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Re: Re: Gathering ideas of library and module improvement.

 

Brian Sidebotham wrote:
> 2009/11/5 Dick Hollenbeck <dick@...>:
>> Mateusz wrote:
>>>> These discussions usually lead nowhere until you have a qualified
>>>> developer in hand with about a man-month to actually do the coding.

<<< snipped >>>

>> So what is wrong *from a user perspective* ?
> 
> I only have a few of things that I think are weak points at the moment:
> 
> (1) The value field is in fact the schematic symbol name. For a
> resistor or capacitor this makes no sense to me. The value of a
> component is something different to the schematic symbol name in a
> library. If others concurred then maybe this is a very easy fix.

Brian,

Currently the value field and the component name are effectively linked
even though in the component library file format they could be defined
individually. However, in the schematic file format the value field has
no relation to the library component name or value field. The schematic
L parameter is used to look up the appropriate library component.
Changing the component name in a library may break this link so any
changes will have to be considered carefully. Generally it would be a
bad idea to create custom fields in default component libraries supplied
by Kicad because everyone would define them differently which would
create a huge mess.

> (2) The Field1...Fieldn fields are very useful, but also limiting
> because it is easy to forget what each field should be used for. It
> would be very useful to be able to set up a static set of field names
> so that I do not have to type in the field name every time I make a
> new component.

The user definable fields do not have to be named Field1 ... FieldN.
You can give them readable names like "Vendor Part Number" or
"Manufacturer" that way you don't have to remember what they represent.
If you are suggesting saving a user defined set of default field names
to be created each time you create a new project than that would have to
be added, which by the way sounds like a good idea.

> (3) The pin editing options are/were confusing. I see Wayne has just
> committed a patch to tidy up the pin dialog so perhaps this is now
> easier to understand. The "Edit pins per part" toggle button is the
> confusing bit for me. I expect when I select a pin's properties to be
> able to set all of its properties, including whether it is shared
> among all component parts or exclusive to the visible part. This has
> caused a lot of confusion for me before.

I have always been confused by the edit pin by pin setting. Even after
looking at the code, I'm still not sure how useful it is or even if it
is really needed. Does any one use it? If you have any feedback to
improve the pin properties dialog, please let me know. I did my best to
follow the GNOME UI standards to create a sane dialog box but sometimes
it's hard to see the forest through the trees.

Wayne

> Other than that I don't really have any other comment as I've never
> used the standard libraries, I've only created new libraries from
> scratch. I'm still a very satisfied user :)
> 
> Best Regards,
> 
> Brian.

 




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