Pcbnew: Zoom with hotkeys only works with default canvas

[Ian O'Hara]

Fresh build of product branch at revision 4658.

When I select either the Cairo or OpenGl canvases, they both render but the hotkeys for zooming stop working (eg: by default, F1 and F2). The zoom buttons on the Pcbnew toolbar work fine in all 3 canvas modes.

I'm running Ubuntu 12.04. Let me know if you need more information.

[Maciej Suminski (orsonmmz)]

Hi Ian,

Thanks for the report. The Cairo and OpenGL canvases are still work in progress and unfortunately they do not have implemented the hotkeys handling for zooming. It is going to be added soon, but I cannot promise any specific dates (there is a lot of things to be done earlier).

Regards,
Orson

[Felix Rieger (riegerf)]

This does not work correctly in PCBNEW (BZR5023) on Windows 7. Zooming in the default canvas mode uses the hotkeys defined (default: F1 and F2), while zooming in the OpenGL and Cairo modes use Alt+Hotkey. I do not know if this behaviour is desired, but it makes working on layouts unnecessarily hard if there is no mouse with a scroll wheel (e.g. on laptops).

[Maciej Suminski (orsonmmz)]

Hi Felix,

Thank you for the report. The OpenGL and Cairo modes are expected to use the default hot keys (i.e. the ones with Alt pressed), so it needs to be fixed. Does the status change to "In Progress" mean that you are going to take care of that?

Regards,
Orson

[jean-pierre charras (jp-charras)]

Orson,
Be careful when using Alt+Fx
Most of time they are filtered by the D.O.S. + Window manager.

In Kicad, a zoom command can be Alt+Fx (x = 1,2) or Fy (y= 1,2,3,4).
for F1 and F2, they are a bit different.
F1 and F2 execute a zoom change + zoom center on the current mouse cursor position.
Alt+F2 and Alt+F2 execute only a zoom change because (obviously) they are mainly commands coming from the main menu, and the mouse cursor position is irrelevant.

F3 redraw the screen, and F4 center the screen to the cursor.
But Alt+F4 closes the current screen on Windows..., and cannot be used instead of F4.

[Maciej Suminski (orsonmmz)]

Does someone else (on any OS) have a problem with zooming in GAL? I mark the report as incomplete, as I do not see any issues for now.

[Art (diametrix)]

I can confirm that zooming requires Alt key. I personally see an issue with that. That will give you a hand cramp in a hurry. On top of that zoom focus remains in the center of the board and does not center on the mouse pointer. So if you want to zoom out from one spot on the board and then zoom in on the other you would need to first zoom out then pan then zoom in again (and possible pan some more depending on how accurate you were panning in the first place)

I prefer to use a trackball so I don't have a mouse wheel to zoom in and out.

[BPJW (garsthuizenfc)]

I can report that there are still inconsistencies between Default and OpenGL mode

KiCAD r5691 downloaded via: http://www2.futureware.at/~nickoe/
Running under Windows 8.1 64-bit

F1
functions in default mode (and is listed in the menu)as : Zoom In
functions in OpenGL mode as: Search for footprint

F2
functions in default mode (and is listed in the menu)as : Zoom Out
Has no function in OpenGL

F3
functions in default mode (and is listed in the menu)as : Zoom Redraw
Has no function in OpenGL but is probably unnecessary

F4
functions in default mode (and is listed in the menu)as : Zoom Center
Has no function in OpenGL

T
functions in default mode (and is listed in the menu)as : Zoom Out
functions in OpenGL mode as: Search for footprint

More examples might exist, I have not checked them exhaustively

[Nick Østergaard (nickoe)]

F1 and F2 seems to work fine on 5717 on archlinux. Indeed, I don't tinnk F3 is supposed to have any use in GAL.

It seems that F4 pans to the cursor, such that it is in the center of the canvas (still same zoomlevel). In GAL it do indeed still pan to the position, but the cursor is not repositioned on the screen to match this point. This might indeed be a bug. I think the legacy bahivour of this is usefull, whilst the current GAL behaivour of this is not so usefull.

I can confirm #7 behaivour for T.

[Nick Østergaard (nickoe)]

Correction, for the T. I searches for the footprint and selects it to be moveable in both legacy and GAL.