"Soft" modes: don't drop active tool for simple operations (M, D, etc.) and use the active tool to disambiguate selections.

[Chase Rayfield]

Application: kicad
Version: (5.0.0), release build
Libraries:
    wxWidgets 3.0.3
    libcurl/7.54.1 OpenSSL/1.0.2l zlib/1.2.11 libssh2/1.8.0 nghttp2/1.23.1 librtmp/2.3
Platform: Windows 7 (build 7601, Service Pack 1), 64-bit edition, 64 bit, Little endian, wxMSW
Build Info:
    wxWidgets: 3.0.3 (wchar_t,wx containers,compatible with 2.8)
    Boost: 1.60.0
    OpenCASCADE Community Edition: 6.8.0
    Curl: 7.54.1
    Compiler: GCC 7.1.0 with C++ ABI 1011

Build settings:
    USE_WX_GRAPHICS_CONTEXT=OFF
    USE_WX_OVERLAY=OFF
    KICAD_SCRIPTING=ON
    KICAD_SCRIPTING_MODULES=ON
    KICAD_SCRIPTING_WXPYTHON=ON
    KICAD_SCRIPTING_ACTION_MENU=OFF
    BUILD_GITHUB_PLUGIN=ON
    KICAD_USE_OCE=ON
    KICAD_USE_OCC=OFF
    KICAD_SPICE=ON

With exception of keybindings to change to a mode eg, add text or route track key bindings, other bindings such as ESC, (M)ove or (D)rag should not cause you to go back to selection mode or different mode than you have selected.

You may be temporarily doing a selection operation, but I'm not sure it makes sense to override a mode selection that the user just made as that is discarding usable information about what the user wants to do.

Imagine I am working on the Silk text on my PCB, so I select Add Text and type some text on my PCB then move it with M , now I am back in selection mode why? Making the modes a bit more separate could also decrease the number of times that you need to be interrupted by the Clarification Dialog. So, if I am Adding text... I mouse over a pile of text/footprint/traces only the text is moved no questions asked. The same goes for route tracks it probably shouldn't ask for clarification about footprint/track vs text always preferring the former. Selection mode should probably just allow selecting everything with the full Clarification dialog.

I hope this is not overly broad or vague but I'm not sure how else to describe this issue.

[Jeff Young (jeyjey)]

We probably also need to decorate the cursor with the active tool icon or something similar to make the "mode" more obvious.

[Chase Rayfield (cusbrar2)]

I don't know why you'd want to clutter up the cursor and reduce the visibility of what are you are working on, when that information is already prominently displayed on the sidebar and status bar.

Thanks for the clarification to the Bug title that's summarizes it a good deal better.

[Hildo Guillardi Júnior (hildogjr)]

I think I already use this video on a related issue
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_zeXPwK1OU

In this EDA of the example:
We have a selection object kind filter;
Each tool have a default behavior already set;
The filter can be changed for each tool.

If I remember, v4 had something like this but despise a tool box for the filter was an annoying dialog that came up every time that I try to select something.

[KiCad Janitor (kicad-janitor)]

Fixed in revision 9effd24f3a98425c1cb852c790c8ab3cc4031f80
https://git.launchpad.net/kicad/patch/?id=9effd24f3a98425c1cb852c790c8ab3cc4031f80