Re: gEDA-user: gEDA attributes -- why not in this simple way

[John Doty <jpd@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Apr 9, 2009, at 2:25 PM, Miles Gazic wrote:

> On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 9:40 AM, John Doty <jpd@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Where is the problem by this simple approach?
>>>
>>
>> Cognitive dissonance in the minds of users and developers, whose
>> minds actually work hierarchically, but who expect, based on
>> traditional practices, that component management is flat.
>>
> I guess I'm in the minority camp.  Stefan's description made immediate
> sense to me, but I simply cannot understand the way gschem handles
> this right now, it seems like a convoluted selfcontradictory
> mish-mash.  Can anyone point me to a doc that explains the
> 'heirarchical' point of view?

There really isn't any, because gEDA only partially supports  
hierarchical description of components (hierarchical schematics are a  
different issue, much better handled), and some of the core  
developers seem to believe that flatter is better (grumble).

>   I think if I could get a conception of
> why it works the way it does, I'd probably be able to adapt myself to
> that kind of workflow.

It works the way it does because the attribute system started as a  
blind, simple mechanism. But its blindness confused new users, so  
gschem became aware of various distinctions among attributes, and  
that awareness was driven by a specific scenario: the new user doing  
a one page one-shot project.

The workflow that works for me:

1. Find a base symbol.

2. Copy that file to the project symbol directory.

3. Add invisible default attributes.

4. Insert symbol into schematic.

5. Attach attributes overriding the defaults as needed.

The key difference, I think, is that you want your defaults visible,  
and that (strangely) only works for certain attributes. I figure  
default attribute text to be schematic clutter: if I want to find out  
what it is, I can look at the BOM. So my approach works, somewhat by  
accident.

>
> Thanks,
> Miles
>
>
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John Doty              Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd.
http://www.noqsi.com/
jpd@xxxxxxxxx




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