gEDA-user: Confusion about symbol file and footprint file

[Luke <hazelnusse@xxxxxxxxx>]

I created a symbol for a optical encoder component (AEDR-8300) using
the tragesym tutorial:
http://www.geda.seul.org/wiki/geda:tragesym_tutorial

I was able to get that to work, and I also hacked my way through the
creation of the corresponding footprint (following the newlib
conventions) by following the guidelines presented by Stuart D.
Brorson, et al. in:
http://www.brorson.com/gEDA/land_patterns_20050129.pdf

When I open the .fp file in PCB, it looks correct. When I open the
symbol file in gschem, it also looks correct. Now, when I create a
schematic and place that component and create the circuit diagram,
every thing is fine except when I run gsch2pcb on it.  The problem is
that the footprint doesn't show up in PCB for the component I created.
 There are a few other components in the schematic that came from the
pre-installed symbol library, and I changed their footprint values to
footprints that exist in the /usr/local/share/pcb/pcblib-newlib
subdirectories, and those footprints show up fine.

My questions are:
1)   What is needed to associate a symbol to a footprint when you
drawing the schematic in gschem?  Is it a filename?  If so, where does
that file need to be located?  Is it the Name field in the Element tag
of the footprint file?
2)   I put a gafrc file in my home folder with the following contents:
(component-library "${HOME}/Documents/nsfwork/DataAcquisition/gaf/symbols")

But it isn't run upon startup, and I cannot insert the symbols I put
in the above folder.  If I instead put this file in the same folder
that I have the project file in, it is read upon startup, and I am
able to insert the symbols.  According to the gsch2pcb documentation,
it should read the ~/gafrc file.  Where can I put a user specific
gafrc file so that it will run every time gschem is started, no matter
where I am running gschem from, and what environment variables need to
be set for this?

Thanks,
~Luke


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