me,
> >     >>> nobody is choosing to work with eight-layer boards in legacy.
> >     >>>
> >     >>> On Tue, Feb 07, 2017 at 09:01:10AM +0100, jp charras wrote:
> >     >>>> Le 07/02/2017 à 06:31, Simon Wells a écrit :
> >     >>>>> i thought this wasn't possible due to wxDC limitations
> >     >>>>
> >     >>>> Exactly, wxDC does not have a transparency feature to draw
> items.
> >     >>>>
> >     >>>> In this case, when you want to draw board layers with a
> >     transparency
> >     >>> effect, the only one other way
> >     >>>> to do that is to use logic combination between colors (for
> >     transparency:
> >     >>> the OR operation.)
> >     >>>>
> >     >>>> In other to achieve a good result, you cannot use any color for
> >     layers.
> >     >>>> You have to choose a set of colors which allows this good
> result.
> >     >>>> (by adjusting the 32 bits binary values of each color to ensure
> >     a good
> >     >>> result when 2 or more color
> >     >>>> values are ORed)
> >     >>>>
> >     >>>> There are not a lot of suitable binary values.
> >     >>>> In all cases the background must be black (when using OR or
> >     >>> transparency).
> >     >>>>
> >     >>>> Note also Eeschema does not use currently transparency, and the
> >     choice
> >     >>> of colors is not critical.
> >     >>>>
> >     >>>>>
> >     >>>>> On 7 February 2017 at 17:00, Chris Pavlina
> >     <pavlina.chris@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:pavlina.chris@xxxxxxxxx>>
> >     >>> wrote:
> >     >>>>>> I'm working on an eight-layer board and really can't wait for
> >     this to
> >     >>>>>> hit pcbnew too. It's bloody impossible to tell layers apart
> with
> >     >>> KiCad's
> >     >>>>>> state-of-the-80s-art color system.
> >     >>>>
> >     >>>> I have made a few boards with 8 and one with 16 layers.
> >     >>>> There is no perfect way to see all layers.
> >     >>>>
> >     >>>> I used Pcbnew and Altium (in a company which has a Altium
> >     license) to
> >     >>> design a 8 layers board (2
> >     >>>> very similar boards, one with Pcbnew, the other with Altium,
> >     because
> >     >>> this company used Altium).
> >     >>>>
> >     >>>> Altium allows arbitrary colors and transparency, but a 8 layers
> >     board is
> >     >>> not easy to manage.
> >     >>>>
> >     >>>> So do not expect allowing arbitrary colors and transparency
> >     will fix
> >     >>> your problem.
> >     >>>> (In the best case, it slightly helps).
> >     >>>>
> >     >>>>
> >     >>>> Having said that, using a selected set of colors does not imply
> >     using
> >     >>> EDA_COLOR_T in Kicad code.
> >     >>>> wxColor can be used instead of.
> >     >>>>
> >     >>>> This is only the *color choice* in Pcbnew which is constrained
> >     in legacy
> >     >>> canvas.
> >     >>>>
> >     >>>> EDA_COLOR_T comes from the fact the legacy graphic primitives
> where
> >     >>> written for an other library,
> >     >>>> not for wxWidgets.
> >     >>>> (Kicad was started before wxWidgets exists)
> >     >>>>
> >     >>>>>>
> >     >>>>>> On Mon, Feb 06, 2017 at 10:03:11PM -0500, Jon Evans wrote:
> >     >>>>>>> Hi all,
> >     >>>>>>>
> >     >>>>>>> I started working on the idea of a color theme system for
> KiCad,
> >     >>> starting
> >     >>>>>>> with the schematic editor.
> >     >>>>>>>
> >     >>>>>>> This change relies on a complete removal of EDA_COLOR_T from
> the
> >     >>> code, and
> >     >>>>>>> replacement with a color structure that can handle arbitrary
> >     >>> colors.  I
> >     >>>>>>> think this is important and the right path for the future,
> >     but since
> >     >>> it's a
> >     >>>>>>> significant change, I wanted to get buy-in before going any
> >     farther
> >     >>> down
> >     >>>>>>> this road.  I can understand the reasons for using an enum
> for
> >     >>>>>>> color--especially since it lets the developers restrict the
> >     colors
> >     >>> to those
> >     >>>>>>> that will work well with the drawing technique of the legacy
> >     >>> canvases.
> >     >>>>>>> But, since the new canvases will have no problem supporting
> >     arbitrary
> >     >>>>>>> colors, I think it makes sense to start setting up the
> >     groundwork
> >     >>> for that.
> >     >>>>>>>
> >     >>>>>>> In my test code, I have replaced EDA_COLOR_T with wxColour,
> >     since
> >     >>> that is
> >     >>>>>>> used internally in a few places already, and it was pretty
> >     simple
> >     >>> (although
> >     >>>>>>> somewhat time-consuming) to replace all usages.  wxColour
> >     has the
> >     >>> nice
> >     >>>>>>> property of serializing/deserializing from hex color codes
> like
> >     >>> "#80FC62"
> >     >>>>>>> so that's what I use for storing in the settings for now
> >     (eventually
> >     >>> I
> >     >>>>>>> think color settings should be in their own files so that
> >     they can be
> >     >>>>>>> traded by users).  Plus, there is a canned wxColourPicker
> widget
> >     >>> that I can
> >     >>>>>>> use in place of the custom color picker buttons that are
> >     used in the
> >     >>>>>>> settings today.
> >     >>>>>>>
> >     >>>>>>> You can see some screenshots of the (work-in-progress)
> settings
> >     >>> dialog
> >     >>>>>>> changes, and an example of a custom color theme in the
> schematic
> >     >>> editor,
> >     >>>>>>> here:
> >     >>>>>>> http://imgur.com/a/MxMmb
> >     >>>>>>>
> >     >>>>>>> So, any feedback from the core team?  Any reason why I
> >     shouldn't move
> >     >>>>>>> forward with preparing a patch to move from EDA_COLOR_T to
> >     wxColour
> >     >>> across
> >     >>>>>>> the board?
> >     >>>>>>>
> >     >>>>>>> Best,
> >     >>>>>>> Jon
> >     >>>>>>
> >     >>>>>>
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> >     >>>>
> >     >>>>
> >     >>>> --
> >     >>>> Jean-Pierre CHARRAS
> >     >>>>
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