Re: gEDA: Clean-up of file selection and component selection dialogs

[Carlos Nieves Ónega <cnieves@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Patrick,

El vie, 28-10-2005 a las 19:41 +0200, Patrick Bernaud escribiÃ:
> Hello all,
> 
> I have been playing with the file selection and component selection
> dialogs (see below for download instructions).
> 
> The code of the former has been cleaned-up a bit. The latter has been
> rewritten for GTK 2.x: GtkTreeView instead of GtkCList, new object for
> complete dialog... These two dialogs also have working preview.

I like very much the way this window is encapsulated within an object...

> They are still a few problems: among them, note that the search
> function in component selection does not work yet or you can not
> prevent from doing a preview in the file selector. That will be fixed
> soon.
> 
> You will need at least GTK 2.4.

I thought gschem will still provide GTK 2.2 compatibility for a while...
is it going to require GTK >= 2.4, or is the current code still
necessary and included with an #if, for example?

> I have a few ideas for restructuring the component selection dialog:
> 
>   - joining the two lists for directories and components into a single
>     model and a single tree.

I think this will simplify the dialog....

>   - when doing a search, the tree should only display directories
>     where there are components that match the criteria and only
>     display these components (not other).
> 
>   - moving the action (reference/embed/include) to a contextual
>     menu when placing component.
> 
> If you think of something else, let me know.
> 
> As always, comments are welcome.

I'd simplify the dialog as much as we can... for example:
  - If the filename is not really necessary most of the times, I'd move
it to a tooltip (displays it only if the cursor is over the symbol entry
for some seconds), and/or use a contextual menu, like "copy filename".
  - Regarding the search, I'd like to know which filter is applied to
the symbols I'm seeing. This means displaying the criteria or the words
I have searched for (how powerful will the search mechanism be? ). If
this is going to clutter the dialog, then one possibility would be to
display all the search-related widgets only if the user wants to do a
search....
This way, the add component window can be reduced to the minimum... it
will only have the component/library tree, the preview widget, and a
search button or checkbox in the simplest version... comments?

Cheers,

Carlos