On 19/02/18 13:16, Jeff Young wrote:
Hi Rene,
Comments in-line:
On 19 Feb 2018, at 12:07, Rene Pöschl <poesc...@gmail.com> wrote:
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.)
I have no issue against this in principal, but why not just use the Select by
Browser then? It’s not only got the by-library organisation, but it has better
filtering across libraries, and it shows nice images.
Hmmm… I suppose the Browser is missing the Filter option….
For both the lib and footprint ;) (See next point)
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.)
Indeed, that’s the root motivation behind getting rid of the active library
concept.
To clarify: i use the select active lib dialog to filter the lib name
(it has live filtering of library names which the footprint browser
lacks) This allows me to reduce the set of libs from >300 to ~3 in most
cases. (example entering JST results in a list of the 3 different
versions of the Connector_JST lib i have on my system. For a normal user
it would result in one lib.)
After that, the list all dialog allows filtering for footprints (in the
active lib)
To continue the JST example: Entering 1x02 will lists all JST single row
connectors with two pins. (If either filtering option is missing, this
use-case becomes a lot harder.)
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.
Could you say more about this? Do you mean the Footprints view in the Symbol
Selector? (You can re-enable that through preferences.) Or something else?
Cheers,
Jeff.
I fear this might be considered derailing the conversation. (It has
currently nothing to do with footprints.) I just miss a way to browse
symbols in a fast manner (use the arrow keys to see a preview of many
symbols in a short amount of time)
This has been previously provided by the select symbol dialog in the
symbol editor. (To emulate this behavior in the tree view, one would
need a way to filter the available symbol libs and a way to navigate
symbols in that lib by using arrow keys. Plus fast symbol preview
without further user action.)
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