[geda-user] Gschem Menus

[Edward Hennessy]

All,

The following menu item launches a dialog box with more functionality
than the menu item advertises:

Snap Grid Spacing... O Shift+S

The following menu item cycles between three snap modes:

Toggle Snap On/Off O S

The following three menu items open the same dialog box:

Color... E O
Line Width & Type... E W
Fill Type... E F

What would be the best way to make these menu items better suited to
a new user without wrecking keyboard accelerators for veteran users?

Cheers,
Ed

[Vladimir Zhbanov]

Post by Edward Hennessy
All,
The following menu item launches a dialog box with more functionality
Snap Grid Spacing... O Shift+S

Perhaps, we could rename it to 'Snape & net Options'

Post by Edward Hennessy
Toggle Snap On/Off O S

Let's just rename it to "Snap Mode"

Post by Edward Hennessy
Color... E O
Line Width & Type... E W
Fill Type... E F

I would leave the first abbreviation with the text: "Edit line Options"
(or even 'Edit Outline' though it makes me harder to translate it into
Russian :)). I think this would simplify the menus for 'old bearded
users' as well as for new users.

Post by Edward Hennessy
What would be the best way to make these menu items better suited to
a new user without wrecking keyboard accelerators for veteran users?

Cheers,
Vladimir

[Kai-Martin Knaak]

Post by Edward Hennessy
The following menu item launches a dialog box with more functionality
Snap Grid Spacing... O Shift+S

IMHO, accels with a modifier are a pain to use and remember.
Why not bind this dialog to a simple G as in "Grid"? After all, this is
what it is - a dialog for all the grid stuff.

Post by Edward Hennessy
Toggle Snap On/Off O S
Color... E O
Line Width & Type... E W
Fill Type... E F

In the long run, this dialog should be merged with the general attribute
editor. It is disconnecting to not be able to use EE to manipulate the
properties of graphical objects.

In the meantime, I'd go with EW, because this was the only accel of the
three I bothered to learn and use.

Post by Edward Hennessy
What would be the best way to make these menu items better suited to
a new user without wrecking keyboard accelerators for veteran users?

I don't think any change on the above accels are going to break long grown
habits.

* The snap size dialog and its accel is fairly new. No old farts habits
here.

* Working without a grid wrecks the ability to connect. It is nice to be
able to switch off the grid. But I'd be surprised if anyone uses it
regularly during schematic capture. I would even endorse a removal of this
particular accel. I had this the action is triggered accidentally.

* Schematics capture is mostly about symbols and connections. A dialog to
manipulate color, type and width of graphical objects is not on the list
of actions frequently needed for this task.

Thank you for working on the UI of gschem! I use the current git head of
geda right now. The unified dialogs are very welcome.

All the best,

---<)kaimartin(>---

[Stefan Salewski]

Post by Kai-Martin Knaak
IMHO, accels with a modifier are a pain to use and remember.

+1

Generally only very few keyboard keys are necessary for a schematics
editor, for my Peted I have currently DELETE, ESC, 'm' and 'e' for move
or edit. I think I will not need much more, and even these are not
really necessary, I have a context sensitive menu since some weeks.
Recently I added in place editing, as proposed by me one year ago: Have
an text entry, which becomes active when you hover over an text element
ant press 'e' or do a double mouse click. The text object shows an
insert mark and reacts on each entered character, and when user hits
RETURN entry widgets becomes deactivated. A few lines of code, works
fine and is fun.