eeschema color changes affect plot export when they shouldn't

[Chris Pavlina]

I suppose this is only a rather minor annoyance, but I just noticed it and it does seem a bit of an oversight. In eeschema, one can change the colors used to render the schematic, including setting the background black. This is nice, as some people find the black background easier on the eyes. Problem is, if you set a black background, you have to set light-colored graphic elements, and this carries through to plot exports (PS, PDF, etc) when color is enabled. These all have light backgrounds, meaning these elements are now almost invisible.

I'd think that the plots should either ignore the UI color settings, or have their own separate settings.

[Jeff Young (jeyjey)]

More info in the duplicate.

[Nick Østergaard (nickoe)]

But is this still an issue? The duplicate report is sort of old and no feedback was ever received. Is it still relevant in latest master? Meanwhile I will mark this as incomplete.

[Jeff Young (jeyjey)]

It's still an issue, although not a high priority one.

Imagine you set your eeschema background to black, your wires to white, and your symbol outlines to yellow.

When you go an plot that we don't want to run your printer out of ink, so we switch the background to white. But now your wires disappear and your symbol outlines are exceptionally hard to read.

[Jeff Young (jeyjey)]

Changing to bug. Users will see it that way, whether we do or not. ;)

[Seth Hillbrand (sethh)]

I was looking at this the other day and, while the attached patch isn't a full solution, it fixes the BW printing (1662859). This will make printing usable with inverted schemes.

[Wayne Stambaugh (stambaughw)]

This is better than the current situation even though it doesn't quite fix everything I went ahead and merged it. Thanks.

[Michael Kavanagh (michaelkavanagh)]

This area is due to be looked at in v6, so I am tentatively setting the milestone.

[Frank Severinsen (shack)]

Would it be ok to add the background color to the plotting as an in between? if people use default color scheme, it wouldn't change anything. if the use a different color scheme, the plot function would actually produce readable (but not printer friendly) plots.

Would the proper way be an option to use current or default colorscheme when plotting?

[Seth Hillbrand (sethh)]

I like the idea of having the option of printer color schemes that can be selected when printing. These could be the default colors.

I haven't heard anyone clamoring for black printed backgrounds though. :)

[KiCad Janitor (kicad-janitor)]

KiCad bug tracker has moved to Gitlab. This report is now available here: https://gitlab.com/kicad/code/kicad/-/issues/1830