gEDA-user: selection quirk, and placement guidelines

[James Moody]

I've noticed an odd behavior with PCB when moving things about. Right 
now I'm just moving footprints around on the board, I have not laid down 
any traces. When I started working this morning I would grab objects  
and there would be a red outline showing how the object followed my 
cursor. This was true whether I was moving the footprint or just the 
label. At some point during the morning this red outline behavior 
stopped. I can move objects, but the helpful outline is missing.  Is 
this triggered by some hot key I may have bumped?  I looked in the 
documentation, but could not find anything.

Speaking of placement, can you give me a few pointers on spacing of 
components?  For example, if I have a few DIP sockets side by side, what 
is the closest practical placement assuming trace routing is not an 
issue?  How about for placing resistors (R025 footprint)? The default 
grid is 10 mils -- does it make sense to increase this to, say, 50 mils 
for placing components then return to 10 for placing traces? I am not 
using surface mount devices on this project.

Thanks for all of the help.
  --Jim