← Back to team overview

kicad-developers team mailing list archive

Re: EESchema find dialog input.

 

Dick Hollenbeck wrote:
> Wayne Stambaugh wrote:
>> 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.
>> 
> You have added more information now about your concerns, and I don't 
> want to be inflexible, but I do like wild card searching.
> 
> If I can assume that your main concern is with the '?' operator, we 
> could simply drop that form of wildcard, and continue to support *.
> 
> This * is pretty good wildcard support, and this leaves ? to be 
> interpreted literally, which would let you find the unannotated symbols.
> 
> Is there a compromise down this path?

This is all still very much a work in progress so nothing is set in
stone. That is why I would like as much feedback as possible up front.
I am trying to make the searching in EESchema as useful possible for
the largest number of users not just me. I think adding a check box to
find dialog turn the current wild card searching on and off solves both
problems. The more I think about it, moving the DRC marker search to
the DRC dialog make more sense than having it in the find dialog. I
think clicking on a DRC error in the DRC dialog error window and jumping
to the DRC would be useful. Moving the component library searching into
the add component dialog makes more sense than having it in the find
dialog as well. All the current find dialog does is display another
dialog with the library search results. I think unique hotkeys to
repeat the last search would also be more useful than using F5 to search
for markers or items depending on the last find dialog which is
confusing. Using something like Shift+F5 to repeat the last marker
search and Ctrl+F5 to repeat the last library search makes more sense.
I'm approaching this as a brainstorming session just to make sure I'm
not getting too far off base.






References