Some minor interface enhancements
| Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| gEDA project |
New
|
Wishlist
|
Unassigned | ||
| pcb |
New
|
Wishlist
|
Unassigned | ||
Bug Description
Here are a few small ideas that would make the GTK GUI a little more friendly.
1. When mousing over an icon/button, show a tooltip with its keyboard shortcut. This makes it easier to discover (or remember) that eg "1" means "change pen to layer #1" and that "F4" means "text mode".
2. There is no accelerator key to switch rout route styles from skinny <-> signal <-> power <-> fat. Can we please have one (or 4).
3. In most applications, Ctrl-S is used for File-Save. Does PCB do this?
If PCB does save files on Ctrl-S, then the shortcut is not listed on the right hand side of the file menu, PCB also doesn't give any feedback, such as
"File saved" in the status bar.
On the other hand, if Ctrl-S is ignored, then perhaps the status-bar should flash up in red "Unrecognised key accelerator" or something.
4. Idea: use the status bar (bottom right) for the last entry of log window. Eg "No DRC problems found". or "File saved". Use colour for green/red
5. In the top left, there is a button to turn on/off each layer. How about an extra button (for convenience) to turn on/off ALL layers. (excepting rats/soldermask).
6. When running the DRC checker, it's not clear exactly where the error is (the error is highlighted, but may not be visible in the selected viewport) .
After many hours, I accidentally discovered that double-clicking the thumbnail would take me to the right spot. So:
- In the DRC window, it should actually explain that the thumbnails are intended to be double-clicked. (How else should the user discover this?)
- When I double-clock the DRC thumbnail, my mouse pointer is immediately moved to the right place. BUT, focus isn't transferred to that window. It should be.
Thanks. Hope these observations are useful.
| apoelstra (apoelstra) wrote | #1 |
| tags: | added: accelerators |
| Felix Ruoff (felixruoff) wrote | #2 |
| Changed in geda-project: | |
| importance: | Undecided → Wishlist |
Right now we are starting an awkward transition phase (from C to C++) and a few key developers are busy or otherwise out of commission. Hopefully we will see progress again by the end of the year.
1. Agreed. When code starts flowing again, a first priority is to clean up the Gtk interface. This includes fixing accelerators, adding tooltips and adding customizability to the UI.
2. We don't want to fix the route styles to 4, so it probably won't make sense to have specific accelerators for each one. But yes, there should be "next" and "previous" accelerators.
3. This should be dealt with during the UI cleanup. The current keyboard shortcuts have been hanging around for a few decades, but I don't think there will be too much opposition to making them sane.
4. GUI cleanup.
5. GUI cleanup. (However, I doubt the usefulness of this feature. You will likely need to argue it on the list if you want this.)
6. The DRC checker needs a major revamp. The current rules have known flaws, they're inflexible, they're hard to customize and hard to understand. But this is very big and scary job, so don't hold your breath.