Bug or feature? Swap can swap standalone references and values of symbols

Schematic
1

Current docs say that Swap “works on symbols, labels, and graphical items.” However, it can also swap standalone references and values of symbols. Try this:

  1. Select a symbol.
  2. From another symbol, select only reference text.
  3. Call Swap.
  4. The first symbol and the text will exchange places.

This looks like bug to me. Or maybe word “labels” in the manual also means “symbol labels”? But they’re not called like that in KiCad. Also, it can swap references between two symbols, making the schematic confusing.

Also, the current docs say that Swap uses S hotkey, whereas it’s mapped to Alt+S in 9.0.2.

2

I think that’s intended behavior, not a bug.

The docs should be better here. But since you’re speculating on the meaning of words, I’ll clarify the author’s intent a bit :slight_smile: The docs generally lump text in with graphical objects. I don’t think I was thinking about symbol fields at all, but fields act like text even though they’re not purely graphical (reference designators have meaning, for example). Sheet fields are the same. Also, the “works on” list wasn’t meant to be an exclusive list, either, though it certainly reads as one right now. Swap also works on a number of other things that you may or may not want to swap, like NC markers and junction dots.

I would also argue that while the docs should certainly accurately describe KiCad behavior, it’s not necessarily a bug in KiCad if they don’t match. It could very easily be a docs bug (like this is).

Anyway I’ve clarified the language a bit. Thanks for the feedback.

Also fixed. In the future if you can report errors like this as bugs on gitlab (in the docs area) it’s appreciated. I care a lot about making sure these details are correct, but I check the forums very sporadically and things like this will get missed if they aren’t seen by me or someone else editing the docs.