kicad-developers team mailing list archive

["Lorenzo" <lomarcan@...>]

--- In kicad-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@...> wrote:

> Using non-standard colors in dialog box button text and fonts in dialog
> boxes looks amateurish in my opinion. I violates the users chosen

Agree 100%, I could also use a way to remove the bottom info bar :P

> code. I can understand a few here and there not 200. This is the
> reason many of the settings in Kicad don't get saved and restored
> correctly. They get copied back and forth (or forget to get 

IMHO one other reason is that some stuff goes in the project, some in the user preferences and it is not evident which goes where.

> Stop duplicating code. I found that the PCB footprint module file

The 'overbar' drawing code in pin names was repeated, like, 8 times :D my generalization patch actually *reduced* source size :P

> some of the changes I made using wxFileName and wxPathList. If the

OK, just one question... where does the fscking cwd is choosen??? More thanone time switching between projects I've found plots or other artifacts inthe wrong directory :(((

> hands. Take a look at Kicad's PostScript output code. If the Kicad
> drawing code used wxDC correctly, adding PostScript support would have
> taken a few lines of printer setup code. Take a look at the

PLEASE NO! Precision plotting with wx just doesn't work... even if the final production is obviously made with gerber (and pcb factories just spit on PS :P, at most they want a summarizing pdf layout for checking the final alignment), the wx printing code ROUNDS to ps unit making 8-mil trackage justwrong (I.E. the solder masks on TSSOPs come out as a single black blob, without isolation).

Postscript was designed to be custom outputted, also it doesn't support some of the wx primitives (i.e. blending mode, since the postscript framebuffer is write-only). The 'print' command in pcbnew is simply not-useful (maybefor quick layouts check, but not even for that since the background color is always black!). I've done a shell script which combines ps plots to make'useful' printouts (and btw relies on the current PS output architecture :D)

I would actually refine the ps output to have more specific commands in theprologue (like primitives for pads and text) to make easier postprocessingof the plots (which is the norm in the un*x world :D)