Peter Clifton wrote: >>> gschem and pcb havedifferent user interfaces, which you have to >>> learn. >> Yup. > > I've wondered in the past.. would people (users / developers) object to > making the GTK HID for PCB more in line with gschem's GTK UI. (Or vica > versa) > > I already ported a similar looking footprint selector (reusing some > code), and the file-quit dialog. Little things... like the message / log > window dialogs could be made more similar, and it might have an effect. > > I'm not quite sure how we'd get round the key-bindings, but perhaps one > idea would be to ship two (or four) sets. PCB: (classic PCB / gEDA > like), or gEDA: (classic gEDA / PCB like). Clearly if we did this, a > brand new install ought to default to a coherent set.
cadnetix mode!!! I only say this half kidding. For those of you who have never experienced the pleasure of cadnetix, it was a schematic capture and board layout tool that was pretty darn good back in the sparcstation 2 days. When I first used cadnetix, I didn't like it because it was different than other gui programs of the day. Everything was "nonstandard". I later realized there were 2 reasons. The first was historical. It predated much of the gui driven programs of the day. But the second is that a CAD system is *different* from a word processor. After getting to know the tool I came to really appreciate how totally excellent the UI really was. It was clear that someone sat next to a layout person for a month and walked away with a histogram of how often different things were done. Then they made the most common the most simple. You could do 90% of your work with one hand on the mouse and the other on the "L-keys" on a sun keyboard. You rarely needed to move the pointer away from the main action area on the screen and you never needed silly things like a modifier key. If you're never typing text, why force ctrl-c, ctrl-v on someone. Why not just 'c' over the original and click where the copy goes? It was a very fast and RSI friendly tool. But I have to admit that the learning curve was a bit of a pain and I'm sure by now with how much more "GUI modeled after a wordprocessor" oriented we all are that it would feel even weirder than it did in the early 90's. I don't want to start a huge discussion of "my keybindings are better than yours", but I did want to point out that even a simple standardization especially on a layout tool can actually translate into a huge difference in the number of key presses. > I'd like to see shared code (or at least.. shared appearance) when we > come to sort out toolbar icons in gschem and PCB in the future. > > If we had to nail down what it is about gEDA and PCB which make them > feel like different applications, what is it? > > Keybindings? (those are the ones which trip me up moving between them) > Colours? > Grid style / behaviour as it zooms? > Zoom style? (about point / warp to centre) > Graphic style of toolbar icons? > Dialogs? > Menus? > Object selection styles? > a big complaint I had about concept + allegro (cadence board tools) when I used them many years ago is simple things like zooming were very different between the two. In contrast, their IC tools have a very similar (but not quite identical) look and feel. zooming/panning is the big one that gets me. I am forever trying to use 'z' and 'Z' to zoom in/out in tools other than the ones which actually accept those. > > Side note.. why doesn't the lack of anti-aliasing in PCB bug me like it > did in gschem? > > Is it that text legibility in schematics is more important, and > schematics typically have narrower line features on screen? possibly. Maybe because one more typically looks at hardcopy schematics and we're used to silk screened or etched text? -Dan _______________________________________________ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user