Re: gEDA-user: PCB suggestion

[sdb@xxxxxxxxxx (Stuart Brorson)]

Hi John --

> Almost all the replies on this topic suggest or imply the need to change
> the underlying board layer data structure.  I'm very new to PCB and gEDA
> but a fundamental stated requirement is an open ASCII database.  Let me
> make a suggestion for future PCB architects.  Consider adopting the
> Mentor Graphics (MGC) Board Station ASCII database.  This has become a
> defacto standard for many translators between high end pcb tools.  In
> fact one company, Intercept, sells a pcb tool that reads and writes the
> MGC ASCII data files.  Surely the MGC data structure would meet all the
> needs of PCB.  Yes, the data structure started out as proprietary but it
> may not be so currently.  A search on "board station ascii database"
> will provide many links.  Just think many more users of PCB there could
> be if the layout tool they use at home could be compatible with the one
> at work.

This is a very interesting idea!  Here are my two thoughts about this:

1.  I did a quick Google search on "board station ascii database", but
didn't find any info documenting the file format itself.  Are you
aware of any resource which defines the Board Station file format
completely enough so that it might be used to design an updated tool?
Alternately, a bunch of examples (layout + ASCII file) might be
useful. 

2.  I think we will use PCB for a long time coming yet.  You might
experience difficulty selling your idea to the F/OSS  Fundis, who
don't like anything commercial.  Moreover, although there is a lot of
talk about new features for PCB, I suspect that there is not that much
development activity in this direction.  Finally, one of PCB's nice 
features is that the file format is (sort of) well documented, and is
easy to process & script (as you know).   (As for documentation, Steve
Meier has a nice doc describing it, and he and I have worked up a next
rev which is currently waiting for the PCB developers to look at and
check.) 

Since a new F/OSS PCB layout package is probably a long way off, we
are left with PCB for the forseeable future.  Perhaps an easy project
is to create a file translator which takes the Board Station database
& converts it to PCB format.  This would be a first step, and would
probably be pretty easy.

Stuart