[Xastir-dev] Proposal for eliminating the .osm files;

[Curt, WE7U]

On Fri, 18 Jun 2010, Jerry Dunmire wrote:

> That sounds like it might be workable. I particularly like the
> generality, but it's still a lot of new functionality. Do you know if
> any gotchas I should watch out for when trying to open a notification
> box from within a dialog?

If you're trying to open a modal dialog from a modal dialog that may
prove interesting.  Other than that I think opening a modal or
non-modal dialog from any other should be fine.  All GUI stuff is in
the main thread and has to stay there.  You're welcome to find out
what happens if you try to do it in another thread...  hi hi


> OK, changing dialog sizes doesn't sound like a good idea.

Smaller or anything different is ok, as long as it stays inside
640x480.  Note that all of our GUI stuff is hand-coded Motif, we
don't even use layout managers at present.  That's what you get from
extending and extending and extending what was originally writting,
without refactoring.  If you felt the need to add a layout manager
to a dialog and a scrollbar so that it could stay 640x480 yet have
more stuff on it, more power to you.


> I think displaying a notification box when the map is first drawn
> would be simpler, but that didn't get any support when I proposed it
> earlier.

I can see problems with it in terms of drawing a map stackup.  I
sometimes have 100's of vector maps selected on top of a raster map.
Sometimes even 100's of raster maps selected (DRG topos or DOQQ
aerial images) with 100's of vector maps on top of them (street
maps).

A good compromise between informing the user and not annoying the
user too much is what we're after.  If we can generalize it enough
to work for other stuff at the same time so much the better.

BTW:  The "don't bother me again" button that was proposed is one of
those things I struggle with.  When I'm unfamiliar with a S/W
package I'm hesitant to click on it 'cuz I don't know if I'll be
able to reset it in the future and don't always know if the message
I'm seeing is important at the time.  I almost never click on them
for those reasons.


> Existing users seem to want the message displayed when the
> map is selected- and that is new functionality both UI and code.

Careful with general statements.  ;-)  What you got mostly was some
more vocal developers expressing their feelings.  Very little actual
user input.  Note that this mailing list runs around 100 users, the
main list is around 450, but most people stay silent no matter what
goes on.


> I'm now getting the idea that the specific zoom levels used in Xastir
> do have important meaning to others (I'm trying to learn!!). So maybe
> keeping the .osm files so that individual users can have their own
> preference is the best option for now.

We've gotten used to using the mouse zoom-box to zoom in, or at
least I have, through the years.  I can zoom in to the exact area of
interest, be it a marathon, a SAR mission, whatever, and have
everything scaled as large as possible with that region.  We've
tuned everything to work properly at any scale for the last 11
years.  Have Xastir forced to particular map scales seems a step
backwards.

-- 
Curt, WE7U.                         <http://www.eskimo.com/~archer>
    APRS:  Where it's at!                    <http://www.xastir.org>
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