Re: gEDA-dev: UI concept screen-shotshttp://www2.eng.cam.ac.uk/~pcjc2/geda/ui/

[Peter Clifton <pcjc2-at-NOSPAMcam_dot_ac_dot_uk>]

On Sat, 2007-05-19 at 18:43 +0200, Ivan Stankovic wrote:
> On Sat, May 19, 2007 at 05:14:19PM +0100, Peter Clifton wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > I've gathered some of the UI concepts I've played with (some past,
> > present) on-line at:
> > 
> > http://www2.eng.cam.ac.uk/~pcjc2/geda/ui/
> > 
> > There are some teasers for a possible UI to invoke a footprint picker.
> > (Ok - I've just been working on the UI design as a distraction, it
> > doesn't really launch the PCB library window yet).
> > 
> > Feedback on any of them would be good.
> 
> These all look really cool, I would love to see them, especially
> the page contents browser and the footprint picker!

Thanks - I'm thinking the footprint picker (with a preview) will be a
killer feature. Of course, they are mock-ups for now unfortunately. All
generated with real code though, not gimp manipulation!

The page contents browser (almost) works, but it (is/was) intended as a
demo of on-the fly updates propagated from libgeda. We don't have that
yet, so the window doesn't update as the schematic changes. I have tried
to make a custom GtkTreeViewModel to front onto libgeda - but the
experience nearly drove me insane. (Its not pleasant!)

The netlist / bus bits are hard-coded based mock-ups, as libgeda doesn't
full connectivity yet.


I just updated the page to show correct rendering of the "..." button. I
think its the nicer UI for it, but is spoilt a little by design issues
in GTK's themeing system. (I hacked the Clearlooks engine to treat my
GschemDotdotBox the same as a combo-box for drawing.)

> I recall a discussion about displaying a tab for each page, I think
> it was Ales who implemented this.  Any news on this?

Both Ales and myself have had a go at this.

I got side-tracked into considering the possibilities of multiple views
of the same schematic, and got lost in the "noscreen" changes (keeping
cached screen coords is incompatible with multiple views)

That's how I got started nearly a year ago!

GTK's Notebook implementation kind-of requires (for "proper" rendering)
separate page contents in each notebook tab - requiring one drawing area
per tab to look "nice". This doesn't fit gschem's code very nicely.

The pragmatic way (which I fiddled with briefly, and is how Ales coded
his) is to put nothing in each GtkNotebook page, and just make changing
tabs update the ordinary gschem view. Unless you're looking for it, you
won't notice the frame which should surround the tab page contents,
sitting empty above the gschem drawing area.

I've got some (probably stale) patches which change to a different
internal management of the page list (which takes a more "flat" view of
them), which could be useful for either the "page navi" toolbar
approach, or the tabbed view approach.

Its a GObject wrapper on a GList, and half opaquifies the interface with
accessors. (You can get the GList but are required not to modify it
directly). The GObject emits signals such as "list-changed" etc.. for
updating page managers, or other interested code.

Thanks for the feedback!

-- 
Peter Clifton

Electrical Engineering Division,
Engineering Department,
University of Cambridge,
9, JJ Thomson Avenue,
Cambridge
CB3 0FA

Tel: +44 (0)7729 980173 - (No signal in the lab!)



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