[[ Notice, the original subject related to several bugs/misfeatures in v5.1 — for the Align feature change, see third bullet point below ]]
I’m not sure why or how all of these happened… In any case, some additional things that I’ve noticed are not working well in 5.1: (needless to say — in all cases, if I’m misunderstanding something, please point me in the right direction)
Some pull-down lists are incorrectly sized. For example, in the footprint editor, the text item properties, the layer selection is not properly sized:
Notice that this is not related to the Font or screen scaling on Ubuntu / Unity — for this, even if I set the Scale Factor to 1, and I uncheck the “Large Fonts” under the “Universal Access” settings, the Layer pull-down still shows broken like in the screenshot.
Also related to the above screenshot — the “Tab Order” of the controls is wrong: From “Width”, if you click TAB, it doesn’t go to “Height” (as it did in 5.0, and IMO as it should). Instead, it goes to the Checkbox “Italic”.
The Align/Distribute tools in pcbnew… well, 5.1 seems to have introduced some new functionality that I think is great, but it is incorrectly (poorly) implemented. For example, if I do “Align to Right” on a group of selected footprints, the only reasonable interpretation is: align the right of all selected footprints to the right-most of the selected footprints. That’s what 5.0 did (I just checked on a 5.0.2 installation). What 5.1 does is: “Align the right of all selected footprints to the right of this footprint” (where “this footprint” is the footprint on which one right-clicked to activate the Align opo-up menu).
This is an awesome feature, IMO — something that was high in my wish-list when using 5.0; however, if what the operation does is align the right of all selected footprints to this one, then the menu item should say Align the right of selected footprints to this one, and not “Align to Right”, which is not what the command does. (I’m not insisting on the actual phrasing as I’m writing it here — whichever proper / more concise way to say that the right-side of all selected footprints will be aligned to the right-side of “this” footprint).
Also related to the Align/Distribute menu: will you please eliminate the ambiguity (at the very least, the confusing nature) of the center vs. middle? I just checked with a colleague of mine who is native English speaker, and they insist that middle and center are, at least in practical terms, exact synonyms. One simple strategy that would help could be to list the menu items in an order that helps: Top, Middle, Bottom, Left, Center, Right. That makes it reasonably clear (to avoid saying “obvious”) that Middle, being between Top and Bottom, is the vertical alignment, and Center, being between left and right, is the horizontal alignment. Another solution would be to just include the horizontal or vertical qualifier to make it unambiguous.
One detail that is really minor (but I think the fix is also a minor effort) — in the footprint editor, the “import” menu (under File) says “Import footprint from KiCAD file”, when it actually lets you import several types, including gEDA footprints.
Are you sure this is the only reasonable interpretation?
All graphics tools i ever used had the first or last selected as the reference point (by default. But most also have settings to select this per action. What i never encountered is a “use the rightmost”)
Huh — I’m pretty sure that’s not accurate; that is, I’m pretty sure you have used KiCAD 5.0
LibreOffice Draw also has the same behaviour as KiCAD 5.0
I agree with your claim if there was a visual indication of a “main” or “leader” item among the selected ones. I seem to recall that in Visual Basic (I’m talking the “vintage” VB6 or VB5), it was the last control that you clicked; but as you clicked it, it would get the “bold/outlined” look that suggested that that one was the “lead” or “reference” one for the alignment.
What happens if you select by drawing an area with the mouse? (as opposed to Ctrl-click on multiple footprints?)
Again: I do think that it makes sense (and I love the feature!) that the footprint where you right-click to activate the Alignment menu, that one should be the “reference” footprint for the alignment; but the menu text should say so!
BTW, in LibreOffice Draw, they do list the alignment options precisely in the order that helps disambiguate the horizontal vs. vertical centering; in fact, LibreOffice uses center for both (well, weirdly enough, it lists: Left, Centered, Right, Top, Center, Bottom — yes, that was not a typo when writing this post: centered in one case, center in the other one)
As i indicated above: This might be another one of these “no clear correct answer” cases. As a inkscape user i like the control the “last one selected” stuff gives me. You might like it more in another way. So how about making this an option? (Maybe make the align tool a separate dialog instead of a part of the context menu. This would allow for adding a selector of how it should behave. Could then also allow for nice buttons that communicate what will happen -> clearer than text.)
And yes i was surprised that you where right with libre office here.
I certainly like the idea of having the choice — but I think I prefer the “quickness” of doing it via context menu, just two clicks. Maybe one last menu entry to invoke the “Advanced Align Dialog” or something like that?
Between the way 5.0 did it and the way 5.1 does it now (putting aside the problem of the menu not saying exactly what it does), I prefer the way 5.1 does it now, for a simple reason: you can implement the maneuver that 5.0 did with the 5.1 tool — but not the other way around (the 5.0 way was annoyingly limited, I thought)
Hey!!! Is it that surprising that I may be right on something? (I’m just kidding — I know what you meant)
I have even not checked what are you speaking about, but if I understand well the mouse pointer indicates the “leader” item. I have yet no practical experience in using KiCad, but I suppose for many functions in KiCad the coursor position is the parameter to be used by function and I accept in local menu the “Properties (E)” instead of “Properties of footprint under coursor (E)”. Why not accept such behaviour for Aligning?
