Feature-Request: Change extension for sch to kicad-sch because people also have eagle
Hi while using eagle and kicad in parallel and having successfully ported eagle 6.5 designs to KiCad, I get problems with Windows as the extension sch should be assigned to eagle in order to open eagle designs properly.
So as the pcb files are named .kicad-pcb it would be just fair and just to rename schematics
.sch to .kicad-sch so both tools eagle and kicad can co-exist. This is especially useful when
importing eagle designs to kicad in order to avoid confusion.
The change in the software will be small just a find and replace.
Maybe, it is good to have a config option for the extension behaviour later on, but at the
first step I strongly recommend to rename the extension to be able to use both tools in a productive
environment.
Feature requests must go over onto the bugtracker.
Additionally i suspect this will happen automatically with the new file format planned for version 6 as kicad itself will need a different file ending for the new file format to differentiate the old from the new.
It’s not necessarily true that we will need a different extension to identify new file formats (I’m not sure if there have been any plans or thoughts one way or another on the issue of whether we should change extensions)
True, but the file format change is the perfect excuse to change to a unique extension such as the suggested one. But all this is academic over here on the forums.
Edit: And I see this is discussed over on launchpad.
you dont need the extension to identify a file. It is the parser of the tool who does it.
But in order to fire up a tool based on the extension assigned on windows file explorer it
is required to register an extension with the tool and there is only 1:1 and not 1:n on ending to tool.
So having a destinct name space like kicad_ for all kicad endings would be an asset
to improve usability with a tool zoo at least with windows.
In linux people use shell and write
kicad rocket_flightcontrol.pro or even there kicad rocket_flightcontrol.kicad_pro
so the usability does not depend on endings but with windows it greatly does.
As gEDA is nice with linux not many people use it, as there are many windows and mac users which
is a reason while KiCAD gained much momentum as it was multi plattform. So in order help the user
it would be nice to adapt to the expected workflow of a windows user who uses windows explorer as shell.
But all this is academic over here on the forums. 