kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx>]

Tom,

I'm deferring my involvement in this conversation until after we talk at
FOSDEM.  I thought that was the original plan but maybe I did not
understand you correctly.

Cheers,

Wayne

On 1/28/2019 12:22 PM, Tomasz Wlostowski wrote:
> Hi Devs,
> 
> A (probably) dumb question of a programmer who tried to put himself in
> the user's shoes:
> 
> - KiCad libraries (.pretty) are directories full of tiny files.
> - Other libraries (Eagle, etc.) are just files.
> - The Library Table dialog must support both, but there's no single
> dialog that allows selecting both files and directories (or even faking
> directories to look as files).
> - [update] wxDirDialog seems to support the above ^^, but it doesn't
> look like a standard file chooser dialog. This is confusing to users.
> - Why do footprint libraries have the extension ".pretty"? What does it
> convey to the user (it's a nice codename for programmers, though)?.
> - Why the PROJECT class is compiled conditionally, exposing only PCB
> libs to pcbnew and SCH libs to eeschema? This prevents having a single,
> unified library configuration dialog accessible from all Kicad apps as
> well as the Project Manager.
> - Do we *really* need to expose all these environmental variables,
> fp-lib-table paths, plugin options and so on in the main library
> configuration dialog? This is extremely confusing. I'm not opposed to
> support environment vars, but should they be as visible as they are now?
> - How about adding support for .zip library files (zipped
> .pretty/.sweet/.3dshapes directory)? This could significantly improve
> the library loading speed as the scanner will no longer need to access
> every single .kicad_mod/.kicad_sym file just to enumerate the
> footprint/symbol it contains. It's quite annoying, in particular under
> Windows or NFS/Samba (loading the standard FP library on my laptop takes
> ~20 seconds).
> - Should we have the same interface for adding 3D model libraries
> (directories/zipfiles with .STEP files) instead of a 3D model search path?
> 
> I'm asking because despite our efforts to improve Kicad's UX, the
> library configuration is still quite difficult, even for experienced PCB
> designers who are switching to KiCad from proprietary tools (see recent
> posts on the Kicad Forum). I'd like to improve this during the V6
> development cycle.
> 
> Cheers,
> Tom
> 
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