kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Chris Pavlina <pavlina.chris@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Mar 08, 2017 at 04:33:06PM -0500, Wayne Stambaugh wrote:
> On 3/8/2017 4:08 PM, Chris Pavlina wrote:
> > That's why I submitted such a trivial patch to the list first, I figured
> > someone would say something ;)
> > 
> > It does make sense to me, because the GUI is blocked. The busy cursor
> > says to me "yes, the GUI is supposed to be blocked right now, it's not
> > frozen". Even with a progress bar, it can seem unresponsive -
> > particularly if 1) the progress bar ends up obscured, as can happen with
> > 'weird' window managers sometimes, or 2) if a single library takes a
> > particularly long time to load, which I'm sure will only get worse if we
> > eventually allow loading them over the internet like for footprint libs.
> 
> It's the old belt and suspender method.  Users have got to quit using
> those 'weird' window managers.  It causes way too much grief.

I'm not sure displaying a busy cursor while the GUI is frozen is grief.
I've always considered it correct behavior, to be honest, regardless of
the presence or absence of a weird window manager. The busy cursor has
been used for _years_ to indicate a GUI that cannot be interacted with,
so users expect it - not displaying it sends conflicting messages; you
are saying by the absence of such a standard item that the GUI is ready
to use.

> I'm
> surprised that a single library load takes long enough to need a busy
> cursor but I'm not opposed to the patch.  Does the progress bar in
> wxWidgets have a continuous mode?  That doesn't solve the hidden
> progress window issue though.

There is a continuous mode, though I'm not sure what the benefit of
using it would be, and it's a bit strange (you have to "poke" it pretty
continuously or it freezes). I wouldn't use it.

I'm not sure why library loading got so slow suddenly. I'd profile it
but I don't have time.

> 
> > 
> > 
> > On Wed, Mar 08, 2017 at 03:55:10PM -0500, Wayne Stambaugh wrote:
> >> Does showing a progress dialog and a busy cursor at the same time make
> >> sense?
> >>
> >> On 3/8/2017 3:36 PM, Chris Pavlina wrote:
> >>> Hi,
> >>>
> >>> This patch enables display of the "busy" cursor while schematic
> >>> libraries are being loaded. Tested on Linux, Windows 10, and macOS
> >>> 10.12.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
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> >>
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