kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@...>]

Dick Hollenbeck wrote:
> Wayne Stambaugh wrote:
>> I have been working on one of my todo list items of replacing the
>> EESchema find dialog with an improved wxFormBuilder version and ran into
>> a few issues with the current search behavior. I wanted to get some
>> input from the group before I continue plowing ahead on my current
>> trajectory. The current item search in EESchema uses a wild card
>> pattern search similar to a typical file name search using * and ?. The
>> problem with this is if you want to search for the components that are
>> not annotated (D?, C?, etc.), setting the search string to D? does not
>> yield the result that I think most users would expect. I'm also not
>> sure that the average user understands * and ? pattern matching. I
>> would think most users are more familiar with matching the whole word or
>> any part of a word options that most find dialogs provide. So I am
>> proposing the following initial changes the EESchema find dialog:
>>
>> 1) Make the dialog modeless and don't dismiss it on every search.
>> 
> nice
>> 2) Save find dialog position, size, and search settings between sessions.
>> 
> execellent
>> 3) Use whole/part of word and case sensitive/insensitive search options
>> instead of * and ?
>> 
> I like * and ?, and if ? is really a single character wildcard, should 
> it not match a ? ?
> 
> That last ? is for the question. And that is humorous, according to 
> me. :)

Your humor not withstanding, yes ? will match ? :) However, using my
example above if D1-D9 where in the list before the first occurrence of
D? then you have to search through D1-D9 to get to the first occurrence
of D?. I could add a check box to enable/disable wild card searching.
This covers both cases. Maybe a better solution would be to make the
annotate dialog modeless and add the search capability for unannotated
components to it. Initially I'll add a check box to the find dialog to
turn simple wild card searching on and off to see how that works.

>> 4) Always zoom in and move the cursor to the found schematic item.
>> 
> nice
>> 5) Add wrapping around past the end of the search list.
>> 
> either way.
>> I don't know if I will get these initial changes before the next release
>> but I will keep pushing forward. After the dust settles on the initial
>> changes, I also have a some enhancements I would like add for future.
>>
>> 1) Reverse item searching ( requires implementing reversible containers
>> for all of the schematic item lists ).
>> 
> with your wrapping, maybe not important
>> 2) Optional regular expression searching for power users which would be
>> disabled (hidden) by default.
>> 
> a compile time option? I think any user this powerful is going to use a 
> text editor, and won't need regexs in eeschema.
>> 3) Add replace item text capability to find dialog.
>> 
> could be good.
>> 4) Implement similar find/replace capabilities to the other Kicad apps
>> where it makes sense.
>> 
> could be good.
> 
> 
> I would like:
> *) control-F for all find dialogs, with initial focus on the text entry 
> field.

I'll look and see if Ctrl+F is not already assigned for something else
and use it for find if it's available.

> *) make the text entry field be an editable combobox so it can retain 
> past search strings?

Already done. I forgot to add that to my list. The last 10 or so
search strings will be saved between sessions as well.

Wayne

> 
> 
> 
>> If you have any comments, suggestions, or just can't live without the
>> current find dialog, please let me know before I get too far along.
>>
>> Wayne
>>
>> 
> 
> Yes Vesa, this crap is getting tedious:
> 
>> ------------------------------------
>>
>> Yahoo! Groups Links
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> 
> Dick