User interface

There are several ways to interact with gschem. gschem requires a keyboard and mouse. There are three ways to initiate an operation or command:

• Using the mouse to select the operation off a menu
• Typing the keyboard shortcut(s).
• Draw the appropriate stroke (if stroke support is enabled)

To make usage matters more confusing, selecting an operation off of the menus behaves slightly differently than typing the keyboard shortcut. Most of the operations operate on the currently selected object(s), hence you need to select the object first before manipulating them. The menu selected operations usually require some more input (usually a mouse click) after they are picked off of the menu. The keyboard shortcut operations take that required input as the current mouse position. This saves an extra click since you can position the mouse at the right place, type in the shortcut(s), and the command then executes. Note, you can change this so that both menu and shortcut behavior is exactly the same. See the section on the resource file for more info on how to configure this.

Most of the interaction with gschem is fairly mode oriented (similar to the great text editor vi). If you select operations off of the menu, then you are placed into the corresponding mode (like copy or move mode). You must then select an anchor point (or whatever the appropriate point is) to continue the operation. Most of the commands off of the menu expect the objects to be already selected. Some of the modes persist after being execute while other immediately return you into select mode (the default mode).

The shortcuts are also mode like in nature. Most of the default shortcuts are for the various commands are not single keystrokes. There are a few which are single keystrokes (like zoom in: `z' or pan: `x'), but most are typically two keystrokes long. As examples, to execute File/Save you would type `f' and `s' (without the quotes) or Add/Line is `a' and `l'. You can get a listing of the shortcuts by picking Help/Hotkeys. You can also see the hotkey assignments in the pulldown menus as well. The shortcuts are defined in the resource files (system-gschemrc,  /.gEDA/gschemrc, or `pwd`/gschemrc). See the section on the resource file for more info.

The mouse button actions in gschem are mostly configurable. The first mouse button is always used to select objects or pick points. This button is not configurable. The second mouse button is either a copy/move action (when held down over an object), a repeat last command or used to draw a stroke to execute a command. The third mouse button is either a mouse pan (when held down as the mouse is moved) or a popup menu. The behavior of the second and third mouse buttons is controlled through the resource file (see the section below for more info).