illogical menus in component editing

[Nicholas Savenlid]

Component name gets turned into a value and more

see attached png

[Chris Pavlina (pavlina-chris)]

You've got some valid criticisms in there - a couple I've been thinking about myself, in fact, such as "WHY NOT EDIT DIRECTLY ABOVE INSTEAD???!?!???". Actually, I made that change myself in another place in eeschema, may make it here too.

I disagree about moving field properties into component properties, that just puts it another level deep and IMHO makes it harder to find. It's right on the toolbar right now. It's a dialog that I use quite frequently, and I imagine many others do too, and I like having it quickly accessible.

As for "component name" being used as "value" - I'm not sure what I think of this. The problem is that doing it the way it is now makes things easy once you understand them. The alternative, having a separate field for component "name" and for "value", adds complexity: for some parts (like passives), you'd want to display only the value, and for other parts (like ICs) you'd want to display only the name, and perhaps duplicate that into the 'value' field for consistency with BOM export and whatnot.

I do see your point about it, though.

Verdict: I agree on the first point, and may address it in the future. As for the other points, please make them in separate bug reports next time so we can manage and address them properly, and please make them more politely as you are more likely to get a response from someone besides me.

[Wayne Stambaugh (stambaughw)]

During my field bug fix I was thinking the same thing about editing
fields in the schematic component edit dialog and the library editor
field edit dialog. Why not just use the wxGrid to edit all of the field
settings where all of the settings for each field are in a row in the
grid. Obviously you would have to prevent changing the names of the
four mandatory fields but everything else could user editable. You can
also embed controls in grid cells so you can limit options for setting
the justification, visibility, etc. This would probably make the dialog
code a lot less complicated since you wouldn't have to update the field
controls every time you select a different field.

On 4/2/2016 9:39 AM, Chris Pavlina wrote:
> You've got some valid criticisms in there - a couple I've been thinking
> about myself, in fact, such as "WHY NOT EDIT DIRECTLY ABOVE
> INSTEAD???!?!???". Actually, I made that change myself in another place
> in eeschema, may make it here too.
>
> I disagree about moving field properties into component properties, that
> just puts it another level deep and IMHO makes it harder to find. It's
> right on the toolbar right now. It's a dialog that I use quite
> frequently, and I imagine many others do too, and I like having it
> quickly accessible.
>
> As for "component name" being used as "value" - I'm not sure what I
> think of this. The problem is that doing it the way it is now makes
> things easy once you understand them. The alternative, having a separate
> field for component "name" and for "value", adds complexity: for some
> parts (like passives), you'd want to display only the value, and for
> other parts (like ICs) you'd want to display only the name, and perhaps
> duplicate that into the 'value' field for consistency with BOM export
> and whatnot.
>
> I do see your point about it, though.
>
> Verdict: I agree on the first point, and may address it in the future.
> As for the other points, please make them in separate bug reports next
> time so we can manage and address them properly, and please make them
> more politely as you are more likely to get a response from someone
> besides me.
>
> ** Changed in: kicad
> Status: New => Opinion
>

[Chris Pavlina (pavlina-chris)]

Yup, agreed. Makes the interface less complicated for the end user too, hence why I wanted to use it for the template field list.

Won't have time to do it myself for a good while though. :(

[Nicholas Savenlid (nicholas-z)]

I apologize for my rudeness, its not by purpose

People who name their components "10K" can do so equally in the field "Name" as they do in "Value"
the name of the ID field is not important for them or Kicad as you can keep your behind the scenes mechanism anyway.

but for an old ee-designer it is confusing when the Value field is already occupied by a component name

many components like connectors dont have a value but they have a name
you just lead people down the wrong path with that naming, and renaming it to "Name" would make no difference for quick designs
It can still be default visible

I add another picture showing some more opinions

Thanks again for your time

[Jeff Young (jeyjey)]

Conversion to wxGrid has been implemented in 5.1.

The Component Name / Value Field conflation still exists, but I think it's a reasonable compromise for dealing with both generic parts with values (resistors) and specific parts (74LSxxxx).

[Nicholas Savenlid (nicholas-z)]

Is 5.1 now in the nightlies or is it a thread you must download by other means?

[Jeff Young (jeyjey)]

5.1 is virtual (spread between several private branches), but most of the UI changes are on my private branch. There's a public mirror at:

https://code.launchpad.net/~jeyjey/kicad/+git/kicad

It's been a while since anyone else built it so it will likely have some compile issues on Linux and Windows (the OSX compiler appears to be more forgiving).

[Nicholas Savenlid (nicholas-z)]

Ok

i wont dive into that, I wait patiently.

Thanks for your work.

2018-07-09 22:35 GMT+07:00 Jeff Young <email address hidden>:

> 5.1 is virtual (spread between several private branches), but most of
> the UI changes are on my private branch. There's a public mirror at:
>
> https://code.launchpad.net/~jeyjey/kicad/+git/kicad
>
> It's been a while since anyone else built it so it will likely have some
> compile issues on Linux and Windows (the OSX compiler appears to be more
> forgiving).
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to the bug
> report.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1565195
>
> Title:
> illogical menus in component editing
>
> Status in KiCad:
> In Progress
>
> Bug description:
> Component name gets turned into a value and more
>
> see attached png
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/kicad/+bug/1565195/+subscriptions
>