kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Rick Walker <walker@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Here's what I'd like to see:

    1) I can upload my footprints and symbols and they get tagged
    as "mine".   If I only want to share, but not take, then I
    can set the system up to only use my twork.

    2) If I find someone else has a similar esthetic to mine,
    then I can add their work to my usage list, either
    individually, or as a group.  So if I decide that "Joe" and I
    agree on grids, labelling and other criteria, I can select
    Joe's horde and make it part of my horde.  I can either
    select only stuff made by Joe, or select all of Joe's horde,
    which includes things that Joe has selected from other
    people.  Obviously, my choice depends on how much I trust
    Joe's stuff.  I can either just a selected number of his footprints,
    his entire personal library, or all his work and all the community
    work he thinks is worth adding to his search list. 

    3) When I select other peoples work to add to my horde, I can
    select a search order which allows better curated hordes to
    take precedence over less disciplined work.

This sort of a mechanism makes it easy for there to spontaneously
emerge multiple libraries. 

For instance, I'm constantly annoyed by the lack of consistent scale
between schematic symbols.  Why should a bypass cap symbol be as big as
an entire op-amp?  The mechanism I propose would allow simultaneous
growth of a "high layout density" schematic lib in parallel with a
"large and airy" schematic lib. 

If a voting mechanism is included, and some way for people to search for
various stylistic attributes (density, grid pitch, ansi/euro, etc), then
people could easily query the system for "the highest voted fine grid,
ansi library" as their primary horde, and the best voted "low density"
lib as a fallback. 

Every person becomes a librarian of their own little niche of
parts.  Some will curate lots of micros, some will be interested
in vacuum tubes.  Some will work at the meta level and cherry
pick the best of different categories to make a more complete
overall lib with consistent layout style.

Absent such a mechanism, I'll probably just keep my own private
libs the way I like them, and plan on building my own symbols for
every new project.

There is a certain level of nuance that is required before a
community horde mechanism is viable or even worth attempting.
This probably involves some degree of self filtering, searching,
and intelligent aggregation of multiple efforts into larger
collections.

kind regards,
--
Rick Walker