Re: gEDA-user: Eagle to gEDA conversion path??

[al davis <ad252@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tuesday 23 February 2010, Dave N6NZ wrote:
> Really?  Is there a use for gEDA->Eagle?

Lots of reasons.

Whether you like it or not, it is popular.  Some people will 
insist on it.

If gEDA is ever to replace Eagle, there needs to be a migration 
path both ways.

If Free/open-source is ever to make it to the mainstream, the 
various free packages need to share.  That includes Kicad.  
Regarding Kicad and gEDA, think of it like vi and emacs.  It 
must be possible to use them interchangeably, but you will never 
convince a fan of one to use the other, and it will harm both if 
you try.
> 
> I never would have cared about Eagle, except that the RepRap
>  PCB's are done with Eagle.  Now, why someone would do open
>  source hardware with closed source tools is a mystery to
>  me... but anyway.... so far in a total of 30 minutes of
>  Eagle usage I've discovered: 1) the crippleware version only
>  allows a single schematic sheet, leading people to create
>  unreadable glop, and 2) printing is truly bizarre.  I can't
>  imagine someone going from gEDA to the free/crippled version
>  of Eagle. 


>  And as to going to the commercial version, OK I
>  can see some customer requiring that, but isn't that Eagle's
>  problem? 

No.  They are on top.  Remember the golden rule:  He who has the 
gold makes the rules.  They have no business reason to 
cooperate.

>  After all, nobody is hiding gEDA's file formats.

True, but they are not really designed for general exchange.  
Rather, they are more like a dump of the internal 
representation.  There is no possibility that anyone outside 
would adopt such a tool-specific format.

For interchange, it is necessary to abstract the content to 
something that is equally meaningful in all contexts.  Don't 
forget .. there is layout too, and lots of other tools and ways 
to use it.  The only representation that is equally meaningful 
in all contexts is a circuit, a netlist.  Then augment it with 
the extra information needed to render it as a schematic, and as 
a layout.





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