footprint naming independent of list position

[oclyke]

So here's a thought that has been on my mind and I just want to record it (in case I forget or die)

Maintaining Buzzard labels alongside an Eagle design is getting pretty streamlined. You can maintain a collection of labels, generate them into a library, and keep that library as part of the design. There's something that would make this even nicer - if the label names did not change when you insert a label somewhere within the library.

If this were possible then one could use "Library->Update All" to "refresh" the labels all across the board.

Currently this does work as long as you don't change the order of labels in your collection. (Because Eagle uses the name with the appended serial number to identify the part within the library)

It may be possible to use some sort of hash on the text of the label to generate a unique name that can persist. Of course, this is not without challenges:

• how to handle labels with the same text? (idea: hash the label text as well as all other label-level options, then the 0.08 and 0.04 sized versions of the same text will get their own names)

Out of initial ideas, might come back to this later.

[NPoole]

I like the idea of hashing the settings. I'll start poking at it.