Hopefully they will do some PR and make videos showing off the new work and roll it out to the distros in a
timely manner. They when they come back for the next new set of features they will see an even larger
response.
This also plays well when you are hitting up corporate sponsors to have a proven track record.
John Eaton
Well, these guys aren’t rocket scientists but they probably had a good reason for choosing that goal.
Really amazing how fast this was funded and glad to be a part of it even if it was just a small part.
I guess that’s just what you get when you write genuinely useful software. I hope some of the UX issues get smoothed out a bit in 5.1 … its pretty good now but a there are pros/cons vs 4.x rather than just all pros.
That would take away time from development. Is it really what you want to happen?
Not sure what you mean. Even v4 will not work with pyhton support under the same operating systems where v5 has no python support. I can not think of anything else that could have gotten better as everything is still there as it was. (in the legacy canvas if you really want to use that)
I really hope people won’t think that because this arbitrary limit was reached the version 6 is really coming “very soon”. I agree with Sprig (in the other thread) that the wording is a bit unclear and for uninitiated user who hasn’t followed the development it may give the false impression of 600 man hours for actually completing the v6 development. As far as hard realities go, I agree with bobc (also in the other thread). Wayne himself said in the mailing list that he expects the road to v6 to be more bumpy than the road from v4 to v5 was. To release v6 “very soon” they would need much more working hours. In the mailing list Orson said they try to outsource as much as possible. As much as that can be done, with enough money v6 could actually be “very soon”. Every donation gets us nearer, of course, and is needed. There are great enhancements planned for v7, too. There’s no end to good ideas. Every donation helps them to make those wishlist items reality even after v6.
Edit: Orson mentioned outsourcing in another thread here, not in the dev mailing list: When will Version 6 be Released?
Edit 2: I also didn’t remember correctly what Wayne said. Here it is: https://lists.launchpad.net/kicad-developers/msg36569.html
Is there some official road map to v7?
Yes, I am tired off seeing great designs losing out to lesser works simply because of better marketing.
Most engineers could do a better job in marketing themselves and their works. It will help your career.
John Eaton
I didn’t mention anything about python so not sure why you mention that?
The main issues I have with 5.0 are UX and binding/functionality issues… which others have expressed as well.
The Legacy interface is worth ignoring at this point IMO and that’s a good thing, going back to it would be self defeating. In the accelerated canvas Drag doesn’t work , and it isn’t optimized for the common case of usage, as an example the clarify selection dialog is too dumb… if I am in text editing mode I obviously don’t want to move footprints or select pads so why did it even prompt me for that and instead just move the text. If I am in Route Tracks mode, footprints and tracks should be selectable/movable etc… but text and pads ignored with pads only accessed via right click as it is an uncommon operation.
Layer blending doesn’t really work effectively, and its only really usable with opacity at 100% layers should only be blended where they intersect… instead what we have is layers are transparent against the backdrop which is not good at all if you make a layer transparent enough to seen another layer through it’s too dim.
All of this stuff seems pretty minor but as annoying as some of these things are I’m surprised they made it through.
Sometimes not all of the available right click popup options make sense, or something you’d want at the top level is buried. eg duplicating a layer doesn’t make a lot of sense, duplicating a layer onto another layer is buried though. Perhaps keep both but duplicate and duplicate to layer should be grouped together under the top level. It’s just little things like that that may not even be cons vs 4.x but… are things that for some reason or other are more noticeable to me under the accelerated canvas.
Would love to fix annoyances but these need well-written bug reports (version info, problem description, ideally images and a repeatable example). These made it through because they don’t annoy everyone or at least not enough to report them.
Missing drag (seems to be stuck on not wanting to do a simple implementation vs full interactive track rerouting), IMO simple is better than nothing because POLA:
Transparency issue (I just reported it):
Improvments to the UX Clarificaition dialog/Modes/Keybindings
Forgive my ignorance, but what does POLA stand for?
Principle of least astonishment! I press D nothing happens… Whaaaaaaaaat??? Honestly I was debating writing it out since the acronym if it exists is probably different in french etc…
I assume you are in eeschema as d works perfectly fine in pcb_new (interactive drag)
In eeschema it seems the default shortcut for drag changed to g (grab)
you can change that in eeschema -> preferences -> general options -> controls (similarly in pcb_new and even in the main window. But in the later it is directly under preferences -> hotkeys -> edit hotkeys)
Nope, G does nothing but highlight the selection in pcb_new… works in Legacy though. And according to the bug I linked it’s a known issue.
You must be thinking drag track… yeah that still works. Sorry for not being clear the linked bug is specific to that though.
I did not know d should have an additional function. (never used legacy. That might also be why i can not think of anything that is worse in v5 than v4.)
It is G in Legacy pcb_new not sure if that changed or not but I just checked… D vs G isn’t a big deal ask long as it’s there. Regardless D and G do nothing in pcb_new with GAL with respect to a footprint.
D is drag track/keep slope. G is grab which is what I was wanting.
D over a footprint seems to do something odd not sure what I end up with a highlighted net… and it’s just stuck that way. Not sure what that is, I’ve seen it before but can’t reproduce easily.
See https://lists.launchpad.net/kicad-developers/msg34703.html, but I suspect it’s not necessarily so up-to-date anymore.
The web page has been updated:
-.-.-.-.- DISCLAIMER -.-.-.-.-
The campaign will stay active for the established 2-month period,
This makes more sense. There will be at least 600 hours of development, and this should significantly shorten the time to release V6; not promising that it will actually be completed by then.
Yet, I do remain curious what Cern will decide to publish once the counter on the web page does hit the magic 600 number.
The more money the better, there are plenty of boring but useful things needed like software testing.