UIpolicy.txt

UIpolicies.txt

+
+** 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.
+
+
+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.
+    
+    Use wxWidgets "sizers" in all dialogs, no matter how simple they are: 
+    http://www.lpthe.jussieu.fr/~zeitlin/wxWindows/docs/wxwin_sizeroverview.html
+    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 necesarily
+    leaving them all bundled tightly together.  The dialog box should look 
+    nice at any size large enough to show all the components.
+    
+    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.
+    

change_log.txt

@@ -4,6 +4,13 @@ Started 2007-June-11
 Please add newer entries at the top, list the date and your name with 
 email address.
 
+
+2007-Oct-21 UPDATE   Dick Hollenbeck <dick@softplc.com>
+================================================================================
++ all
+    added UIpolicies.txt
+    
+
 2007-Oct-21 UPDATE  Jean-Pierre Charras <jean-pierre.charras@inpg.fr>
 ================================================================================
 + pcbnew:
@@ -15,7 +22,6 @@ email address.
 	Therefore, under windows, dialogs are now resizable (like under unix)
 
 
-
 2007-Oct-21 UPDATE   Geoff Harland <gharlandau@yahoo.com.au>
 ================================================================================
 + eeschema & pcbnew & gerbview

todo.txt

@@ -63,16 +63,5 @@ as zoom changes, the effective real size of the MARKER changes.
 @todo: compensate for the zoom.  right now it is difficult to select marker when zoomed out.
 
 
-*** Establish consistent policy on UI text upper vs. lower case usage.  My 
-suggestions are below, but the important thing is consistency, not the actual 
-choices.
-Window Titles: all nouns and verbs capitalized.
-Tooltips: all words lower case except first word. (This is a sentence fragment, not a title).
-others (what are they?):
-:
-:
-
-*** Add tooltip text to cleaningoptions_dialog.cpp throughout for all options.
-Might need to do this using DialogBlocks.
-
-
+*** Add tooltip text to all non-obvious controls in every dialog window.
+Need to do this using DialogBlocks.