Re: gEDA-user: Creating bill of materials?

[John Doty <jpd@xxxxxxxxx>]

   On Aug 18, 2011, at 4:05 PM, John Hudak wrote:

     So, this causes me to ask the question: Why hasen't gattrib been

      removed from:[3]http://geda.seul.org/wiki/geda:gaf ???? as well as
     any

      other instances?

   Perhaps because some of us use it.

      While the concept is good, the implementation is worthless, and

      apparently has been 'around' with the same sort of problems since

      2006.

   It's useful for "touch up" of a few attributes, but not for the broad
   changes you want.  The spreadsheet approach really doesn't scale well
   anyway. If you have 300 bypass capacitors in a project, it's much more
   efficient to have a "heavy" project-specific bypass capacitor symbol
   with all of the necessary attributes inside it. Then, to change your
   bypass capacitor selection, you need only edit that one symbol rather
   than 300 instances.
   Unfortunately, gattrib is an orphan: its developer is no longer active
   on the gEDA project. So, although it remains useful within its limits,
   nobody is fixing its bugs. Do you wish to volunteer?

     As a person who is trying to give the gEDA approach a try,

      frustrations mount daily in trying to make progress.

   There is no gEDA approach. There are many gEDA approaches. gEDA is a
   toolkit, not an integrated tool. If you expect it to lead you down some
   specific usage pathway you will be disappointed. Part of the game is
   adapting it to the flow your job needs. Its power is that you *can*
   adapt it to *your* needs: you aren't stuck with an approach
   that doesn't fit those needs.

      This brings up another issue that I am curious about....the one of

      component symbol libraries.

      My expectation (hope, guess?) was with an effort that is open
     source,

      users would contribute their symbols to the library,

   User-contributed symbols are available at gedasymbols.org.

     and the symbol

      library would be huge.  I didn't find that reality.  I assumed this

      because users would 'giveback' to the community.  Clearly some have

      done this. I plan on doing this (if I continue down this path).  So
     why

      hasen't the component mfgs been inclined to develop and contribute

      symbols?  Why hasen't the users contributed more?

   I think it's partly because symbols are often specialized to a
   particular project or approach.

      Perhaps there are

      not too many users.  Perhaps it is a case of: The tools have been
     built

      but the users are not comming.    Anyway, just curious....

   Well, if you go to my area at gedasymbols.org, you'll find symbols for
   VLSI design and symbolic circuit analysis. Those won't work for pcb.
   But they're useful for their intended purposes.
   John Doty              Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd.
   http://www.noqsi.com/
   jpd@xxxxxxxxx


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