kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Oliver Walters <oliver.henry.walters@xxxxxxxxx>]

Wayne,

I styled these improvements in this manner for three main reasons:

1. It makes input validation easier (e.g. prevent user from changing the
name of immutable path variables / prevent input of duplicate variables)
2. The functionality is more obvious with buttons, I feel (perhaps at the
sake of efficiency)
3. It is more in line with UI elements from other software, where the UI is
more "user friendly"

Maybe it's less efficient but this dialog is rarely used and certainly not
for large scale data entry.

However, whatever changes are made here, I feel should be commonised with
other similar data entry dialogs. In particular, the pretty-table and
symbol-table dialogs.

1. A common table class should be created (currently code is duplicated all
over the place)
2. Better input validation
3. Ability to select library paths with a directory chooser dialog
4. Consistency across all dialogs

I would be happy to defer to the 'spreadsheet' style approach if we can
have a common dialog style and also improve as above.

e.g. in the 'PCB library tables' window, some buttons only work when you
have the entire row selected, and some work when you have a cell selected.
Also, the 'remove library' button removes the last library even if no
library is selected.

I'd rather make a set of changes to improve all of these tables, rather
than "improve" this one but then have style differences.

What do you think?

Oliver


On Sat, Oct 7, 2017 at 6:08 AM, Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

> Oliver,
>
> My original intention with this dialog was to do away with the "Add" and
> "Remove" buttons all together and create an object derived from
> wxGridTable and wxGrid for editing the environment variable list.  I did
> this because it was expedient.  I've never been a big fan of the way we
> use buttons to add, delete, edit, etc. entries in grids and list
> controls.  Why not just make them directly editable like a typical
> spreadsheet?  I would think that this would be more natural for users
> rather than using buttons.  It seems to me that double clicking (or
> right clicking and context menu) in the path grid cell would launch the
> dir select dialog.  I know it's more work to do it this way but I think
> it is a more user friendly approach than having to use buttons to modify
> the grid.
>
> That being said, I would be willing to commit this patch if you fix a
> few things in DIALOG_ENV_VAR_SINGLE_BASE:
>
> Make the dialog resizable so DIALOG_SHIM can do it's job.
>
> Don't allow the controls to expand.
>
> Don't allow the wxStdDialogButtonSizer to expand.
>
> Set the spacer proportion to 0.
>
> Use a wxDirPickCtrl instead of your own custom control.  It will be more
> consistent across platforms.
>
> Get rid of the dialog size and let the sizers select the best size for
> the controls.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Wayne
>
> On 10/6/2017 10:53 AM, Oliver Walters wrote:
> > Attached is a patch which improves UX for the ENV_VAR editor dialog
> >
> > * Adds ability to select path with file chooser
> > * General cleanup
> > * Removal of that sinking feeling you get when interacting with a clunky
> UI
> >
> > Oliver
> >
> >
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