Functional Design Specification
How the program should behave in practice for the user. Page 1 of 4
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The File Menu
The File Menu has 10 options. Open, Close, Save, Save As, Print, Audit Drawing, Report, Batch Convert, Batch Plot and Quit. These must be accessible using a mouse or keyboard.
When no drawing is open, actions that are not possible should be greyed-out and unselectable
Open
Fig 1.1 Basic layout of the dialogue box
Fig 1.2 File Open - File Information view
Fig 1.3 File Open - File Preview view
The Open option displays the File Open dialogue box. It can also be reached using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-O. This layout of this dialogue box is shown in figure 1.1. The layout consists of a number of items. The main viewpane shows a graphical representation of files and directories in the directory currently being browsed. Above this a horizontal text bar shows name of the directory being browsed and is editable by the user. To the right of this are 2 selectable icons, the first to browse up a level in the directory tree and the second to create a new directory if the user has write permissions in the currently selected directory. If the user does not have write permissions, this option icon should be greyed out and unselectable.
To the right of the previous two icons are the four icons for the options which affect the viewing mode for the viewpane below and the preview pane to the right of the viewpane. These include; a simple listing of files with little information shown other than filenames with the right pane absorbed to make the viewpane larger, a detail view mode which shows information similar to the GNU ls -l command including file size and attributes again with the right pane absorbed to make the viewpane larger, thirdly a preview file information mode which shows the files attributes in the right hand preview pane, and lastly a file preview mode which shows a small thumbnail preview image of the contents of the drawing file in the right hand pane if there is a bitmap image attached to the drawing file. If no bitmap image is attached to the file, a message to that effect will appear in its place.
Along the bottom of the box a file name text box is automatically filled when a file is selected in the viewpane, (having been blank to begin with) and allows editing of the filename to be opened by the user. Options next to this are for Opening and Canceling. selecting Open will close the dialogue box and attempt to open a file with the corresponding name from the file name box, in the directory specified in the directory selection box at the top of the dialogue. If possible (e.g. the file named exists, is a supported cad file and is readable) it is opened in the main viewing window. If not an error message is displayed to the user that suggests in plain language the possible reason for the failure. When selecting a file to open, if the filename typed does not exist, clicking the open button will perform no action, the File open dialogue remain open as before - this should perhaps be changed so that the Open button is greyed out until a valid filename is entered. [Reported as bug 793169]
Beneath the filename input box is a selection box that applies a viewing mask to the viewpane. Options that can be selected include DWG files which will show only files with a .DWG extension DXF files and an option to show all files regardless of extension or lack of extension. Selection masks by file extension should be case insensitive so that files for example, with the extensions .DwG .dWG and .Dwg are all shown.
Close
Closes the open drawing. This option is greyed out when no drawing is open. If the file has been panned / zoomed or otherwise modified no warning will be given to save first. This is by design as LX-Viewers' main purpose is as a viewing program. It is not necessary to close a file before exiting the program nor is it necessary to close prior to opening another drawing. In both cases the close is done automatically for the user.
Save
Fig 1.4 A failed save
Saves the drawing file to disk. A shortcut key of Ctrl-S is also available. The currently open file will be saved to the disk with the same path, name, type and drawing version as the file that was opened, overwriting the original file if it is still present. If unable to save (e.g. the user has read permissions to the file only) a error dialogue box will appear similar to Figure 1.4 . The text of the dialogue box will explain in simple terms what the error is and a possible way to resolve the error
Save As
Fig 1.5 Save As dialogue box
This option opens the Save As dialogue box to save the drawing currently being viewed. The layout of this dialogue box is shown in figure 1.5. The layout consists of a number of items and is complicated by the dialogues 2 modes of display, basic and advanced. When the advanced option is toggled, more options are displayed to the user for affecting the save.
Fig 1.6 Basic appearance
In the basic mode (figure 1.6), The main viewpane shows a graphical representation of files and directories in the directory currently being browsed. Above this a horizontal text bar shows name of the directory being browsed and is editable by the user. To the right of this are selectable icons to browse up a level in the directory tree and to create a new directory if the user has write permissions in the currently selected directory. If the user does not have write permissions, this option icon should be greyed out and unselectable.
To the right of the previous two icons are the icons for the options which affect the viewing mode for the viewpane below and the preview pane to the right of the viewpane. These include; a simple listing of files with little information shown other than filenames and a detail view mode which shows information similar to the GNU ls -l command including file size and attributes.
Along the bottom of the box a file name text box is automatcally filled when a file is selected in the viewpane, (having been blank to begin with) and allows editing of the filename to be saved by the user. Options next to this are for performing the save, canceling the operation and toggling the advanced dialogue mode on.
Fig 1.7 Advanced appearance
Toggling the advance mode on produces 3 further options on the screen. Firstly, an option to save as one of any of the supported filetypes that can be written by Lx-Viewer (Currently DWG, DXF, BMP, PNG, SVG as v1.0). Only one filetype may be chosen at once. Selecting a filetype changes the filetype pulldown options in the bottom left of the dialogue and visa versa so that the two sections are linked. Selecting the DWG file type produces additional options to the right allowing the selection of which version of DWG to save as. A small text heading informas the user they may select which DWG type to save as. Only one version may be selected at any one time. When DXF is selected the same additional options appear to the right to allow saving as any of the supported versions of DXF, the text describing these options should also change to read DXF. [reported as bug 793169]. In addition, when selecting the DXF file type, a small option selection dropdown menu appears to the lower of the dialogue, allowing the DXF precision to be set.
Fig 1.8 Batch dialogue box
The option to Write BCF is to create a Batch Conversion File. Selecting this option begins the process for creating a reference file for the conversion of many files at once, without needing the Graphical User Interface, e.g. from the command line. The options required for saving are first selected by the user, and then the Write BCF button selected. The file ~/lx-viewer/convert.bcf is then created but on a windows system.... Note that no information is added to the file at this stage. If the file already exists and is writable, it will be overwritten. If it is not possible to write this file then an error message appears stating in plain language the error and possible causes and remedies. Else, if the creation of the file is successful, a dialogue box (Figure 1.8) then appears to ask the user if they want LX-Viewer to remain open or not after it has performed the batch conversion. An option of yes or no is provided. Once selected all information is then written to the BCF file. This BCF file has no effect if you call the batchconvert function from within LX-Viewer.