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Date: Wed, 6 Sep 2017 20:17:53 +0200 (CEST)
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To: geda-user AT delorie DOT com
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From: gedau AT igor2 DOT repo DOT hu
Subject: [geda-user] [pcb-rnd][dev] attribute dialog upgrade
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Reply-To: geda-user AT delorie DOT com

Hi all,

1. what we had already

pcb-rnd inherited a cute feature from mainline back in 2013: attribute 
dialogs. These are generic purpose custom dialog boxes - you can see 
exampels when exporting the design from the GUI, because the main/original 
purpose was to provide a flexible way exporter attributes can be 
presented.

In the original code the attribute dialog worked from a flat list of 
"attributes" (values of different type, like integers, enums).

2. what's new

On top of this, recent development version of pcb-rnd introduces hierarchy 
with 3 "composite" types:

- vbox (vertical box)

- hbox (horizontal box)

- table (regular grid placement)

Composite types can host plain old attributes or further composite types, 
thus can be used to build complex dialog boxes with arbitrary arrangement 
of widgets. These dialog boxes can be built and ran by core code or plugin 
code or even user scripts. All current production GUI HIDs (lesstif and 
all variants of gtk) support the new feature.

3. how is it going to be useful

The first example where we are going to use the new feature is the 
subcircuit/buffer layer binding view/edit dialog. It will present a table 
with two columns. On the left the "layer binding recipes" are shown, (e.g. 
"second copper layer from the top") on the right the actual board layer 
pcb-rnd calculated from the recipe. The user is free to change the 
parameters of the recipe on the left (and request a re-binding) or 
directly override the binding on the right side (in which case the recipe 
for that layer will be ignored).

Regards,

Igor2