Edit KiCad auto suggest lists

[DanTrackpaw]

Hi
I wonder if anyone thinks it would be a useful feature to be able to edit the symbols.txt and footprints.txt files from the system settings interface? I find the auto suggest feature beeing of great convenience when creating parts. As I only use my own custom libraries I miss out on this functionality so I propose adding functionality for editing this file. I have tested an implementation and if this is of interest I can elaborate and provide a PR.

[mkne]

I would appreciate that feature. Especially if you migrate designs from another EDA to KiCad you might have a lot of non-default libraries.

[jbtronics]

You should not edit the file directly (as it gets overriden in updates), but instead edit another custom file.
I think it should not be too difficult to merge both together on the javascript side.

[DanTrackpaw]

I would would like to be able to not only add but also remove entries in the suggestion list so I would prefer editing over merge. Could a default/custom switch to select a different custom file be a better approach?

[mkne]

I agree with @DanTrackpaw that it would be more useful to be able to switch between default and custom footprint list. Especially, if you have footprints/symbols with the same name, merging might be a problem and even if the names are just similar, it would be confusing for the user to decide which footprint/symbol is the correct to select.

[DanTrackpaw]

I reimplemented like this:

Is this better?

[jbtronics]

I think that should be okay that way.
I am not sure if it it would maybe be better to have that in the system settings for UX. But that might be a bit difficult as it is not really fitting well into the settings saving procedure and having a complete separate logic branch.
Maybe a link from the settings page to this controller is good enoug.

You can open a PR and i will take a look when i have time.