Re: gEDA-user: bugs, warts and feature requests (3)

[Stephan Boettcher <boettcher@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

kai-martin knaak <kmk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

> From my notes:
>
> â pcb feature request: Please put all the gerbers in a dedicated subdir 
> of the working directory by default. The name of the subdir should be 
> configurable.

Any default will seldom be what I'd need, since either the directory
name or the filename base will contain some version number.  I
usualle append "/v01" to the provided default.

To default to a subdirectory instead of a base filename in the cwd saves
typing a "/".  The "." in ".group1", etc should then be removed from the
generated filename extensions.

I.e., 
  default: "LAYOUT_NAME/"                File: "LAYOUT_NAME/group1.gbr"
  default: "LAYOUT_NAME."                File: "LAYOUT_NAME.group1.gbr"
  default: "`date +LAYOUT_NAME.%Y%m%d.`" File: "LAYOUT_NAME/20101223.group1.gbr"

> â pcb feature request: Optionally zip all gerbers and the cnc files to 
> yield a single file that can be sent to the fab. The name of the zip 
> file might contain the current date.

That will miss the README.txt, that I always add to the package, so that
the vendor knows exacly what the layer order is, and that the silk and
paste layers shall be ignored, etc.  

And there should always be a review of the gerbers with gerbv before
submission, so gerbv needs to learn to open .zip files, without barfing
at the manually added README :-)

> â pcb usability: pcb just complains on stdout if gerber output is 
> advised to put the gerbers to a non existing path. Suggestion: pop up a 
> warning dialog.

Or just mkdir -p the directory ?

> â pcb feature request: add a square property to tracks and lines.
>
> â pcb feature request: Currently, text gets lost during "convert buffer 
> to elements". Proposal: Convert text in silk to lines in silk. Convert 
> text in copper to overlapping pads. I guess, it is possible to reuse 
> the already existing render routines to do the conversion. 

Would developer time not better be invested in supporting text (arcs,
planes) on copper and silk layers in an element?

> â gnetlist bug: gsch2pcb produced invalid pcb syntax if footprint names 
> contain a hyphen. The work flow will fail somewhere down the road with 
> unspecific symptoms. This is a nasty, but long standing newbie trap 
> that really should be defused one way or another. 
>
> Please comment.
>
> ---<)kaimartin(>---

-- 
Stephan


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