>From the bzr log message is appears that fields not in the template list will be deleted on exit from the component edit dialog. Or read differently Fields with a null value and not listed in the template list will be deleted (which seems to be the behavior when I play with it...)
I store quite a bit of component meta-data here in the fields which either gets dumped to the BOM for automatic purchase order generation, or get's manipulated via python scripts accessing the raw eeschema files. Presently the file format uniquely identifies each field with an id integer. So empty values for field name and field value are technically not a problem. At least this was my assumption and it seems a reasonable conclusion for anyone writing scripts against the .sch file. I happen to use the field name as a key for some things and so they are unique, and non-null in my case. However there are lots of good reasons to stick a null in the field value and automatically stripping fields with a null value string would be undesired. I just noticed that if one of my field names is in the template it get's shuffled in the order. Also template fields get inserted before existing fields, and this order is being propogated to the field ID in the file... This will break things external to eeschema. I don't mind if they get displayed in a different order on screen but changing the ID in the file is very bad so the source of that should be tracked down and fixed. Regarding the fields template: In my opinion this should only be used inside the library component editor. Once a component is in the library; the component is *itself* a template for adding information to the schematic. I don't think we want to be 'automatically' modifing the components, making assumptions about the library creators intentions. I hope this is useful. -hauptmech _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers Post to : kicad-developers@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp