gEDA-dev: Filechooser and component selector code

[Peter Clifton]

On Sat, 2006-09-23 at 11:26 +0200, Patrick Bernaud wrote:

[snip]

> Now in CVS:
>   - a fix for an uninitialized field of TOPLEVEL (libgeda);
>   - the separation of file selection and component selection dialogs
>     (gschem);
>   - the preview as a simple/rough GtkWidget (libgeda, gschem);

This looks really nice. I especially like the "Filter" in the component
selector, rather than the previous "Search". It feels more intuitive.

One thought would be to have the filtered list update as the user types
if possible. Its not immediately obvious to press Enter (Like the
previous search box). The evolution mail client embeds a "Clear" button
(actually a sweeping brush) into it's filter box to remove the filter,
however it too requires Enter to be pushed before filtering the list.
Somehow that doesn't seem wrong in Evolution.

I see that the new widget doesn't have its configure event connected,
presumably removing the resizing capability of the preview widget. Is is
possible to implement an arbitrary fixed size preview, or a resizable
widget? Perhaps a couple of properties could define its suggested, or
preferred size, then another which defines if the widget will resize to
fill available space?

On my system, I notice that the parts lists are a little small for the
line width of the file names. I can drag the window out which is nice,
but if I close and re-open it, the old size is back.

I'm not sure if it is something we're "supposed" to program ourselves,
or whether the window manager should do it for us, but I'd like the
ability for the window to popup with the same width and height each time
I open the component selector dialog. I don't mean to save it across
invocations of gschem, just whilst gschem is running.

Thankyou once again for your work in developing and merging these
patches,

Regards

Peter Clifton