Well this gives me some hope. :) We'll table this issue until after the stable release. Maybe wxFormBuilder development will start up again. If not we will have to make a decision. Thanks everyone for the input.
Cheers, Wayne On 8/17/2015 5:02 PM, Chris Pavlina wrote: > 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 > _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers Post to : [email protected] Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
