Implementing Hover Highlights and Trace Hints in tscircuit: Core Module Refactoring

In this in-depth development stream, Seve guides contributors through significant improvements to the tscircuit project, focusing on two main areas:

1. Hover Highlights Implementation:

• Refactoring the PCB drawing object to include mouse interaction properties

• Creating a new render phase for inserting trace hints

• Implementing color manipulation for highlighted elements using the color library

• Discussing the importance of net list generation for connected element highlighting

2. Trace Hints Rendering:

• Fixing the issue of trace hints not being drawn in the edit traces view

• Refactoring the core module to create trace hint classes from manual trace hints props

• Adjusting render phases to ensure proper order of operations (port matching, trace hint insertion)

• Adding PCB trace hints to the soup and ensuring correct ID assignment

Throughout the stream, Seve demonstrates best practices for:

• Writing and updating tests to verify new functionality

• Managing artifacts and improving code organization

• Local development workflows using yalc for testing changes before PR merges

• Addressing TypeScript challenges and improving type safety

This video is ideal for contributors looking to understand the intricacies of tscircuit's rendering pipeline and those interested in advanced React and TypeScript development techniques in the context of electronic design automation.