X-Authentication-Warning: delorie.com: mail set sender to geda-user-bounces using -f X-Recipient: geda-user AT delorie DOT com X-Original-DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20120113; h=message-id:date:from:user-agent:mime-version:to:subject :content-transfer-encoding; bh=d3+pqXgt8h5vX//mE9VPzsohMbzyja0xotUgNvh2HZ0=; b=E0AOeTbzKs7oYYGYaHfcqvNrSqfur3fcDRg2NXSkn3aThx99/vrZO858OxB5nYoeYN 1GS6qdr6jBv45B/3NMQJ1OThj1/HPMeQp7VR+Lxi7zLXh8FYUm0uWaPal3JtaUjaaRN8 1Yvcrz4/GWJnWylWLZ3dX4yReonrX6Nf+7gs1ZijsuadyQJFe6QyB6iTfQrZkmPSkO79 L4xGUujSHRddwATfB5XEyrGj0W7iuUiUstaRO+wicGNPjF3F98vQSPdC1YuDDJ1sSrXa KoH1sPBdZ63QQLS09S5kWA7hig0pi9vw6MbLe5aCyU6E3whF5mdaUugTj8EK3WHm0YNE FkmQ== X-Google-DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=1e100.net; s=20130820; h=x-gm-message-state:message-id:date:from:user-agent:mime-version:to :subject:content-transfer-encoding; bh=d3+pqXgt8h5vX//mE9VPzsohMbzyja0xotUgNvh2HZ0=; b=DmxYwyH9A14qkKNCQm3oguJ2h6YVPFqEzM4PLX66l/2NBgYnoJbF3A9ZGD4pZY1TT9 ji5bvUkekD9mIzwroZJDh4Se03SZ9wvxwvigDWpJgvoMG68rxJUL4Xlr0AB9rYiTh9s+ Yu7ePiUyfhnTmdl6LG7sL8pH1LcHV+lLFpROrKNYyQZ3yTgjE/FI0Eyj7356/J1nGkgQ 4VVtBjZix38CTEb0rFBoMpTJlxfYukb9+ZB47Pq1YVkodCBO/4qT21NZBOs6hPADP/Gu CMUv/tW8Thyihuw732s0kY9VkPQHvqQ/i2BrHAwFT3RctE8T+SYPinVkQL2fMCMnkE6n cn4g== X-Gm-Message-State: AOPr4FUMZkzKMkqNa4B+l+t2WQVUCB9dvPxx0811rz+3b8uLtQRftRgJadiCqD7QmErZcA== X-Received: by 10.28.175.143 with SMTP id y137mr558797wme.21.1462117144980; Sun, 01 May 2016 08:39:04 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <572622FE.9050705@gmail.com> Date: Sun, 01 May 2016 16:38:38 +0100 From: "Iain Paton (selsinork AT gmail DOT com) [via geda-user AT delorie DOT com]" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/24.6.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: geda-user AT delorie DOT com Subject: [geda-user] gschem annoyances Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Reply-To: geda-user AT delorie DOT com After a recent HD failure, I've just built the latest gschem git master. Here are some some of my thoughts from the process: Guile 2.0.x is a real pain in the *** to build and even after getting it to build it interacts badly with whatever gschem is doing with libtool. For example you end up trying to link to a shared version of libatomic_ops that doesn't exist and is anyway two steps removed by being statically linked into the garbage collector that guile uses. (libatomic_ops by default builds a static lib, not shared, gschem should neither know or care about it) After finally solving all the problems and getting a working build I discover the next set of problems: Sidebars. No choice, forced on every time gschem is opened. So let me describe my usage. I have a 30" 2560x1600 screen and a second smaller 20" monitor. In previous gschem versions I've kept the main schematic page on the large screen, all the menus and dialog windows on the second screen. This gives me the maximum useable space for the actual schematic I'm working on. I'm now faced with a large, mostly empty sidebar and whatever you call the thing along the bottom that doesn't exactly fit the sidebar description. Collectively these reduce space for the schematic by just short of a million pixels! Ok, so these can be hidden from the view menu, but this takes either four mouse clicks or four keypresses *every* time which is a serious blow to productivity. Can someone with commit access please commit the patch from https://bugs.launchpad.net/geda/+bug/1492834 so that users have at least some choice? The patch isn't enough however. There's still a couple of serious useability problems. Click on the 'ABC' add-text button on the toolbar, or use the AT keyboard shortcut to add some text and I get the pop-up dialog as before and this can be put on the second screen. But if I want to edit some already existing text, rather than this happening in the dialog, it's duplicated in the Text tab in the sidebar. Two problems here, if the sidebar is hidden it's automatically opened. This might be ok, but it has to be manually closed which quickly becomes annoying. It's also inconsistent from a UI perspective to have two different places with essentially identical layout for no reason other than Add vs Edit. Interaction between the sidebar opening and the display of the page I'm editing means that if I edit some text at either edge of the window then there's a good chance I end up with the thing I'm editing disappearing off the screen which isn't at all helpful. I can also size the sidebar down to zero with the gripper. But this has undesirable problems as trying to edit some text then does nothing at all, it doesn't work out that the sidebar isn't visible and restore it, doesn't present the dialog, instead it just switches to an invisible tab. The sidebar might just about be useful if it could be detached and put on my second screen - I can do this with both the menubar and toolbar if I want.. To make it worthwhile would require being able to combine it with other things like the Add Component window and Attribute editor though and that doesn't seem to be possible? Sidebars are also completely unconfigurable - can't hide by default, can't move to the left, can't detach. Bottom 'sidebar' doesn't respect (log-window "later") which I've had in $HOME/.gEDA/gschemrc forever to tidy up the annoyance in previous versions. Most of what is in the sidebar appears to be seldom used, Object tab mostly only useful when creating symbols and Options tab for me only contains things that are set once and then never touched again. On the Options menu, the Show Log Window... entry now does nothing it should either be updated to work with the bar, or removed. I've added some of this stuff to https://bugs.launchpad.net/geda/+bug/1496899 which seems to be very much along the same lines as where I'd like to see this go. Finally a request for some help. While the sidebars evolve I'd like to temporarily go back to the old Edit Text dialog, I've found where it's connected in system-gschemrc with (,(N_ "Edit Text...") &edit-text "gtk-edit") but I'm having problems tracing where that &edit-text scheme function ends up. Would someone more familiar with how the scheme code interacts with the underlying C code be able to point me in the right direction? Iain