Using fields instead of text for tab annotation footprint data?

[mairas]

Hi,

I use Kikit's tab annotation footprints a lot and I think they're great. There are some issues, though. If you lock the footprint and then unlock it, the text remains locked. Also, once you adjust the tab width, you get DRC warnings because the PCB editor thinks you've modified the footprint itself.

My idea is that maybe the width could be stored in the value field instead? I haven't looked at the implementation, but I'm assuming that if the footprint had a unique name, you could still find and process the footprints and the width settings in the code.

[mairas]

Now that I think of it; is the locking issue more of a bug in KiCAD? I'm on 8.0.5 at the moment.