Pcbnew OpenGL mode panning unusable on systems without middle mouse button

[Cecill Etheredge]

KiCad's panning functionality in Pcbnew's OpenGL mode requires the use of the middle mouse button, and does not appear to support any other forms of panning (e.g. cursor keys, or panning cursor), making OpenGL mode practically unusable on systems without a conventional middle mouse button.

I believe this issue could be fixed by implementing panning through cursor keys (as in default mode) or by using the mouse cursor, e.g. in a special panning mode.

Tested with:

Macbook Air 2012 model, OS X 10.10.3, KiCad 2015-05-13 BZR 5653

[Chris Pavlina (pavlina-chris)]

Scrollbars were recently added and do work, do they not work on OS X?

A separate pan mode would be nice for this sort of thing, though I'd be more prone to saying that a system without a middle button isn't suitable for CAD at all...

[Cecill Etheredge (ijsf)]

I don't really understand why some features are exclusively behind hotkeys (whether it be a keyboard key or mouse key) and not accessible from an icon in the interface, but I'm talking from a interface usability perspective here...

It's not my intention to start a discussion on whether a system that lacks a middle mouse button is designed for CAD, that surely isn't the point of this bug report.

[Nick Østergaard (nickoe)]

I will just throw it in here: I would quite like to see the right mouse button to be used for panning. This works great in other apps that I have used. That is, you should hold the button down while moving your cursor.

[Tomasz Wlostowski (twlostow)]

@Cecill: Shift + Wheel (or two fingers on touchpad) scrolls up/down, Ctrl + Wheel scrolls left/right.

@Nick: The above is not standard, but most Kicad users are used to it. Early GAL versions had scrolling done as in most Windows/GTK/QT apps: wheel = up/down, shift + wheel = left/right, ctrl+wheel = zoom, right button = pan.

[Nick Østergaard (nickoe)]

@Tomasz, what exactly do you mean? I think it is perfectly fine to still pan with the shift and ctrl modifier to the scroll wheel action. But I enjoy the right click-and-hold panning in JOSM (GIS mapping software), and routing a PCB is quite like routing a map. I think it can work fine with this right click to pan and at the same time make the right click context menu work fine. But I guess that needs some testing.

[Maciej Suminski (orsonmmz)]

Arrow keys are now handled in OpenGL mode. You can also use Shift+arrow to pan the view.