Hello everyone,
I would like to add support for the SpaceNavigator 3D mouse if nobody
objects.
Being able to pan around the schematic or pcb canvas while keeping
your other hand busy doing the "real work" might improve the
ergonomics and efficiency of KiCad. To avoid having to constantly move
your hand to the keyboard for shortcuts, the two commonly used tools
should be user-assigneable to the buttons on the mouse. I dont know
how much of an improvement a 3D mouse will yield in a 2D application
like KiCad, but since I expect the implementation to be quite straight
forward I would like to give it a try.
Speaking of implementation, this is what I thought of:
The "spacenav" library provides a simple API to communicate with the
3D mouse. It's the open source (GPL3) alternative for the proprietary
library provided by 3Dconnexion (The manufacturer of the SpaceNavigator).
The only problem I see is operating system portability: The spacenav
library is only available for Linux right now. Windows and OSX would
still depend on the proprietary library (Same API by the way). There
must be a possibility to get around that, since the open source
software Blender supports the SpaceNavigator mouse on all operating
systems. I will take a look at their implementation later.
I would like to hear any comments regarding my idea and whether or not
you think 3D mouse support would be a usefull improvement for KiCad.
So far for now..
Jost
_______________________________________________
Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers
Post to : kicad-developers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers
More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
