kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx>]

Orson,

On 3/6/2018 8:55 AM, Maciej Sumiński wrote:
> I am trying to find a reasonable way to handle symbol and components
> with invalid characters in their LIB_IDs (see bug report #1752419 [1]).
> While now it is impossible to create such LIB_IDs, we need to handle
> documents that had been created before the restriction was introduced.
> 
> LIB_IDs in SCH_COMPONENTS will have illegal characters replaced on load,
> but it is not the case for LIB_{PART,ALIAS} classes. Due to that:
> 
> - Symbol-component links are broken (e.g. component with LIB_ID
> 'Test/Name' will change to 'Test_Name', but the corresponding LIB_PART
> will remain 'Test/Name'.
> 
> - It is impossible to place/edit such symbols.
> 
> The simplest solution is to process LIB_{PART,ALIAS} LIB_IDs in the same
> way as id done for SCH_COMPONENTs, so they become valid names that match
> SCH_COMPONENTs using them (see the attached patches). There are two
> drawbacks:

I would prefer to keep the behavior consistent with what is done with
the SCH_COMPONENT LIB_ID renaming.  I know it's less than elegant but we
are going to just have to take our medicine until we transition over to
the new file format.

> 
> - Changing names that user had previously assigned, which might be
> annoying if LIB_IDs are used e.g. to create BOMs. Personally I would use
> the value field that accepts all characters for this purpose.

Can LIB_IDs be used in BOMs?  That would be an odd way to do it but I
suppose you could.  Typically the contents of the value field is used
for BOM output not the symbol name.

> 
> - Naming conflicts may occur (e.g. both 'Test/Name' and 'Test:Name' will
> be changed to 'Test_Name', but I believe it is a rare case.

I just used a simple counter to append digits to the end of the name in
the case of name conflicts in the remapping code so a similar approach
here would not be out of line.

> 
> Any thoughts? I believe a more elegant solution will be implemented once
> the new schematic file format is ready.

The current behavior is just going to last during v5.  Once the new
schematic file format is done and the LIB_ID parser and formatter
support escaping the / and : characters, we should be able to use any
character (except for control characters) in LIB_IDs.

> 
> Cheers,
> Orson
> 
> 1. https://bugs.launchpad.net/kicad/+bug/1752419
> 
> 
> 
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