kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Brian Sidebotham <brian.sidebotham@...>]

2009/5/31 Manveru <manveru@...>:
> 2009/5/30 Gabriele Oberhammer <gabriele@...>:
>> [Attachment(s) from Gabriele Oberhammer included below]
>>
>> 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.
>
> This would be useful IMHO, but these buttons has to have smaller size
> with only numbers or single letters and colours of the layers. One
> other application has that.

This would be a nice feature to see. I'd love to see it implimented as
a dockable window as I always work with two monitors too. When placing
components I normally have eeschema in one window and pcbnew in the
other. I don't see an advantage in obscuring the dialog by making all
the buttons small and not displaying the full layer names. A simple
method of collapsing of hiding the dialog should be enough to provide
back desktop space if it is tight.

Best Regards,

Brian.