kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Chris Pavlina <pavlina.chris@xxxxxxxxx>]

I'm working on an eight-layer board and really can't wait for this to
hit pcbnew too. It's bloody impossible to tell layers apart with KiCad's
state-of-the-80s-art color system.

On Mon, Feb 06, 2017 at 10:03:11PM -0500, Jon Evans wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I started working on the idea of a color theme system for KiCad, starting
> with the schematic editor.
> 
> This change relies on a complete removal of EDA_COLOR_T from the code, and
> replacement with a color structure that can handle arbitrary colors.  I
> think this is important and the right path for the future, but since it's a
> significant change, I wanted to get buy-in before going any farther down
> this road.  I can understand the reasons for using an enum for
> color--especially since it lets the developers restrict the colors to those
> that will work well with the drawing technique of the legacy canvases.
> But, since the new canvases will have no problem supporting arbitrary
> colors, I think it makes sense to start setting up the groundwork for that.
> 
> In my test code, I have replaced EDA_COLOR_T with wxColour, since that is
> used internally in a few places already, and it was pretty simple (although
> somewhat time-consuming) to replace all usages.  wxColour has the nice
> property of serializing/deserializing from hex color codes like "#80FC62"
> so that's what I use for storing in the settings for now (eventually I
> think color settings should be in their own files so that they can be
> traded by users).  Plus, there is a canned wxColourPicker widget that I can
> use in place of the custom color picker buttons that are used in the
> settings today.
> 
> You can see some screenshots of the (work-in-progress) settings dialog
> changes, and an example of a custom color theme in the schematic editor,
> here:
> http://imgur.com/a/MxMmb
> 
> So, any feedback from the core team?  Any reason why I shouldn't move
> forward with preparing a patch to move from EDA_COLOR_T to wxColour across
> the board?
> 
> Best,
> Jon