kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Fabrizio Tappero <fabrizio.tappero@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,
I'd like to contribiute to this discussion with:
1) A quick mock up of what it might be better (and more compact). See
attachment.
2) A very friendly comment that maybe we should attempt to strive for
great usability and maybe, despite being compact and cute, "F.Cu" is
not as meaningful as "Top Copper". Same thing for an underscore
instead of a blank space of for a "Front" instead of "Top".
3) A comment: GUI margins are not so optimised and maybe some pixels
could be saved here and there. Not so important because in 1/2 year
monitors will have massive number of pixels.
4) A comment: I have no idea what is best to do with internal layer names.

I remain available for tuning the mockup via further comments.

Cheers
Fabrizio




On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 12:57 PM, Lorenzo Marcantonio
<l.marcantonio@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 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
>
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