On Sat, Oct 02, 2010 at 11:56:56PM +0200, Felix Ruoff wrote: > Hello, > > there was/is a discussion about modifying the main-menu of pcb at > the thread "PCB: Change default file-filter in open-dialog". I think > it will be more clearly arranged if we continue this discussion at > an extra thread which I like to start with this mail :-). > > I am currently spending some time with thinking about the > menu-structure. Therefor my first question: Is anybody else working > at this point? >
I spent a short while working on keyboard shortcuts. I got through the low-hanging fruit (open/save/close/quit) and discovered what you did: there are a *lot* of little functions in pcb that have keybindings, and mapping them all is hard work. Initially, I had wanted there to be a keybinding for every single operation. But since we have a command mode, perhaps this would be a Bad Thing? How many times have you screwed up an application by holding Ctrl and hitting the wrong key? > One of the reasons for me to modify the menu is, to adapt it to the > human-interface-guidelines (hid-guidelines) of GNOME > (http://library.gnome.org/devel/hig-book/). Anywhere on the > geda-webside I found the hint, that the geda (and pcb???)-GUI should > be adopted to the rules described there. This does some problems > with the keyboard-shortcuts. E.g. Ctrl+P is actually used for 'Auto > place selected elements' and should be for 'Print' in the > guidelines. Agreed. If somebody put out a patch to clean up the gpcb-menu.res file and make the shortcuts standard and sane, I would welcome it. But then the same effort needs to be done for gschem. > I will prefere using the shortcuts suggested in the document given above. > In some cases it might be nice to support some new and the old > shortcuts the same time. Does anyone of you know if it is possible > in the actual implementation to define two shortcuts for the same > action? > No. You can define the same shortcut twice, but IIRC only one of them will work. Nothing will complain, but the program will feel broken. > The hid-guidelines suggesting Ctrl++ and Ctrl+- as shortcuts for > zooming in and out. Using the plus and minus-sign for keyboard > shortcuts is not possible in the actual implementation. The appended > patch fixes this. > +1 > > In the old thread there was some discussion about the menu-entries. > Thank you all for your suggestions! I tried to merge them to a new > discussion-basis here. First, it's just about the "File"-menu. > > File > New Ctrl+N > Open Layout... Ctrl+O > Load > Element Data to Paste Buffer... // perhaps, this two entries > can be merged at a later stage. > Layout Data to Paste Buffer... // needs some coding (am > working at this). Perhaps, moving this two to the 'Buffer'-menu? > Netlist File... > Vendor Resource... > ----- > Save Layout Ctrl+S > Save Layout As... Shift+Ctrl+S > Save Connection Data of > a Single Element > All Elements > Unused Pins So far so good. > Save Buffer to Footprint // Don't know if this Personally, I don't like this at all. I think that footprints should be an export option, as well as the default save behavior in "footprint mode". Also, we should have a "footprint mode". > should be added here. Perhaps this should stay at the 'Buffer'-menu. > ----- > Update from Schematic... > Revert > To Saved > To Backup // Don't know the action to > fill in here. Is this implemented in the core already? I think this is source control's job. One of the points made in the file-format discussion was that we want something more diff-friendly. Git integration would be cool, but that certainly doesn't belong in the core. > ----- > Calibrate Printer... (or perhaps 'Page Setup' when there will be > a new page-setup-dialog) > Print Layout... Ctrl+P > Export Layout... > ----- > <List of recent files> // I did some work on this. > It works but it is not well integrated jet. Will send a patch when > ready (or I gave up) A first step to this would be to create (or find) a decent unified API for storing user settings and data under the ~/.pcb directory. > ----- > // Here was the 'Preferences'-entry. I think we can move it to > 'Edit' (as also suggested in the ghi-guidelines) to make this menu > shorter > Close layout Ctrl-W // if and when multiple > layouts are supported ;-) > Close all layouts // if and when multiple > layouts are supported ;-) > Quit Ctrl+Q > > > These are my thoughts about the file-menu. Perhaps, you have some > more comments or other hints? > Our menu system is pretty goofy right now. In cleaning it up, we have to consider a few things: 1. Default keybindings (of course) and menu structure (of course) 2. Customizable keybindings 3. Customizable menus 4. Dockable menus, toolbars, etc 5. Command-mode improvements. 6. Removal of unused menu items It's such a pain to use the pcb menu right now for anything serious, I don't think anybody really does. Fixing up the command mode should be an equal priority, if not bigger. As for the command mode: 1. Tab-completion (huge) 2. Callback (a little clunky now) 3. Escape/lost focus should get out of command-mode 4. Output display 4a. For internal commands a single line could be shown in the status bar 4b. For lots of output, a log panel built into pcb would be nice 4c. However, this needs to be 100% out of the way when not in use 5. External application support (similar in vi how you can do :!make or :!pdflatex %). Andrew _______________________________________________ geda-user mailing list [email protected] http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
