kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Jon Evans <jon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I was going to add a context menu entry for "next selection", is that
obvious enough to you or do you think there should be extra hints?

On Feb 11, 2017 18:14, "Chris Pavlina" <pavlina.chris@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Very nice. I only think it needs to be a bit more obvious how to do it.
>
> On Sat, Feb 11, 2017 at 05:49:05PM -0500, Jon Evans wrote:
> > Proof of concept: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfnXPosOHcY
> > (when you see the selection changing, I'm hitting the new hotkey I made
> for
> > cycling through items)
> >
> > On Sat, Feb 11, 2017 at 2:24 PM, Chris Pavlina <pavlina.chris@xxxxxxxxx>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > I wish I had thoughts more verbose than "yes" right now... Yeah, this
> is
> > > how most tools work, and it's quite intuitive. I would be 100% in favor
> > > of implementing it this way.
> > >
> > > On Sat, Feb 11, 2017 at 02:21:08PM -0500, Jon Evans wrote:
> > > > Hi all,
> > > >
> > > > I had been thinking about proposing this already as a UX
> enhancement, and
> > > > then while looking through the starter bugs realized that lp:1154020
> [1]
> > > is
> > > > actually quite difficult to solve in a nice way due to the popup menu
> > > used
> > > > for clarification today, so I decided to send it out now.
> > > >
> > > > I propose that we change the selection code to "guess" at the item
> the
> > > user
> > > > wanted to select, and let the user cycle through the set of items
> that
> > > are
> > > > near the last point they clicked with a hotkey (and possible a
> context
> > > menu
> > > > option "Next").  This is similar to how the commercial tools I've
> used
> > > work.
> > > >
> > > > A few more ideas about this:
> > > >
> > > > - The currently selected item needs to be indicated somehow.
> Currently
> > > we
> > > > don't highlight all items when selected (for example, fields) and so
> > > either
> > > > highlighting which item you are selecting or showing it in the
> message
> > > > panel would be required for this to be friendly.
> > > >
> > > > - This would tie in nicely to selection filtering stuff that other
> devs
> > > are
> > > > working on.  Turning on a selection filter mode ("components only",
> "text
> > > > objects only", etc) would restrict the set of items that can be
> picked,
> > > and
> > > > greatly increase the chance that the right item will be selected on
> the
> > > > first click.
> > > >
> > > > - Some commercial tools have "focus" modes, which are kind of like
> > > filters,
> > > > but they don't restrict what you can select, but rather influence
> what
> > > will
> > > > be selected first.  So if you are in "component focus mode" and you
> > > select
> > > > a component with a label on top, the component will always be
> selected
> > > > first.
> > > >
> > > > - We could map two hotkeys next to each other (for example "," and
> "." on
> > > > QWERTY keyboards) and let people step forward and backward through
> the
> > > > clarification list
> > > >
> > > > I think this change would make item selection faster, allow fixing
> some
> > > > long-standing bugs, and work nicely with enhancements to selection
> > > > filtering that are coming.  The one downside is that you would no
> longer
> > > > get a list of all items that are underneath the cursor, but I can't
> see
> > > the
> > > > value in that information.
> > > >
> > > > Any thoughts on this?
> > > >
> > > > Best,
> > > > Jon
> > > >
> > > > [1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/kicad/+bug/1154020
> > >
> > >
>