kicad/Documentation/guidelines/UIpolicies.txt

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** General UI Guidelines for KiCad Development
Capitalization:
For any visible text used within KiCad, follow recommendations here:
http://library.gnome.org/devel/hig-book/2.20/design-text-labels.html.en#layout-capitalization
This applies to all Menus, Titles, Labels, Tooltips, Buttons, etc.
The capitalization for the application names is KiCad, Eeschema, CvPcb,
GerbView, and Pcbnew. All strings that have application names that are
visible to the user should be capitalized this way. It's also a good
idea use this capitalization in source code comments as well to prevent
confusion of new contributors.
Dialogs:
Follow the recommendations here:
http://library.gnome.org/devel/hig-book/2.20/windows-dialog.html.en
paying particular attention to "initial focus", "sensible default values",
"default buttons", ESC key termination. Please note that the escape key
termination only works properly if there is a dialog button defined with
an ID of wxID_CANCEL or SetEscapeID( MY_ESCAPE_BUTTON_ID ) is called during
dialog initialization. The former is the preferred method for handling
escape key dialog termination.
Use wxWidgets "sizers" in all dialogs, no matter how simple they are:
http://zetcode.com/tutorials/wxwidgetstutorial/layoutmanagement
and keep dialogs resizeable.
Configure the sizers so that as the dialog window is expanded, the most
sensible use of the increased dialog window occurs automatically by the
sizers. For example, in the DRC dialog of Pcbnew, sizers should be used to
expand the text control to use the full available free window area, so that
the user's view of the items in the text control is maximized as he/she
expands the dialog window, making it easier to read more DRC error messages.
In other dialogs without one component more important than the others, the
sizers might be configured to position the controls to sensible positions
near the perimeter of the increasingly larger dialog box, not necessarily
leaving them all bundled tightly together. The dialog box should look
nice at any size large enough to show all the components.
When using wxFormBuilder, please add the following settings to the
"Dialog" node:
subclass.name <- DIALOG_SHIM
subclass.header <- dialog_shim.h
This will provide for an override of the Show( bool ) wxWindow() function
and provide retentitive size and position for the session.
Use tooltips to explain the functionality of each non-obvious control.
This is important because the help files and the wiki often lag behind
the source code.
Avoid defining initial dialog sizes if possible. Let the sizers do their
job. After the dialog is fit to the sizers, set the minimum size to the
current size to prevent the dialog controls from being obscured when
resizing the dialog. If the labels or text of the dialog controls are,
set or changed at run time. Rerun wxWindow::Fit() to allow the dialog to
re-size and adjust for the new control widths. This can all be done after
the dialog is created but before it is shown or use class methods to
re-size the dialog as required. Reset the minimum size to the updated
dialog size.
Dialog windows shall not exceed 1024 x 768 when displayed in a 13 point font.
Note that the font used by end users is not something that you control from
within the dialog, but for testing purposes please do not exceed this dialog
size should the user have selected a font size of 13 points.