Here, have another vote of confidence. Very few GUI builders aren't crap, and most are fairly inflexible. wx is not a difficult toolkit to work with in general and any developer who can write decent code should be able to interact with it directly. Perhaps it is not a bad thing for "can write wx code" to be the "you must be this tall to enter" for the kicad codebase? ;) wxformbuilder is buggy - seriously, does anybody here *enjoy* working with that thing?? - and doesn't support some of the nicer widgets.
As for future plans to port to Qt - as much more as I like Qt than wx, that'd be rather a waste of dev time IMO. On Mon, Aug 17, 2015 at 01:26:02PM -0400, Wayne Stambaugh wrote: > On 8/17/2015 9:14 AM, David Novak wrote: > >> To be honest, I've never been a big fan of dialog box layout tools. > >> Their strength is there weakness. They promote designing quick dialog > >> box layouts that makes reuse difficult. Take a look at the padding and > >> overall layout in KiCad's dialogs. They are all over the map. I prefer > >> hand coding dialogs. It's painfully slow but encourages reuse (well > >> designed base dialog classes) and standardization (using wxSizerFlags). > > > > I agree with Wayne. Dialog layout tools are nice to get up and running > > quickly, but the more I use them, the more they get in the way. On > > internal projects, my team ends up implementing workarounds for advanced > > features. > > > > I've recently started trying to convince my team to code the dialogs by > > hand. In my mind, with a little planning up front, hand coding the > > dialog could be relatively quick. > > > > David > > > > Thanks for the vote of confidence. I thought I was the lone voice in > the woods when it came to hand coding dialogs. I doubt we will have an > easy time convincing everyone else it's a good idea. That being said, > we may end up in a position where we have no option if there is not a > viable open source option. I would reject using a proprietary tool and > I don't want to waste precious KiCad development resources maintaining > wxFormBuilder. > > > > > On 8/13/2015 2:41 PM, Wayne Stambaugh wrote: > >> > >> On 8/13/2015 2:05 PM, jp charras wrote: > >>> Le 13/08/2015 18:36, Eldar Khayrullin a écrit : > >>>> Hi all. > >>>> Maybe in future need to port kicad in other modern gui as qt( > >>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_(software) ) > >>> A bit overkilled for this issue (if this is an issue). > >>> I am not especially thrilled by QT. > >>> This is a very good tool, but it has its own issues. > >>> Good luck to volunteers who will port 400 000 lines of code relative > >>> to GUI. > >>> (80% of code of any application; Kicad has more than 500 000 lines of > >>> code) > >> We'll leave that decision to the next project manager. This project > >> manager is not interested porting KiCad to QT. This has been discussed > >> before. > >> > >>>> 13.08.2015 13:00, Blair Bonnett пишет: > >>>>> Hi all, > >>>>> > >>>>> It appears wxFormBuilder is, if not dead, not far from it. The > >>>>> evidence: > >>>>> > >>>>> * No stable release in 4 years, and the last beta release was 13 > >>>>> months ago. > >>> Although I agree with the fact wxFormBuilder is not actively maintained, > >>> the last release was made the 17 June. > >>> > >>> I share your concern about wxFormBuilder. > >>> > >>> But replacing it is not easy. > >>> > >>> To answer one of your questions, before using wxFormBuilder, I used > >>> DialogBox (free version). > >> I'm reluctant to use proprietary tools for all of the usual reasons. I > >> would rather code dialogs by hand than use a proprietary tool. > >> > >>> It worked fine and was easy to use. > >>> It is written and maintained by the creator of wxWidgets. > >>> > >>> But the user code is embedded in automatically generated DialogBox. > >>> I did not used recent versions, so it is perhaps now different. > >>> > >>> One on the *best features* of wxFormBuilder is the fact it creates > >>> "black box" files and all the user code is in other files. > >>> You even do not need to read them. > >>> > >>> Any other candidate should have this feature. > >>> > >>> We need volunteers to test other candidates (in fact a very few > >>> candidates) > >> To be honest, I've never been a big fan of dialog box layout tools. > >> Their strength is there weakness. They promote designing quick dialog > >> box layouts that makes reuse difficult. Take a look at the padding and > >> overall layout in KiCad's dialogs. They are all over the map. I prefer > >> hand coding dialogs. It's painfully slow but encourages reuse (well > >> designed base dialog classes) and standardization (using wxSizerFlags). > >> I got shot down the last time I suggested this and I understand the > >> reasoning. > >> > >>> > >>>>> * A grand total of 13 commits in the last 12 months (current trunk is > >>>>> r2205, r2192 was made on 1 August 2014). A number of these are > >>>>> buildsystem / release / changelog (!) updates. > >>>>> * No developer responses on the mailing list, including to a message > >>>>> three months ago [1] asking if the project was still active. > >>>>> * No support for newer widgets. For example, the wxSpinCtrlDouble > >>>>> widget added in wxWidgets 2.9.0 is not supported. I patched it to add > >>>>> this widget back in April and posted the patch to both the mailing > >>>>> list and an existing ticket from three years ago [2]. No response to > >>>>> that either. > >>>>> > >>>>> We may have to start thinking about whether we continue with it from > >>>>> here, or consider a move towards a different tool. > >>>>> > >>>>> I realise any change like this isn't going to happen prior to the > >>>>> stable release, and nor am I suggesting it should. But with the recent > >>>>> post to this list about UI improvements, I think this is a highly > >>>>> related topic which should be discussed as well. > >>>>> > >>>>> There are a number of alternatives listed on the wxWidgets wiki [3]. > >>>>> Does anybody have any experience with any of them? (Spoiler alert, I > >>>>> don't). Are there any thoughts on how to proceed from here? > >>>>> > >>>>> Regards > >>>>> Blair > >>>>> > >>>>> > >>>>> [1] https://sourceforge.net/p/wxformbuilder/mailman/message/34100789/ > >>>>> [2] https://sourceforge.net/p/wxformbuilder/feature-requests/45/ > >>>>> [3] > >>>>> https://wiki.wxwidgets.org/Tools#Rapid_Application_Development_.2F_GUI_Builders > >>>>> > >>> > >> _______________________________________________ > >> Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers > >> Post to : [email protected] > >> Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers > >> More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers > > Post to : [email protected] > > Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers > > More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp > > _______________________________________________ > Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers > Post to : [email protected] > Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers > More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers Post to : [email protected] Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
