kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[John Beard <john.j.beard@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Jul 31, 2018 at 4:51 PM, Seth Hillbrand <seth@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> wxFormBuilder isn't perfect but it solves many of
> the tedious issues.

I find wxFB to be much more tedious than code.

If dialog code *is* unbearably tedious, IMO that means there is not
enough abstraction, and too much repetitive UI is being expressed
directly in terms of "raw" UI widgets, rather than at a more
"semantic" level. This is a natural consequence when using a form
builder, where anything not made of a simple primitive widgets or
subclass is impossible without a blank placeholder. Even special
subclasses (say the pin type drop down) are not actually usefully
expressed in wxFB, you just see a dummy lookalike.

A good example: DC sweep sources 1 and 2 in dialog_sim_settings_base:
total duplication of a entire panel of 13 widgets and a sub-sizer.
Within that panel, three instances of identical "voltage" inputs,
which are manually arranged triplets of {title, control, unit label},
all with identical manually set flags and so on. These triplets are
also used in the Transient and AC panels in the same dialog. The
tedious nature of these dialogs, in both code and wxFB, is a sign that
there is redundant UI here. wxFB may make the tedium more bearable
(I'd argue it doesn't), but doesn't help fix the root cause.

Cheers,

John