This is a very good thread discussion. There is passion respect learning and understanding and a positive outcome: resolve to help and work together to improve opencpn for Mac! Thankyou all. I will post a couple of links about Menus and shortcut threads later for your review.
In tracker using the ALL dropdown or Opencpn Features or Beta for PROJECT. Then try clicking on "Description" to sort, Then scroll down to "UI". You will find lots of entries there.
Sometime ago we also started a separate "Project" dropdown for "Menus and shortcuts" or something like that. This is in Tracker and it has not seen much activity but this project is focused on the same improvements you are all talking about.
When i get to a computer I will add those links.
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On an off topic question, should I suggest Opencpn for Mac to a friend who is migrating from windows to Mac? He has been using opencpn on windows but is concern about the challenges in running Mac. He has been looking at other nav software too. It would be very nice to be able to suggest "stick with opencpn on mac". Is there any particular suggestions for install and operation? Should he use 3.2.2?
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This is a very good thread discussion. There is passion respect learning and understanding and a positive outcome: resolve to help and work together to improve opencpn for Mac! Thankyou all. I will post a couple of links about Menus and shortcut threads later for your review.
Not just for Mac, I hope, if we can make some positive changes to the toolbar such as I suggested I think it will greatly improve OpenCPN on all platforms. The Mac menu bar is a side issue, almost.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rgleason
In tracker using the ALL dropdown or Opencpn Features or Beta for PROJECT. Then try clicking on "Description" to sort, Then scroll down to "UI". You will find lots of entries there.
Sometime ago we also started a separate "Project" dropdown for "Menus and shortcuts" or something like that. This is in Tracker and it has not seen much activity but this project is focused on the same improvements you are all talking about.
When i get to a computer I will add those links.
I have seen a few of those entries, but will make time for a proper look through the tracker.
A general "UI" project category might be useful.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rgleason
On an off topic question, should I suggest Opencpn for Mac to a friend who is migrating from windows to Mac? He has been using opencpn on windows but is concern about the challenges in running Mac. He has been looking at other nav software too. It would be very nice to be able to suggest "stick with opencpn on mac". Is there any particular suggestions for install and operation? Should he use 3.2.2?
You should absolutely recommend it. It works great on Mac, even though it doesn't look totally native. It's certainly the best Mac navigation software I know of.
I don't know whether to recommend sticking with stable 3.2.2 or using beta 3.3.x. I am using the beta for day to day navigation, and it is very stable. It also has several useful features that stable, such as NMEA input/output over the network. The only major regressions I am aware of are the fontselector crash and the massive underzoom issue, but the latter affects all platforms.
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In Tracker Project dropdown we have a separate project for "Shortcuts & Touch Screen" perhaps this will work: OpenCPN::Tracker Shortcuts & Touch Screen: Tasklist
Nobody has really entered anything into this special project.
re:
"If there is someone of the Mac users here who knows to work with Xcode for compiling OCPN, then please use the analyzer in Xcode.
After that please come back for further discussions..."
Check again, please.
All issues are now "Dead Stores".
"Dead Stores" are not bugs. It's like leaving the glass of water on the table untouched after dinner. You don't want it, don't need it. But it is not an error to leave it half full.
I would like input from others on what items should be in the menus, and what order they should be in.
For those who don't want to build from source, I will post some screenshots later (when I get to my Mac) so you can see what I have done and provide input.
re:
"If there is someone of the Mac users here who knows to work with Xcode for compiling OCPN, then please use the analyzer in Xcode.
After that please come back for further discussions..."
Check again, please.
All issues are now "Dead Stores".
"Dead Stores" are not bugs. It's like leaving the glass of water on the table untouched after dinner. You don't want it, don't need it. But it is not an error to leave it half full.
Thanks
Dave
Checking your latest code with latest Xcode 6.1 there are still 63 issues like "Logic Error", "Memory used after it is freed" and so on, besides more than 100 "Dead Stores".
Gerhard
Caesar,
I have made a comment in your git.
When something should be OS X like then please make it OS X like and not another way.
Gerhard
Gerhard,
Thanks for the feedback.
This is supposed to be about menus, not Help Books, but:
OCPN does not have an OS X Help Book, so far as I am aware.
Maybe it should, bit that's a different issue and can be addressed later.
For the moment I have used the existing method of opening the help in a browser. At least it is more visible than before.
What do you think about the rest of the menus, especially regarding layout and and which items are in which menu?
I know I haven't put the AIS options in the menus yet. I'll come to that.
Cheers, Caesar
PS - if you have a better idea, eg regarding the help menu, please feel free to send a pull request to my mac-menus branch.
The help menu item is in the upper original Mac OS X menu bar. It has a search function also. I have made another item there for updates with Sparkle.framework.
Here are screenshots of the menus as I currently have them.
Feedback from all Mac OCPN users would be helpful.
Note, for now I have just used the existing shortcuts (except for fullscreen, where I have used the standard OSX fullscreen shortcut, and MOB, where I have used Ctrl-Space as Cmd-Space is reserved globally for Spotlight.)
However, a few shortcuts could do with changing to be more usable on the Mac, particularly the funtion keys F4, F5, and F9 used for Measure, Colour Scheme, and Quilting.
Gerhard, I looked at your menus. I don't understand German, but I can work out what most of the entries are...
Yes, automatic updates using Sparkle would be fantastic. That will have to be discussed separately from the menus.
To be honest I am not sure if a major feature like that should be Mac-only, a more cross-platform solution would be better (though of course the Linux packages are updated automatically anyway, so "cross-platform" here would just be Mac and Windows.)