Skip to content

Font picker is slow to load

Description

KiCad v7 introduces a font picker when editing net labels. Unfortunately, and I have a very fast computer, this new font picker means that the dialog box takes about 500ms to open now. I would prefer the dialog to open in an imperceptible < 100ms.

This is due to this gnome bug about an N^2 algorithm in the combo list: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/1910

The workaround used for this bug in LibreOffice was to disable event listeners the combo box. I don't think this is possible in WxWidgets. Maybe a reasonable workaround here would be to only render the full font list once the selectbox is focused?

2023-03-13-200749_598x1241_scrot

2023-03-13-200123_1714x1110_scrot

Steps to reproduce

  • Click on a net label in eeschema
  • press "e"
  • observe that it takes half a second for the dialog to pop up

KiCad Version

Application: KiCad Schematic Editor x86_64 on x86_64

Version: 7.0.1, release build

Libraries:
	wxWidgets 3.2.2
	FreeType 2.13.0
	HarfBuzz 7.1.0
	FontConfig 2.14.2
	libcurl/7.88.1 OpenSSL/3.0.8 zlib/1.2.13 brotli/1.0.9 zstd/1.5.4 libidn2/2.3.4 libpsl/0.21.2 (+libidn2/2.3.4) libssh2/1.10.0 nghttp2/1.52.0

Platform: Arch Linux, 64 bit, Little endian, wxGTK, , tty

Build Info:
	Date: Mar 12 2023 01:48:29
	wxWidgets: 3.2.2 (wchar_t,wx containers) GTK+ 3.24
	Boost: 1.81.0
	OCC: 7.6.3
	Curl: 7.88.1
	ngspice: 39
	Compiler: GCC 12.2.1 with C++ ABI 1017

Build settings:
	KICAD_USE_EGL=ON
	KICAD_SPICE=ON