kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Chris Pavlina <pavlina.chris@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Jul 06, 2016 at 03:44:10PM +0200, Lorenzo Marcantonio wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 06, 2016 at 09:36:45AM -0400, Chris Pavlina wrote:
> > Would anyone be opposed to me making the reference and value fields in
> > "footprint properties" directly editable, so you don't have to click Edit and
> > call up a second dialog if you don't need to modify font properties? Seems like
> > an obvious improvement, but I don't know why they're not editable in the first
> > place so I want to make sure there's nothing I'm missing to get in the way.
> 
> I sometime wondered about it, too... also the 'read only' fields are
> shown as normal fields and it's immediate to think about typing in them!

Yes - if somebody says no, I'm going to at least set them disabled so it's
obvious. I'd consider that a minor UI bug.

> 
> Most probably they are done in that way because there are other
> properties (size, alignment and so on) attached to the text but I don't
> think it would be problematic to allow changing the string from there.
> 
> Anyway, think about it a second: these texts come from the netlist
> (except when editing a module from the library); it's actually a use
> case changing the string manually? it will be overwritten next time the
> netlist is read!

I suggested changing it because I just tried it. I know what I'm doing. ;)

They most certainly can be edited, though one doesn't do it often. A "common"
use case is swapping two parts - I had two resistor footprints on this PCB, one
of which I had edited to have a copper short across it (jumper footprints for
rare debug use, can be cut by the person doing development to avoid having to
install an actual jumper in most boards), and I wanted to quickly swap the
shorted part with its companion open part.

> 
> -- 
> Lorenzo Marcantonio
> CZ Srl - Parma