kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Henner Zeller <h.zeller@xxxxxxx>]

Hi,
I'd like to continue working on refining this feature over the
weekend, but don't want to add more to this already big patch.
Is this patch ready to go into mainline ?

-h


On 12 February 2014 00:34, Henner Zeller <h.zeller@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi,
> Choosing components in the schematics editor is very cumbersome right now.
>
> Some examples:
>   - Search does a substring search, then shows a list of components that have
>     that substring. If you search for a capacitor 'C' or resistor 'R', this is
>     somewhere in a huge list you have to scroll through as the alphabetically
>     list has it somewhere in the middle.
>
>   - The search-result is a separate window that distractingly pops up. If there
>     was no match, no selection happens and we're silently dropped back in the
>     schematic editor. If you don't know the exact term you have to search for or
>     have typos, these round-trips are very frustrating.
>
>   - Keyword search is a separate button. Why not part of the search ?
>
>   - It is almost impossible to discover components that are in the
> library, as the
>     search and refine is not interactive and give very little clue about
>     description and keywords.
>
> Anyway, for me as a new user, this is very painful (probably you can get
> used to it, but it will still slow you down).
>
> So I sat down and thought about how it _should_ be.
>
> This is what I came up with, see patch:
>
>   - interactive search-as-you-type: a text input in which you can refine a
>     query by adding search terms and see the result-list narrow down.
>     The best match is at the top and can just be accepted with 'enter'.
>     (No wildcards necessary, just type space separated terms)
>
>   - Scoring: the 'best' match is in the front. A search for 'C' or 'R'
> brings up the
>     capacitor or resistor to the very top as it is an exact match for a
>     component in the library. Prefix-matches are scored higher than
>     substrings etc. This will give you most components you search for with
>     a couple of key-strokes interactively narrowing down the search.
>
>   - Matches in Keywords and descriptions are part of the same search.
>
>   - The result list contains part of the description of the component, for the
>     selected component, the full description and keywords are shown. This
>     helps to better choose components.
>
>   - The 'history' functionality is very similar to like before, it is
> just a toplevel
>     node (always unfolded) in the tree. It is improved as the last used
>     component is pre-selected, so you can just get it with 'enter'.
>
>   - In general, it is easy to operate this dialog with the keyboard for quick
>     results.
>
> There is another feature I'd like to add in a separate patch: show a little
> drawing of the currently selected component in the left bottom corner
> (left blank right now) when selected with the mouse popping up the library
> viewer. I left it as a dummy in this patch as I didn't want to make it too big.
>
> Also choosing a sub-gate should be possible as well, but is not handled
> in this ui yet.
>
> Anyway, just try it: patch this into your local source and play with it.
> For instance, you want to see all flip-flops the 74er series has to offer ?
> Your search term would narrow it down with '74 flip'. Press 'enter' to
> select or navigate with the cursor keys to select the right one.
> Search for a PLL in the 40er series ? Search for 'pll' (top result, just press
> 'Enter' to select) or 'pll 40' to exacly narrow down to a single component.
>
> I tried to follow all style guide parts and let uncrustify have a look as well,
> so the patch should be fairly 'clean' regarding the style-guide.
> Please be gentle with a newcomer-patch :)
> Of course, you might have suggestions - let me know what to improve.
> (Feature tweaks are probably better handled in smaller followup patches)
> The patch looks quite big, but this is mostly due to wxbuilder-generated code.
> But I should probably stop adding more stuff to it and iterate from here.
>
> View patch here:
> https://github.com/hzeller/kicad/compare/master...component-chooser-experiment#files_bucket
>
> Download it here:
> https://github.com/hzeller/kicad/compare/master...component-chooser-experiment.diff
>
> Thanks,
>   -henner