pcb-rnd knowledge pool

 

DAD, top window in various HIDs and docking

hid_topwin by Tibor 'Igor2' Palinkas on 2018-10-12

Tags: roadmap, hid, top, window, topwin, docking, dad, dialog

node source

 

 

Abstract: Long term all HIDs will have all dialogs as DADs coming from the HID-agnostic plugins. Some elements of the top window, like the layer selector should be done in a similar way to avoid code duplication and reduce HID development cost. This will result in a new, more generic DAD approach that also solves the docking problem.

  This article describes future directions for HID development, in line with with our HID policy . It's constantly updated as the docking effort progresses.

The difference between a DAD dialog and any larger block of widgets in the top window (e.g. layer selector or the coordinate readout) is just the parent widget pointer. Which means the API and the central, HID-agnostic GUI code wouldn't be different if the widgets would be realized not in a separate non-modal dialog but as part of the top window.

Which means any such non-modal DAD dialog code could potentially be re-hosted in the top window, without the code knowing about this. That lets us implement our own, custom "docking" mechanism that will be the same with all HIDs. Properties of that docking system will be:

Generally this will help:

Note: the lesstif HID is lagging behind with the docking effort.