"Select All" missing from Edit menu (lp:#1843129)

Original report created by blackketter (ppt-dean)

KiCad 5.1.2-1, macOS

"Select All" (and its key shortcut, command-a) is missing from KiCad.

It's a standard item in the Edit menu on (almost) all macOS applications,
like Cut, Copy, Paste and Delete.  It's particularly useful when editing a
text field, like a label.

Original tags: ui

changed milestone to %6.0.0-rc1

changed weight to 6

added prioritywishlist statusconfirmed ui labels

Michael Kavanagh (michaelkavanagh) wrote:

Please copy the full version information from About KiCad -> Copy Version
Info.

blackketter (ppt-dean) wrote:

Application: kicad
Version: (5.1.2-1)-1, release build
Libraries:
    wxWidgets 3.0.4
    libcurl/7.54.0 LibreSSL/2.6.5 zlib/1.2.11 nghttp2/1.24.1
Platform: Mac OS X (Darwin 18.7.0 x86_64), 64 bit, Little endian, wxMac
Build Info:
    wxWidgets: 3.0.4 (UTF-8,STL containers,compatible with 2.8)
    Boost: 1.69.0
    OpenCASCADE Community Edition: 6.9.1
    Curl: 7.54.0
    Compiler: Clang 9.0.0 with C++ ABI 1002

Build settings:
    USE_WX_GRAPHICS_CONTEXT=ON
    USE_WX_OVERLAY=ON
    KICAD_SCRIPTING=ON
    KICAD_SCRIPTING_MODULES=ON
    KICAD_SCRIPTING_PYTHON3=OFF
    KICAD_SCRIPTING_WXPYTHON=ON
    KICAD_SCRIPTING_WXPYTHON_PHOENIX=OFF
    KICAD_SCRIPTING_ACTION_MENU=ON
    BUILD_GITHUB_PLUGIN=ON
    KICAD_USE_OCE=ON
    KICAD_USE_OCC=OFF
    KICAD_SPICE=ON

eelik (eelik) wrote:

Context menus over texts are different on different platforms, but I
wouldn't have guessed that such an item would be missing. On Windows it
seems to work. See the attached screenshot. Ctrl+a works too.

Application: Eeschema
Version: (5.99.0-51-g4c9e4c947), release build
Libraries:
    wxWidgets 3.0.4
    libcurl/7.61.1 OpenSSL/1.1.1 (WinSSL) zlib/1.2.11 brotli/1.0.6
libidn2/2.0.5 libpsl/0.21.0 (+libidn2/2.1.1) nghttp2/1.34.0
Platform: Windows 8 (build 9200), 64-bit edition, 64 bit, Little endian,
wxMSW
Build Info:
    wxWidgets: 3.0.4 (wchar_t,wx containers,compatible with 2.8)
    Boost: 1.68.0
    OpenCASCADE Community Edition: 6.9.1
    Curl: 7.61.1
    Compiler: GCC 8.2.0 with C++ ABI 1013

Build settings:
    KICAD_SCRIPTING=ON
    KICAD_SCRIPTING_MODULES=ON
    KICAD_SCRIPTING_PYTHON3=OFF
    KICAD_SCRIPTING_WXPYTHON=ON
    KICAD_SCRIPTING_WXPYTHON_PHOENIX=OFF
    KICAD_SCRIPTING_ACTION_MENU=ON
    BUILD_GITHUB_PLUGIN=ON
    KICAD_USE_OCE=ON
    KICAD_USE_OCC=OFF
    KICAD_SPICE=ON

Attachments:

• 

blackketter (ppt-dean) wrote:

To be clear, I was reporting Select All missing from the Edit menu on the
menubar, but it's also missing from contextual menu on the Mac.

Attachments:

• 

Ian McInerney (imcinerney) wrote:

The edit menu on the menubar contains the items for working on the PCB in
general. A "select all" placed into that menu would select all items on the
board rather than the text in the field.

As for it not being in the right-click menu, I believe that is being
handled by OSX rather than us. That menu is generated by OSX for the field,
and we have no control over what is in it. It is further complicated by the
fact it is actually a combobox rather than a simple text control.

It looks like the keyboard shortcut for select all will be included in the
3.1 branch of wxWidgets, so we will hopefully get it in v6.

blackketter (ppt-dean) wrote:

Thanks, Ian, but there's a little confusion here. What you describe isn't
how the Edit menu works in macOS.  The Cut/Copy/Paste/Delete/Select All
menu items affect the item that currently has focus (i.e. where the cursor
is).

For the example I gave, if you select text in a dialog box (in this case
the text in Label Properties) you can use the Edit menu (or key
equivalents) to Cut, Copy and Paste that text correctly now.

What's missing from the Edit menu is Select All (and command-A).
Additionally, the Delete item from the Edit menu should also work on this
text.  It's currently disabled.

I was wrong to complain about Select All missing from the context menu.  It
generally doesn't appear there in standard Mac apps.

In any case, I'm glad to hear that the keyboard shortcut for Select All
will come for free in V6.  Hopefully the whole Edit menu also behave like a
traditional Mac application.

I appreciate your attention to this stuff.  I'm a long time Mac user
(1984!) but new KiCad user and am so glad for it to be available on the
Mac.  These little details really help usability and make KiCad more
welcoming to people like me.  Thanks!

mentioned in issue #4048 (closed)

marked #4048 (closed) as a duplicate of this issue

marked this issue as related to #4048 (closed)

So, I am not sure about this one. My experiments show that when using a text field in KiCad on OSX our edit menu doesn't get any text modification entries (such as copy/paste, etc.), it is only the grayed out entries from our frames. wxWidgets has added the select all shortcut to the keyboard, and the context menu being generated is actually the OS context menu (wx doesn't create it, OSX does).

I am actually not sure if there is anything for us to really do here.

added wxwidgets label

Regardless, I think a "Select All" for the schematic/board items should be added.

That should be doable. It is probably going to be good to implement the ability to select specific types of items as well (e.g. for pcbnew select all modules/text/traces/vias/etc. on specific layers/all layers, for eeschema just select specific items).

@craftyjon @orsonmmz is this basically the selection filtering that is on the roadmap?

Yes, although the way I was thinking about it, it would not show up on the edit menu.

The selection filter would be a stateful thing, so while a filter is active, all selection operations would be passed through the filter.

For example, if the filter is set to tracks + vias, but everything else turned off, then a drag-select around the entire board would only select tracks + vias. I think it seems fine to add a Select All to the Edit menu, and in this case, Select All would also only select tracks + vias if the filter is set that way.

Currently I'm thinking the UI for this will live on the new right panel (i.e. upgraded Layers Widget) but have to discuss with Orson

Sounds reasonable. I think that can be accomplished by making the selection tool smarter - so it will keep track of the current selection filter and then select operations would naturally pass through the filter as they use the selection tool.

Yea, I think putting the UI on a panel to the right would be good. Having it be a specific dialog will probably interrupt workflows.

There is also another kind of filtered selection, which is the "advanced find" dialog

Basically if you have a find dialog where you can match on parameters, object type would be one parameter that can be matched. This dialog is also referred to as "find similar objects" in some conversations, because that's what a similar dialog is called in Altium

Then, you have in that dialog the action to take on the find results, which could include selecting, deselecting, highlighting, zoom to fit, etc.

This is a "one shot" action so I think it would be done separately from the selection filter logic in the selection tool, and depends more heavily on Orson's property system. I think maybe he is working on a prototype of this?

changed milestone to %6.0 Feature Freeze

Without an assignee it's probably not happening for 6.0....

Too bad… 🥺

removed milestone %6.0 Feature Freeze

assigned to @sethhillbrand

changed milestone to %6.0.0-rc1

added prioritylow label and removed prioritywishlist label

I'm going to implement the simple version for v6. This is a pretty glaring missing point now that we are doing selection-based editing

mentioned in issue #5145 (closed)

mentioned in merge request !350 (closed)

closed with commit 7565a083

closed with commit 1e315bc3