kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Gabriele Oberhammer <gabriele@...>]

Dear Kicad developers,

I wish to suggest a little change in the way layers visibility is managed.
I've already done some work, which you can see in the attached screenshoot.
Basically, this is what I propose:

- create a new right vertical toolbar (called LayersToolbar or whatever makes sense) to
make layers visible/invisible directly (instead of doing Preferences->Color and
Visibility->check/uncheck->Apply)

- change the 'Colors and Visibility' dialog so checking/unchecking layers will chose which
layer visibilities are managed by the LayersToolbar.

- add a new tool on the left toolbar to show/hide the LayerToolbar

Obviously the proposed LayersToolbar could be extended to manage the layers 'Tech' and
'Others' and/or display a little square near the layer name painted in the layer color.

The bar will at most display 16 buttons, so it should fit for every resolution.
If not, it will be simple to display fewer buttons and a 'Next' button on the bottom which
will show the remaining layers.

I think this approach could be useful when you want to quickly hide a layer to better read 
a label which is overlapped with another (see cpu pin WR-132 / CLK 10 MHz in the screenshoot).
It could also give some benefits to new users because a recurring question
in the user-list is how to hide/show layers.

Do you think this change is a good idea or not?
I'll wait replays and comments before going on on e dead-end :-)


Best regards, Gabriele.





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