gschem: dock window wishlist

[Roland Lutz]

I just had the chance to check out the new dock feature, and I like the general idea. Here are some suggestions for improvement:

* Both tool windows I'm using most ("i" and "e e") aren't included in the docking area; for me, this kind of defeats the whole purpose of the docking area. Is there a technical reason why they aren't included?

* If the sidebar is hidden, the tool windows should be displayed as dialogs like before.

* I'd very much prefer if there was an option for moving the docking area to the left side of the window.

* Unless there's something interesting to see in the status area (while the user is searching text, or if there have been errors), the status area should remain hidden since vertical screen space is precious these days.

[Iain Paton (selsinork)]

* As well as move to the left, please consider allowing both the sidebar and bottom bar to move to top/bottom/left/right and to detach completely to a seperate window so that they can be put on a second monitor.

* Allow tool windows (like "i", "e e", "e x") to be added or removed from the either sidebar or bottom bar as the user desires

* When the sidebar is sized down to zero with the grip, do something when "e x" is activated other than switching to an invisible tab.

* If the sidebar is hidden and "e x" causes it to be enabled, please make it disappear when the user is finished instead of forcing them to use "v s" to hide it manually - I do much prefer Rolands suggestion of just using the dialogs if the sidebar is hidden though.

* have bottom dock respect (log-window "later") in the users gschemrc and hide the bottom dock

* put "e t" in a tab rather than having it further reduce the available space

* put "Run Macro" in a tab like "e t" for the same reason

* put Find Text input box into the Find Text tab in the bottom bar rather than having it reduce available space

* "e t", Run Macro and Find Text all impinge into the schematic space and seem to cause a change to the zoom. Don't do that.

* remove Options / Show Log Window which now does nothing, or alter it's behaviour so that it works sensibly with the log in the status tab

* remember the users preferences, if the sidebar was hidden or resized last time they closed gschem, next time they open gschem restore sidebar to the place the user left it

[Peter Clifton (pcjc2)]

If it isn't completely dead and bit-rotten, the "gdl" docking library (from Anjuta) might be worth considering.

At one point I had worked up some ideas to use it within gschem, but I can't recall why it never got anywhere.. it might have been the GDL library wasn't feature complete, or perhaps hesitation to change behaviours people might be used to.

Peter

[Roland Lutz (rlutz)]

Fixed in:
09bc120 gschem: Make component selection dialog dockable
a9f98e9 gschem: Make multi-attribute editor dockable
dd7319c gschem: Add left dock notebook
bccf075 gschem: Show log window automatically on error

Support for
- displaying tool windows as dialogs like before if the sidebar is hidden
- detaching tool windows completely to a seperate window so that they can be put on a second monitor
- showing an invisible tool window when the associated hotkey is activated
is implemented in the new base class GschemDockable (see commit 4963728).

[Roland Lutz (rlutz)]

released in gEDA/gaf 1.10.0