[Usbpicprog-technical] upp_wx GUI

[Francesco M. <f18...@ya...>]

Hi,
    using the upp_wx program I've thought to the following 
changes/improvements... let me know what you think of them.

1) the toolbar currently uses two radio boxes to inform the user about what 
hardware has been detected. This is a misuse of the checkbox widget; in fact in 
upp_wx they aren't used for user input just as "read-only" displays, isn't it?
I think it would be better to create a wxControl-derived custom control, which 
simply draws:
   DETECTED HARDWARE: UPP v. 1.1
or
   DETECTED HARDWARE: UPP BOOTLOADER v. 1.1
it would be much more user-friendly, I believe.

2) the toolbar uses a wxComboBox. However there's no reason for the user to type 
inside it; why not use a wxChoice instead?

3) the main window currently displays 3 big grids.
I'd suggest using instead a wxNotebook with 3 tabs: code, config, data.
In this way it would be easier for the user to locate what he wants to view.
Also, in future the "config" tab could contain a more complex UI layout to show 
the various config flag names, etc etc.

Other possible notebook tabs to add are those displayed by piklab when selecting 
a specific device:
- Device information: basic features of the selected PIC + link to microchip.com
- Memory Map
- Voltage-frequency Graphs
- Pin diagrams, possibly with the PGD, PGC, Vdd, MCLR, GND pins highlighted.

4) currently when issuing a command which provokes a read/write operation on the 
USB, the program "hangs"; the UI doesn't redraw and the program does not respond 
to user. This is because those operations should be done in a secondary 
thread... this shouldn't be difficult to do; a simple wxThread should be enough.


I'm ready to help with any of these tasks...

Bye,
Francesco

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