The FAQ pages aren’t simply a bunch of ‘factoids’ like in many other software. It seems to be the ‘goto’ area where I’ll find ‘How to Get All the Most Useful Things Done’, IMHO, the very most important section of the docs.
How about putting links to the FAQ main page in the main documentation page and all its second-level subsections. I think this would save many first users much wasted time.
This forums FAQ is indeed quite different and far more extensive then most other FAQ’s, but it’s still no official documentation. I’ve written a few FAQ articles myself, and Rene Poschl has written quite a lot of them during the time of KiCad V5.
FAQ articles can be started and modified by a lot of forum users, and are therefore easier accessible then the official documentation (which requires interaction with GIT, asciidoc and such).
There already is a mention of the FAQ in:
And I think the FAQ index also has a sticky link on top of this forum, but I’ve mostly disabled stickies (Don’t need to be reminded each day).
For the official documentation, there is also the issue of keeping it updated with each KiCad versions. Having links to separate FAQ items that may or may not get updated is a bit of a maintenance nightmare. But I do agree that writing a few lines into for example the “Getting started in KiCad” tutorial of the existence and extent of the FAQ may be useful.
A prominent link to just this one page is all I’m suggesting, not software version or topic specific links:
https://forum.kicad.info/
One thing to hear in mind is that the official documentation is also published as a standalone document that can be read without an Internet connection. It would not be appropriate for this document to assume one.
The official documentation is also translated into various languages. AFAIK most if not all of the FAQs here are in English.
PDF files can contain hotlinks to web pages. I create my own documents that way to link to the original source.
I also assume the origins of Kicad are in the USA since all the default units are in inches (Imperial units in Canada?).
There’s no preferred unit system, it can be changed to suit the parts. In fact KiCad originated at CERN.
The point is FAQs are unofficial documents written by volunteers who may give up on a whim while the official documentation is written by team members, maintained, and more stringently QAed. You can file an issue for a documentation error but if a FAQ is out of date (and some are long in the tooth) all you can do is hope the author will update it eventually. Meanwhile any deep links to them remain and can mislead.
Kicad originated in France. See: https://www.kicad.org/about/kicad/.
Text in the Schematic and Symbol Editors seems to be standardized in Imperial but text in the PCB and Footprint editors is in Metric, so it’s hard to see what is the default.