[Ktechlab-devel] Feature Requests

[David Saxton]

On Tuesday 10 January 2006 22:33, asraniel wrote:
> > There is also "manual connection routing" available
> > (http://ktechlab.org/documentation/connecting_components.php) to allow
> > manual control over positioning of connections. Or do you mean the
> > ability to move wires about in addition to this?
>
> Ah, wasnt easy to find that pulldown menu for manual connections.. dont ask
> me why, even when i was reading the doc about it i was looking at my screen
> for 2 minutes before i found it.

That sounds like a usability bug to me. (I know you said don't ask  ;), 
but.. ) why do you think you didn't notice it? Is the icon bad / were you 
expecting a different method of changing the routing method / etc?

> And yes, a way to move the connections after you made them would be nice,
> but perhaps a big change in the whole 

Ok. Such a feature is useful, but the trouble is - how would the user move the 
wires about?

The obvious choice is left-clicking and dragging, but this is reserved for 
creating new wires. Other mouse buttons (right or middle) could be used, but 
this would conflict with existing actions, and is less discoverable. The same 
goes for using control keys (although this at least does not conflict with 
other actions). Any ideas?

>
> > > -Color connections
> > >    The ktechlab way to show if on a connection there is 1 or 0, is not
> > > bad, but perhaps as a option you could color the connections in
> > > different colors if they are active or not, it can help to read bigger
> > > circuits.
> >
> > What do you think of the attached image?
>
> Yes, exactly what i wanted. is this already a option? i dont know if its a
> good thing to make it default, but i just know that its easier to debug
> something with that, you see the values on the circuit much faster and how
> they propagate
>
It's not an option in 0.3 - instead, something I quickly programmed to test 
feasibility, etc, of it. If you're interested, it's currently in svn trunk.

Personally, I don't like the appearance of voltage bars on the component pins 
- they look kinda ugly. So I'm experimenting with other methods of conveying 
voltage and current information to the user - such as colouring in wires, and 
animating the wires to show current flow. We'll see how it goes :)

David Saxton