Current test request scope:

- running sch-rnd without file name to work on a new empty sheet

- drawing circles (decoration)

[:DEL - drawing wires (wirenets; these are actual networks, not decoration) DEL:]

- drawing lines (decoration)

- drawing rectangles (decoration)

- arrow tool; normal click select, shirt+click additional select, positive 
box selection, negative box selection

- the del tool, {del} and {e d} keys

- tools from the tool bar, tool menu and hotkeys

- grid

- pen management (see below)

- undo on anything so far, including pen management; you can use {u d} to 
open the undo dialog to see your undo history

Anything else is out of scope; this notably includes load and save, buffer 
operations, text objects, symbols, exports, imports.


Further reading, understanding details:

1. Sizes (dimensions, coord conversion to physical world, e.g. in print)

Cschem uses unitless integer coords. They could be anything, and 
sch-rnd does allow the user to interpret the coords as anything, or 
set them up however they like. Sch-rnd users talk in integer coords, not 
in mm or inch. You see your crosshair coords printed in the usual top 
right corner. The k suffix means *1000.

You can change grid with mostly the same menus and key bindings and 
actions as in pcb-rnd.

We need to have some sane defaults on how big things are (line 
thicknesses, symbol and font sizes, etc). I've done some research on this 
topic, what you see in current version is what I think would be our 
defaults long term.

Research data, rationale and conclusion (and default sizes):

http://repo.hu/cgi-bin/pool.cgi?project=sch-rnd-aux&cmd=show&node=sizes


2. titlebox

Titlebox is sch-rnd's title block convention. We use it on the default 
sheet already. Since we don't yet have a text object, it's empty for now. 
Details on how it will look and work:

http://repo.hu/cgi-bin/pool.cgi?project=sch-rnd-aux&cmd=show&node=titlebox


3. pen management (theory)

Gschem hardwired graphical properotes (style) in each object. E.g. width, 
color, etc. hardwired in each line object. The only reason the symbol lib 
looks somewhat coherent is that every single file hardwired the same 
values. Citation: http://wiki.geda-project.org/geda:file_format_spec

Cschem has a different approach. Individual drawing objects (atoms, 
in cschem terminology) don't have such properties but a single stroke 
property that references a pen. There's a simple 
group-traversal/inheritance setup so that pens can be specified at 
different levels. This allows us to have symbol-central, group-central, 
sheet-central pens (and thus style).

It also means you can have your own preferred color scheme and line 
thicknesses set up and if you important a random symbol from a random 
source, if that symbol followed _pen name_ conventions, it will 
automatically look liek your preferred style as it doesn't hardwire pen 
properties but inherits them from your sheet you place the symbol in.

More on this on sch-rnd side: 

http://repo.hu/cgi-bin/pool.cgi?project=sch-rnd-aux&cmd=show&node=pen_addr

Cschem side: table of conventional pen names:

http://www.repo.hu/projects/cschem/design/03_drawing_imp.html



4. pen management (in practice)

Each group has a list of pens (can be empty). There are conventional 
default pens in our default empty sheet template (default.lht). The config 
system specifies what pen each tool should use.

A. tool pens: if you use a tool to create an object, it creates the new 
object with the pen taken from the config at the moment. If you later 
change tool pen in the config, it won't affect existing (already placed) 
objects but will affect newly created objects. You can invoke the relevant 
preferences dialog tab using {t p} or using the menu (mode, tool, change 
pen). It's all very similar to how most graphical drawing programs work: 
you "have a pen and draw with that"...

B. ... except you have a different pen for each tool. Which means you can 
easily draw your lines with different style from your rectangles. If you 
don't want that, we also have a button for setting all stroke pens to the 
same.

C. pen properties: so each placed object and the tool configuration 
remembers what pen to use, by pen name. Then each pen is specified 
somewhere: in our simple test case now, in the sheet's root group. If you 
are at the colors tab of the preferences (the {t p} thing) and click to 
change pen of a tool, you get to the pen selector dialog; there you see 
pen properties of the currently selected pen on the right. If you change a 
pen property, all (existing and future) objects drawn with that pen will 
automatically be affected. Existing objects should be redrawn immediately.

D. unknown pen: if an object references a pen name that is not found, a 
cschem-hardwired default pen ("error pen") is used. At the moment it is 
orange, but I think it will be purple later to match pcb-rnd's "invalid 
color". An easy way to create this situation is removing a named pen that 
is used by your drawing, e.g. sheet-decor. (Then if you add a new pen, 
rename it to sheet-decor, and set up color/thickness, already drawn 
objects will happily use that)

E. each tool pen config really has a list of pen names, in preferred 
order. When you _activate_ a tool to create new objects, cschem will go 
and check pens for the given tool in order they are specified and picks 
the first existing one. This is for portability reasons: just in case you 
want to use a different pen naming standard in your own sheets you can 
make your config in a way that it will work with both your standard and 
sch-rnd conventions. This is only for tool pens, already existing objects 
have a single pen, not lists. Also, the GUI doesn't try to manage lists: 
if you use the pen dialog to pick a pen for a tool, that will make a 
single-item list with that one pen (because that pen surely does exist at 
the time you click). So the list thing is for advanced use, from 
cli/text-editor




Best regards,

Igor2