Mail Archives: geda-user/2015/07/25/12:01:29
Refining some of the points:
On Sat, 25 Jul 2015, DJ Delorie wrote:
>
> Based on what I think will affect the most users...
>
>> 1. {large} merge pcb-gpmi in pcb-rnd: scripting within pcb, using
>> 10 different languages (includes python, perl, awk, lua and guile)
>> Languages (and the dependencies they mean) are all optional.
>
> I hear a lot of folks say "scripting" when what they mean is
> "in-editor command line" - we have one but it can't do everything the
> mouse can do. If this merge can give us that feature somehow, that
> would be cool.
I actually do mean in-editor scripting. Like you need a smallish feature,
something that's almost as simple as you could do it from the actions, but
it already requires a loop and a few if's here and there...
I also mean using existing, 3rd party scripting languages (not PCB's own
action language), binding them so they can access actions or PCB data
structures and functions directly.
>
>> 2. {large} resurrect the win32 port - only if there are volunteer windows
>> testers
>
> This would be the biggest benefit.
So 3 tokens on this one, or what?
>
>> 3. {small} UI: trace length calculation and display
>
> The 'R' key already does this
This feature must be very new.
I've just installed 20140306 (was that the last snapshot?) to test it.
With the gtk hid, 'R' doesn't do anything. Report doesn't print length
info either.
>
>> 4. {small} UI: be able to manually change text line width
>
> ?
Sometimes I scale down silk text and it becomes unreadable because the
lines are just too thick. However, when I have larger text on the same
board, I want lines to be thick. This feature would allow the user to
change text line thickness independently of text size.
>
>> 7. {medium?} CORE: optional inverse silk or copper text: draw a fill
>> rect around the text and make the text a cutout of this fill rect.
>
> Each layer should be a generic CSG, which would give us this anyway,
> rather than add a new special type of object.
I'm trying to implement features I need. I sometimes daydream about
rewriting the core to have a better model of the world, but I'd
never finish with that s that's out of the scope. Yes, this feature would
be an ugly hack on the existing infrastructure.
>
>> 9. {medium} HID: resurrect the lesstif HID (pcb-rnd supports gtk at the moment)
>
> If you broke the HID interface in your port, you've done something
> wrong anyway.
Sorry, but your comment is being as useful as John Doty's.
I didn't break it. I just do not support it yet.
When I switched from autotools to scconfig, I didn't implement the
detection of lesstif. Since the user count of pcb-rnd is real low, I
decided to spend time first on what is actually needed, and leave options
and extras to a later time.
Let's face it: the lesstif hid is not very popular, most users go for the
gtk hid. I do not know exactly how popular it is: this why I tried to
query PCB users with this poll. If it turns out noone wants to use
lesstif, I won't assign higher priority to getting scconfig to configure
it.
Regards,
Igor2
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