[Xcircuit-dev] insert more space in existing drawing

[Tim Edwards]

Dear Svenn,

>> Since I do a lot of other kinds of drawing with xcircuit, such as
>> chip specification documents, I often draw spreadsheet-type tables
>> in xcircuit.  Until now, extending a table has been a pain, since
>> I couldn't grab a bunch of lines and stretch them all at the same
>> time.  Likewise for data busses in a schematic.
> 
> I do most of my work in VHDL now so drawing schematics actually ending
> up in a netlist is the rarest task I do. But I use xcircuit to draw
> block and timing diagrams and anything that a drawing tool can be used
> to. Specially in timing diagrams the hassle is huge when I need to
> insert another pulse in the middle. Had that problem recently when I
> had to prolong a fetch cycle to capture the last bit from a shift
> register in a heavily handshaked data processing chain. I will pick up
> the tarball and test the feature.

Okay, I have a solution for you.  It is in xcircuit-3.7, the new
development distribution, and if I did everything correctly on the
website host (which almost never happens), then it should be available
tomorrow morning (if the automatic compile doesn't happen, I will
generate the distribution by hand myself, tomorrow).

The new "edit" command works exactly as you described.  Select a
bunch of stuff, for example, on the right side, using an area select
box.  Type 'e' with the cursor close to a polygon (the reference point),
then extend the whole selection.  Polygons or curves that are partially
in the area select box will be stretched.  Any element completely
inside the area select box will be moved with the reference point.
Path elements can also be stretched and modified this way, which makes
it a lot simpler to work with, say, boxes with rounded corners.  Tables
should be trivially easy.

Note that my original hack to version 3.6 is no longer applicable.
The area select box must be used to select pieces of polygons and
curves, but this avoids the possible ambiguity of the original
method.

Note that along with this change, version 3.6 has been declared the
stable version, which I had been intending to do for a long (much too
long) time.  As you might expect from any new feature that caused me
to modify large sections of code, version 3.7 should be considered
highly unstable, at least through the first several revisions.

						---Tim

+--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
| Dr. R. Timothy Edwards (Tim)   | email: tim at opencircuitdesign.com    |
| Open Circuit Design, Inc.      | web:   http://opencircuitdesign.com |
| 22815 Timber Creek Lane        | phone: (301) 528-5030               |
| Clarksburg, MD 20871-4001      | cell:  (240) 401-0616               |
+--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+