kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 4/29/2015 9:39 AM, Adam Wolf wrote:
> I agree, Wayne.
> 
> When I get a better grasp on where eeschema is going, I might mock up
> some UI changes and see what people think.
> 
> Right now, there is very little discoverability for new users to know to
> add extra libraries that we have already created and ship with every
> installation.

In the future, maybe we could add some type of wizard to the component
library management dialog similar to the footprint library wizard.

> 
> It is possible with Henner's add window, that adding all the libraries
> by default is not really a problem anymore.

Adding all of the libraries would make the type ahead find significantly
slower.  I'm not sure users with less powerful systems would appreciate
the change.  I'm not opposed to adding all of the libraries because I
have my own custom kicad.pro that's fairly minimal with the custom
libraries that I use for almost every project.

> 
> I don't like the idea of unwritten yet important metadata about the
> libraries we ship with KiCad, but there are bigger fish to fry.

Indeed.  I want to keep the focus on the stable release.  It's all I can
handle at the moment.

Wayne

> 
> Adam Wolf
> 
> On Apr 29, 2015 7:41 AM, "Wayne Stambaugh" <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx
> <mailto:stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
> 
>     On 4/27/2015 6:56 PM, Adam Wolf wrote:
>     > Oof.  Guess that's what happens when you spend March in Canada.
>     >
>     > How are users supposed to know what footprints are available in each
>     > library?  Are we expecting users to open libraries in a text editor?
>     > Should they add each one, one by one, and then see if they have
>     > footprints they need for the design, and then remove them if they
>     don't
>     > need them?
> 
>     This is a catch-22.  If you add all of the component libraries to
>     kicad.pro <http://kicad.pro>, the new users will know which
>     libraries exist but power users
>     will bite your head off because they only want the libraries they need
>     to prevent the library load and search overhead to a minimum.  If you
>     use a minimal number of libraries, power users will be happy and new
>     users will complain that there are no component libraries.  I'm not sure
>     there is a good solution to this problem.  The current kicad.pro
>     <http://kicad.pro> file
>     aims for the middle where the most common libraries are included for
>     convenience but not all of them for speed.  This way nobody gets what
>     they want.  If nobody is happy then it's probably a pretty good
>     compromise :)  I've always though a document on how to configure kicad
>     would be worthwhile. All of this information is in the current
>     documentation but it's scattered all over the place and it's not always
>     clear why you would want to customize your configuration.  Given that so
>     few people read the documentation, I'm reluctant to create such a
>     document.
> 
>     >
>     > What's the desired behavior for a new user?
>     >
>     > (I had two users contact me last week saying my OS X nightlies were
>     > missing some FTDI symbols that were on Github, so I started
>     > investigating...)
>     >
>     > Adam Wolf
>     >
>     > On Apr 27, 2015 5:51 PM, "Nick Østergaard" <oe.nick@xxxxxxxxx
>     <mailto:oe.nick@xxxxxxxxx>
>     > <mailto:oe.nick@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:oe.nick@xxxxxxxxx>>> wrote:
>     >
>     >     Someone tried this before:
>     >     https://lists.launchpad.net/kicad-developers/msg17320.html
>     >
>     >     2015-04-27 16:13 GMT+02:00 Adam Wolf
>     <adamwolf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:adamwolf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>     >     <mailto:adamwolf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>     <mailto:adamwolf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>>>:
>     >     > Hi folks,
>     >     >
>     >     > I noticed there were a bunch of libraries done by the library
>     >     folks that
>     >     > aren't in the default kicad.pro <http://kicad.pro>
>     <http://kicad.pro>, so I was
>     >     missing out on a lot of their good
>     >     > work!
>     >     >
>     >     > Over the weekend, I added all the libraries to the default
>     >     profile.  If this
>     >     > is something we want in the main tree, awesome.
>     >     >
>     >     > Note, there is an "updated" timestamp in kicad.pro
>     <http://kicad.pro>
>     >     <http://kicad.pro>, and I did not adjust it.
>     >     > It does not appear to have been adjusted the last time it
>     was updated
>     >     > either, so I left it alone.
>     >     >
>     >     > Adam Wolf
>     >     > Cofounder and Engineer
>     >     > W&L
>     >     >
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