| ID: | 2469 |
| From: | ge...@igor2.repo.hu |
| Date: | Fri, 16 Nov 2018 12:25:59 +0100 (CET) |
| Subject: | [pcb-rnd] feature removal plan: alternative/compact vertical layout |
Hi all, we have two settings, accessible from both the old preferences window and the new preferences dialog: "alternative window layout" in horizontal and vertical directions. The default is 'on'. The compact_horizontal setting affects the status line only: if it's true, the status line gets a line break, making it narrower, but taller. This is required to meet our small-screen 800x600 target and don't waste too much space on large screen. The compact_vertical setting does more: moves the tool bar between the under-the-menu position and the under-the-layersel position and changes whether the coord readout (top right corner) is multi-line. These features do anything only in the gtk HID. I plan to do the following changes later on: 1. changes are needed because I want to have every HID offer a similar looking top window _and_ want to simplify the HID API too. Any extra local (per HID feature) is only complication for both code and documentation. On the other hand if something looks like an useful feature on one HID, we should most probably have it on all HIDs. Example: the 'full screen mode' - originally it was a gtk vs. lesstif thing, some users using lesstif because it didn't have so many widgets in the top window; by now we can do the same with gtk as well. And later on lesstif will have all the same widgets in top window and the same full screen option to hide them. 2. I plan to remove the compact_vertical setting; the toolbar would be always under the menu. Rationale: - HID API simplification - our layer selectr is taller now, the toolbar fits harder there than under the menu - the tool bar will be dynamically extensible, which means we will be able to have more icons there; there's more room under the menu for growth - long term plan: main window widget groups will be dockable dialog boxes with multiple positions you can dock them in; in that setup a special setting makes no sense. See also: http://repo.hu/cgi-bin/pool.cgi?cmd=show&node=hid_topwin 3. I plan to rename compact_horizontal to compact and make it more generic: it would affect any top window or other dialog in whatever way that makes sense locally to the given window to work better in resolutions between 800x600 and 1024x768. This means the multi-line split for both the coord readout and the status line would be controlled by this flag, and maybe some more in other dialogs. 4. the compact setting will obviously be hid-independent, will work with any present and future hids. Best regards, Igor2
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2469 [pcb-rnd] feature removal plan: alternative/compact vertical layout from ge...@igor2.repo.hu