kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 1/12/2015 1:41 PM, Adam Wolf wrote:
> Wayne,
> 
> Users definitely can write in ~/Documents.

Then the stock libraries should not be in the ~/Documents path.  Is
there an OSX equivalent to Linux's /usr/share path?  If so, that's where
I recommend putting them.

> 
> I also agree with you about not modifying stock libraries--I explicitly
> mention this in my mac install's README.  Once you start doing that,
> upgrading becomes a pain, and users are going to lose work.

User's (mostly windows)  have complained about this in the past and my
first question is why did you modify a stock library item rather than
create your own custom library.  This is such a basic concept to me so I
tend to forget that not everyone sees it that way.  KiCad is not the
only EDA application to suffer from this problem.

> 
> I honestly think that many users/pre-developers are quite lost by the
> fp-table-lib stuff, and don't realize that it *frees* them to put their
> libraries wherever they want.  (I didn't understand how it all worked
> until about a month ago.)

The fp-lib-table design does have a learning curve but it's flexibility
and design are really sound.  I haven't seen a commercial product
(granted I have not used them all) have this powerful of a library
management tool.

> 
> This may be a documentation problem/UI problem, rather than a search
> path problem.  I am going to continue with the paths like they are, with
> the exception of packages3d per our previous discussion.

We are still stuck with the schematic component and 3D library path
search issues until after the next release.  At that point, I am going
to start working on the core code of eeschema to fix this issue.  Then
only the 3D model libraries would use the search path code.  There has
been talk about fixing that as well.  Hopefully by the following
release, the search path code will be no more.

> 
> I think that after your path stuff is done, and maybe a few more UI
> tweaks to the fp-table area, these user concerns will mostly go away.

Maybe we could get someone more creative than myself to create a short
video describing the benefits and usage of the fp-lib-table.  That may
make life a lot easier for users.  If you understand how the
fp-lib-table works, the configuration of it makes a lot more sense.

> 
> Adam Wolf
> Cofounder and Engineer
> W&L