Finally, in KiCad 5 Eeschema context menu, the last function is “Close”. I never understood the purpose of this function, since to close the context menu you simply click outside the menu. In KiCad 6, the “Close” function is removed.
This interesting detail actually shows the big difference in the editing model or paradigm between v5 and 6, and was one of the major points in v6 development. I think many people have learned to use v5 eeschema editor, have noticed it’s somehow “weird” or different from other apps but couldn’t tell exactly why. Some people have expressed strong disliking.
It’s because in v5 you can’t actually select anything in the normal meaning of the word “select” in software world. You always act instantly on an item or a group of items.
I hope the next video demonstrates it:
Clicking on an item shows some information about it in the message bar below which may fool you to think that you have selected it. So does the Clarify Selection menu. But what happens after you have clarified the left mouse button click? You can’t open the right button menu for that item which you just “selected”. Why?
Because you didn’t select it. You just acted upon it. You told KiCad to show information about it in the message bar. It’s not kept selected, and when you want to do something else with it you have to clarify again because all clicks do some action immediately.
Doing a drag “selection” works similarly: once dragging is done, the items are acted upon immediately. If you move the mouse they move along. Now it’s possible to use the context menu on those selected items. This is the only situation where they can be said to stay in selected state, and even then they are in the midst of a “move” operation.
Now you can also see why there are two ways to dismiss the context menu. The other discards the selection. The other one keeps it for further actions (moving etc.) or rather goes back to the move operation which was interrupted by the context menu.
This was good in 90’s, but since then every other program evolved and “select first, then choose the action” became the normal paradigm. Even pcbnew has used that normal editing system, so KiCad has been internally inconsistent.
In eeschema v6 the editing paradigm has been changed from the old one to the universally used normal one.
Now it’s easy to understand why this is the most important change in eeschema besides the file format change. Many small new features depend on this fundamental change.
so I don’t know how to feel about it