Hi John,Did you see my initial post on this? Maybe I got it wrong but I tried to understand the intent as best I could and present my thougths:
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2010 22:30:33 -0800 (PST) From: clif@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: gEDA-user: get-package-attribute sometimes returns "?" - ID: 3114991 To: geda-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx Hi Gang,This is about a patch I submitted a while back because myself and others didn't understand the souce of the "?". Patrick found it though. They are from the spice A.. blocks. The value of some of the unpromoted attributes are "?". Apparently they are place holders to remind someone to add real values in the same way R? is a place holder for a refdes.To fix it in a uniform way I think we need to standardise what we use as a place holder for an attribute. Sould we explicitly put "unknown" or "?"? Unfortunitly gschem won't let you put a null string.The other choice is to not list attributes without useable values, but then you don't have the reminder of which ones to fill in. This gets used like a short version of the add attribute drop down menu, however you have to click on "show inherited attributes" to see them. Though most people don't do that and then wonder where the errors come from. ;-)If neither of those choices sound good then I have an off the wall one. We could allow null value attributes which are always promoted so you would see them, and this would be a poor mans form in which you have the option of providing their values, or even deleting them. Get-package-attribute would return "unknown" for attributes which exist but have null values.Any thoughts? Clif
The only pice of code that currently deals with the "?" is this one:
;; sometimes get-package-attribute returns "?" instead of "unknown". WTF? This should fix that . . .
(if (string-ci=? model-file "?")
(set! model-file "unknown"))
--
We're just trying to move toword a more uniform way of handling it.
Clif
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2010 18:58:20 -0700 From: John Doty <jpd@xxxxxxxxx> Subject: Re: gEDA-user: get-package-attribute sometimes returns "?" - ID: 3114991 On Dec 16, 2010, at 2:50 PM, Peter TB Brett wrote:Should I make a new one that replaces all the "?" in symbols / blocks with "unknown"?That sounds like a good idea, actually.I'm not happy with this. The "?" is in those symbols for a reason. I do not believe the core code should be trying to outsmart the symbol and back-end designer (Stuart in this case). That said, spice-sdb needs some work on reasonable behavior in case of error John Doty Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd. http://www.noqsi.com/ jpd@xxxxxxxxx
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