kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Lorenzo Marcantonio <l.marcantonio@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 11:46:01AM +0200, jp charras wrote:

> Do you mean show user name + original name in layer manager ?

No, not in the layer manager bar, in the layer setup dialog, where you
rename the stuff. I used the wrong terminology.

> filenames were using the user layer name or the translated layer
> name, which is something like an user layer name.

I remember this.

> This is one of reasons the English native layer names are now used
> in plot filenames.

The new layer names have already restriction on them AFAIK, so it should
be solved. Also plot names can be easily renamed with a script or
directly plotted using the scripting interface.

> Why to change *now* the sexp board file ?
> Have you found an issue when reading/writing board files ?
> If yes, changes could be done.
> If no, changing something will create incompatibility with the
> stable version only one month after the release!
> This is a very serious drawback.

That's why I suggested to keep the *internal* name in the board file,
for the same exact reason. Also the user is not supposed to look in the
file. I concur that a non-compatible change to the format is not the way
to go.

> Renaming them could be made not at board level, but more at user
> config level ( like lib paths, window size, colors ...)
> without any change in board files.

For the same reason that you can rename copper layers, because
(especially for ECO layers) they could have a specific meaning (like
comments for clearance, in my case).

The localization issue remains since you probably don't know that
a layer named 'MassaAnalogica' is really an analog ground plane.

If we want to go thru a minimal change route we could keep user
layer names as board identifiers for coppers and default names for the
other layers (this wouldn't change the bulk of the IO format).

However I think that user names for comment layer should be put in the
board (someway). Putting them in the user config means that you see
'comments' (or whatever you use it for) instead of 'clearances' when
opening a board of mine. It's not very different to see Inner1 instead
of AGND, I think...

Other than that there is the tried and true way to give gerbers to
fabricators: *write* on the layer what it is for, it's better than file
names!

I agree that this whole mess is little more than a user convenience.
Even without copper renaming I'd simply have written: "Supply" on Inner2
layer and "Grounds" on Inner1 layer.

-- 
Lorenzo Marcantonio
Logos Srl