Poor ease-of-learning for picking alignment reference object
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
KiCad |
Fix Released
|
Unknown
|
Bug Description
The Align/Distribute functionality changed from 5.0.2 to 5.1. Assuming this change was intended (I do think the new functionality is great), it is incorrectly (poorly) implemented:
If I do “Align to Right” on a group of selected footprints, the reasonable interpretation (and the way it used to work in KiCAD 5.0) is: align the right of all selected footprints to the right-most of the selected footprints.
What 5.1 does is: “Align the right of all selected footprints to the right of this footprint” (where “this footprint” is the footprint on which one right-clicked to activate the Align pop-up menu).
The bug I am reporting is actually the text on the pop-up menu --- it should NOT say "Align to Right/Left/etc."; it should say something like: "Right-align selected footprints with respect to this footprint" (or something along those lines but more concise).
Additionally, the order of the menu items should be changed to avoid the ambiguity between center/middle (horizontal vs. vertical centering). Either use the words horizontal / vertical to avoid ambiguity, or list the items in the following order: Left, center, right, top, middle, bottom (with center between left and right, it is clear that it refers to horizontal center; similarly for middle between top and bottom).
KiCAD version:
Application: kicad
Version: 5.1.0-060a0da~
Libraries:
wxWidgets 3.0.4
libcurl/7.58.0 OpenSSL/1.1.0g zlib/1.2.11 libidn2/2.0.4 libpsl/0.19.1 (+libidn2/2.0.4) nghttp2/1.30.0 librtmp/2.3
Platform: Linux 4.15.0-46-generic x86_64, 64 bit, Little endian, wxGTK
Build Info:
wxWidgets: 3.0.4 (wchar_t,wx containers,
Boost: 1.65.1
OpenCASCADE Community Edition: 6.9.1
Curl: 7.58.0
Compiler: GCC 7.3.0 with C++ ABI 1011
Build settings:
USE_
USE_
KICAD_
KICAD_
KICAD_
KICAD_
KICAD_
KICAD_
BUILD_
KICAD_
KICAD_
KICAD_SPICE=ON
Changed in kicad: | |
status: | New → Opinion |
tags: | added: eeschema pcbnew ui |
Changed in kicad: | |
importance: | Low → Unknown |
status: | Expired → New |
Changed in kicad: | |
status: | New → Fix Released |
Another option: some other tools I have used have you pick the reference object after executing the command. This approach has the advantage of working the same way if you execute the align command from a keyboard shortcut (where there might not be an obvious reference object to pick).
IMHO it is better to be able to pick the reference object than to assume that the user always wants to align to the rightmost selected object (the previous behavior)