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Date: Tue, 31 May 2016 09:43:03 +0200 (CEST)
X-X-Sender: igor2 AT igor2priv
To: geda-user AT delorie DOT com
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From: gedau AT igor2 DOT repo DOT hu
Subject: [geda-user] RFC: the "Cursor line noise"
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1605310930050.28818@igor2priv>
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Reply-To: geda-user AT delorie DOT com

Hi all,

first of all: this mail has nothing to do with gschem and does _not_ 
propose anything for mainline pcb either. I state generic "what 
users would prefer in a random software having the same issue" questions.

(Background: I'm working on the "conf rewrite" in pcb-rnd, collecting all 
the configuration/setting/preferences data into a central tree in memory 
that has an uniform API.)

Today I bumped into an old problem that does affect users who want to keep 
.pcb files in VCS: the Cursor line and the Grid line noise.

The core of the problem is that these two lines represent GUI settings. On 
one hand it'd be great to have the last cursor position and grid setting 
saved but it certainly can interfere with VCS usage generating dummy 
diffs.

With the conf rewrite I have a new perspecitve looking at this old problem 
and I came up with this idea:

- a design file should not contain non-design-related data (e.g. GUI 
settings)

- instead there could be a separate file that could save such settings

- the user would place the main design file (e.g. foo.pcb) under VCS but 
the design-preferences file with all gui settings would be an uncommited 
local file (e.g. foo.pcb.pref).

- drawback: the user needs to know about what the two files are for, when 
adding one (or both) to vcs, when sharing/distributing them, during 
backups, etc.

So my question is, as an user, what do you think about this approach? 
Would it bother you if a random CAD program would start to split design 
files like that? Is it worth the hassle (from the user's point of view) or 
the Cursor-Grid-like-noise is too small to deal with 2 files all the time?

TIA,

Igor2