kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Rene Pöschl <poeschlr@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 19/02/18 12:14, Jeff Young wrote:
> The Open / List All button is much faster on all libraries than it used to be, and it’s a bit of a step-child to Search by Keyword and Select by Browser anyway.
>
> So, I’m going to propose that we add a Library selection widget to New Footprint..., Export Library... and Save As... and otherwise abandon the active library concept.

If you remove the active library concept from the "list all" stuff then 
you might want to add a way to filter (by library) after that dialog 
opened.
The live filtering of the list all dialog is much more powerful then the 
filter by keyword button. (I personally never use the search by keyword 
feature as i in most cases know in what lib a footprint resides. 
Otherwise i can use search all without having an active lib.)

One use-case where filtering by a specific lib might be helpful is 
library maintenance. The maintainer might have multiple different 
versions of the same lib in their system. (I have three copies of the 
footprint library added to my review project. Differentiated by a prefix 
to the library nickname. Results in >300 libs active in this project.)

The save button should also have a way to remember in which lib the 
currently edited footprint resides and offer a one click save. (Fill out 
the target lib and footprint name such that by default the current 
footprint is overwritten.)
The use-case for "i want to edit a footprint" is much more common then 
"i want to copy a footprint to a different lib/name". (At least for me.)

A bonus would be if the selection of the target lib is made easy via 
some live filtering option. (The official lib already has >100 footprint 
libs)

And please do not remove the lib browser! This is the only way of 
checking a large number of footprints in a fast way. This feature has 
already been removed for symbols. (By removing the symbol selector with 
the preview.) Don't make the same mistake on the footprint side.