Hello,
I think the software is quite promising, but some usability adjustments could help further.
For instance, I understand the hover mode is interesting for touch control, but if an item is not selected (such as intending to touch a component in a schematic but instead accidentally touching on the component reference or component value text), the mode exits from Hover mode into Click to select mode. It's very irritating that the mode swaps like this. Personally I would prefer to see a configurable option to disable the existing behaviour and enable a hybrid mode which could optionally just faintly highlight components and wires as the mouse moves over it, and then clicking to select, or holding down to select and drag. In other words, a hybrid mode that doesn't care if the user clicks to select, or holds down and drags. Just to make it more intuitive, it would also be nice that if the mouse is hovered over component text, then the component is still automatically highlighted as if the user was hovering over the component, and the entire component can be moved. The smashed text mode is fine.
Another issue is that it is hard to tidy schematics. Here is an example, where it was desired to move C2. Once it is moved, the right side wire becomes angled. After that, it is impossible to straighten the wire without deleting the top and right side wire and then redrawing them. No move operation resolves it. If I try to move the right wire, it introduces a new wire segment. If I try to move the top wire, it just makes the left side become angled. Moving components tends to make the wires angled in almost all circumstances unless the component is moved in the same direction as the wire, and usually needs two wires to be deleted and re-added.
This is probably a low priority, and difficult to solve in all circumstances maybe. A solution would really improve usability.
Another thing concerns scrollbars. They are absent from the schematic and PCB view, but they would not take up a lot of space. It is worse in the pool manager because the scroll bar is very thin, and hard to click on, because just a millimetre of mouse movement will miss it. Can they be normal scrollbar width, because I don't see the benefit of the thin bar in this view. I know some people will just use a scroll wheel but there could be hundreds of items in the list and it takes a long time.
I don't want you to think I am nit-picking, I am just trying to speed up commonly used tasks and reduce the behaviour from getting in the way of the user enjoying your software.
I tried creating a package, I have not got far yet, but I had this comment regarding pads:
When in hover mode, clicking on the pad won't bring up the pad parameter window on the right. I have to move the pad to bring up the parameter window, or I have to click elsewhere first to go into click select mode. This is quite unintuitive. Clicking on an item should bring up the parameter window always surely. I think this is another example of where a hybrid mode would be better. Another issue is that the parameter window does not allow the pad size to be modified. It can be modified by pressing i and then typing a value and then pressing OK. But there is plenty of space in the right side parameter window, and would provide easy discovery of the pad adjustment, whereas pressing i needs to be learned.
One final thing for now, I looked at the symbol and package files, and there are long strings like "7dac098e-afb4-4074-80d2-d5a5983a45dc". For using code to create symbols and packages, can these be random references, or can be any length names like "pad-00001" where 00001 is a locally unique number in that file? It would be easy to increment a locally unique number. The ability to have the padstack within the same file as the package file would also help here, to save having to generate two files.