Re: gEDA-user: Heavy Symbols and such

[Peter Clifton <pcjc2@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, 2007-12-08 at 07:37 +0000, Peter TB Brett wrote:

> > > I'd be happy to see an obvious extension of this concept: An attribute
> > > that lists a number of preselected footprints for this symbol. E.g. the
> > > list for a resistor could be "0805, 0402, RES_RM10, VISHAY_S101. The
> > > attribute editor would convert this list into a chooser widget.
> >
> > I like that idea.  gschem's attribute dialog could use that to be
> > smarter -- it could give you a drop-down combo box for pre-defined
> > choices, and of course let you type in something different as well.
> > That would probably be useful for many attributes with a few sensible
> > defaults.
> 
> I believe that Peter C was working on this but there were implementation 
> difficulties.

I did some work on UI stuff, but the main blocker was not being able to
think of a good way to get the "knowledge" into the system. I don't much
like defining file-formats / API, and I couldn't see a neat way to
associate possible choices with different attributes.

Peter B did help me write some scheme functions which identified a
"preferred" resistor value, and this was going to be a test example for
suggestion / validation.

It wasn't obvious to me how / where you should configure gschem /
libgeda to know that you want attributes attached to something with
"device=resistor" to be validated against the E24 set, or the E12 set
etc..

Another (hack) I tried, was footprint selection. I patched PCB to allow
running PCB without bringing up its main GUI, but just the library
window (via a command line option). The idea was that "pcb
--choose-component" (or whatever) would open up a library chooser, and
print names of footprints on stdout / stderr, until the user clicks
"close". The last printed footprint would be fed into gschem.

This helps _list_ footprints available to PCB.. what it doesn't do so
well was help you choose them. (PCB needs a graphical footprint preview
as part of the library window before that will work well).

> There appears to be a tracker item for it:
> 
>   [ 1723653 ] Intelligent helper interface for attributes

I can't recall why it has priority 9.. but never mind.

Best wishes,

-- 
Peter Clifton

Electrical Engineering Division,
Engineering Department,
University of Cambridge,
9, JJ Thomson Avenue,
Cambridge
CB3 0FA

Tel: +44 (0)7729 980173 - (No signal in the lab!)



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