If you do not want references on the silkscreen, one of the methods is to create your own library, and copy/modify the footprints in it, so they don’t have the text on silkscreen.
Sorry, I still get a feeling you don’t understand what I’m talking about.
Also:
I’m talking about the feature, which was already presented and woked fine. This is exactly a case, when you had to do NOTHING. Absolutely NOTHING.
To be honest, I am very afraid that KiCAD will suffer the fate of many other products that have been perfected. However, as time goes by, developers have nothing to do and start doing nonsense and making changes for the sake of changes. And at the same time explain to users that it is better for them.
I really want to be wrong. Please sorry for my sincerity.
OK, and what? I’m talking about 9.x.
Sure. It is also possible to wear the pants over the head. 
There are the lot of ways. But why the easiest and working way got gone?
Sorry but you are the one talking nonsense now . . . “developers have nothing to do” . . . show a little respect.
Maybe you don’t realise that the developers you are talking abut are doing this for free in their own time . . .
For sure I understand it (and support KiCAD from time to time). That’s why I don’t understand the reason of this change.
With respect.
There are always compromises between usability, the number of available functions and complexity of the UI. KiCad has gained a lot of functionality in the 10 year’s I’m using it and has become much more complex. It also has lost a little bit of the simplicity and straightforwarness that it had 10 years ago.
I also do not really understand why you want this option. I can go along with not wanting the references on the silkscreen in the gerber output. But why do you then want to put them on silkscreen in the first place? The simple option is really that if you don’t want it on the silkscreen, then remove or move it from the silkscreen. For me, having extra flags to adjust such things in the gerber output are just a clutter of the user interface, and you have to check them all and get them right, or else your Gerber output is no good.
I understand that it’s annoying that this forces you to adjust your workflow, but does it really make a significant difference apart from that annoyance? It’s easy to get stuck in a loop when something annoys you, and this makes it more difficult to see the broader picture. For me, I want the Gerber output to look the same as I have designed the PCB. That is the sole purpose of the Gerbers: So you can order a product that looks the same as what you designed.
I have not moved to V9 yet, but I see I will have ‘the same’ problem with this flags. I didn’t used them in gerber generation, but used them differently. I don’t know if V9 has new feature that I will be able to use instead (correctly working layer pairs could be such feature).
Currently all my footprints have reference and value both at Courtyard and centered. I use it to generate documentation files like in the middle of this long post:
I generate one such file with references (for assembly house) and second with values (for me).
I get it by checking one of these two flags when exporting to svg.
If I will not have these checkboxes I would probably have to delete all references before exporting with values and then be sure to step back this edition step.
Do KiCad will allow to delete all references from PCB?
The easiest way to do that would be to put them on a specific user layer, and turn that layer on for your SVGs and off for the assembly-house ones. (In 9.0 you can even automate that with jobsets.)
(And yes, you can now have sided user-layers so that they flip.)
Thanks.
You answered the question I had in mind when reading your previous sentences.
When I change KiCad version I spend several hours on opening all my libraries and projects and saving them with new version. I just prefer to adopt needed changes at the moment when I know what is going on and not have to (much time later) open V5 project with V11 version and then try to correct all historical changes.
I see I will have to wait with decision of moving from V8 to V9 till the time I will be able to spend some time (may be few days) to not only open and save my footprint libraries but to modify each footprint and then updating them in each project.
I wonder if I will be able to make (in footprint files) layers changes automatically using find/replace text editor functions as now both texts (value and ref) I have are at F.Courtyard layer and there are also other objects at that layer. I planned to make the copy of whole courtyard picture at such layer (till now I supposed it will be one layer having both text like now I have at courtyard) and modify coutyard picture to be KiCad acceptable (I have there pin1/cathode markings).
I don’t know Python (I’d like to learn, but there are only 24 hours in a day).
I will have to see one or two footprints modified to find if I’m able to specify rules to write program (C++) to make that changes and if doing them manually will not be faster (I have only about 280 footprints in my libraries).
I also don’t know how layers management is done in KiCad. For example if at PCB having no additional layer pairs defined (I suppose in V8 layer set is specific to project and not to whole KiCad environment) I update all footprints and their new versions use layer pairs that PCB don’t knows - will the pair definition from footprint (or may be from footprint editor) be someway adopted by PCB.
I expect V8-V9 change will be more difficult for me than all previous changes.
As I already mentioned, this option was already presented and worked fine. I’m not asking to add some functionality. I’m just wondering, why it is removed? Especially, considering that “developers … are doing this for free in their own time” 
The silkscreen layer contains both reference numbers and a lot of abother information which I want to keep. The “Plot footprint references” ckeckbox gave me the fast-and-simple way to reject the references, but keep the rest of silkscreen. Using one ckechbox only 
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You didn’t read the earlier posts by Jeff Young, did you?
Yes, I did. Good joke. Like.
This xkcd is as relevant as ever
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I believe @JeffYoung but it is hardly to believe in it that there were many users having such problems:
To have such problem they had to move those texts (ref or value) from KiCad default layers to copper layer. I don’t suppose anyone is doing it. But if someone does it (I completely don’t understand what for) then he should expect such problems and than be careful with it. As he is not, than (in my opinion) he has problems that he asked for. As I understand it, many users, instead of taking the time to check the Gerbers, prefer to simply write critical reports about KiCad each time they make that mistake. This behavior seems to me typical of young, irresponsible people.
The other possibility: Are you sure that this was not a coordinated action by someone who wanted to make KiCad less usable? 
Were there any rationale explanations in those reports what for these texts were moved to copper layer?
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Honestly, I’ve got a feeling JeffYoung didn’t get the point of question. But, this is my “feeling”
only.
Hi JeffYoung,
May I ask you, how does this photo relate to the topic?
I was using this ‘school’ but only to write PCB name, revision and our firm name (I simply liked them being gold ).
If someone is using it to write all references than he have to position them the way to not make shorts.
From my point of view if someone does it than moving references to copper and correct positioning them are a kind of closely related actions.
So his only problem can be that he forgot to switch checkbox on and didn’t get references at PCB.
In my opinion deleting these two checkboxes is a big step back in terms of KiCad’s friendliness.
If you have these check-boxes and you decide don’t bother with finding the right place for value and/or reference texts than you just uncheck them when generating gerbers, but when working with PCB you can have them as they are usually and at their usual layers (you need not to modify footprints in any way - KiCad will not warn about footprint being different than in library).
Later, when you have time making final PCB release you have all these texts at correct layers and just have to spend (sometimes relatively lot time) to find correct positions to all these texts.
I have not installed V9 yet, but I suppose (not sure) that in V9 using standard KiCad library if you don’t want to spend time on reference positioning the only way is to delete them or move to another layer. Probably it is possible in one move (I have never tried it).
Expecting rather lot work I will have with my libraries to adopt them to V9 I think that if I knew that these checkboxes will happen to get back with V10 then I will certainly jump from V8 directly to V10.
Yeah, it’s the same with the KiCad Libraries. We have to change them all to use fields instead of text items too.
I would give them low odds of coming back in V10. We understood the costs when we made the decision, so right or wrong I suspect we’ll live with it.
I don’t understand this sentence as I don’t understand difference between field and text item.
Probably because last KiCad documentation I have read was named as being about KiCad V4 but truly was about KiCad V3.
I will have to look through KiCad footprints compatible with V9.
I assumed that I have to move ref and value to another layers.
Do being it field and not text item allows to switch them on/off during gerber (and other output) generation.
The “standard” ref and value will already be fields. It’s the fab layer text items (if any) which reference them (“${REFERENCE}” or “${VALUE}”) which need to be moved.
You can bulk-edit fields to be visible or not. But you still can’t have them be different just for gerber generation.
If you need fab drawings both with and without references, the best thing to do is put the references on a separate layer and then generate one fab with that layer and one without.
What I will say has nothing to do with KiCad software itself.
I’m not using ref or value at PCB, but only in documentation and I don’t need picture without texts, but I need one picture with references and one with values. Nowadays we could have documentation practically without these pictures (everything is more digital then in past), but we are simply used to something we defined ourselves in previous century.
On a dense PCB the simplest way is to put these texts inside footprints, but Fab layer shape (rectangle) has much less room inside than courtyard rectangle (think of 0402).
Because of this when I first time installed KiCad V4 to make my decisions I decided to have these texts at courtyard (allowing for probably 2x bigger font). Since then I assumed to move them both to another layer pair when it will be available. It is not big difference if I will have to use two separate pairs.