Re: gEDA-user: New PCB Library window

[Peter Clifton <pcjc2@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 2008-01-03 at 19:35 -0800, Ben Jackson wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 04, 2008 at 02:52:15AM +0000, Peter Clifton wrote:
> > 
> > The library window gets a filter for finding footprints (search is by
> > the name listed in the window), and a preview.
> 
> What about something more like the windows explorer view?  View
> 'details' and see columns like name, size, pin count, or view 'thumbnails'
> and see lots of pics...

The problem here, is that PCB's library data-structures aren't populated
with this data. I guess you could load footprints in turn, and retrieve
this information, but this requires a reasonable amount of change in the
way footprint lists are built.

In addition, "thumbnails" might be tricky. The pinout preview is a
reasonable amount hackey in its self... it hijacks the main PCB drawing
state, replaces the target window with its own, and then draws an
element. (It copies the main PCB drawing state back afterwards).

> It would be neat if you could invoke this chooser directly from gschem
> when you need to assign a footprint, too.

I had a proof of concept hack to do that too ;)

It adds a "--library" command line option to PCB, and causes only the
library window to be displayed. Any clicked footprint has its name
printed to stdout / stderr (I can't recall which).

Unfortunately, this isn't a superb IPC mechanism, especially as PCB has
other printf output via stdout / stderr.

I just re-tested the patch (with a bit of manual tweaking), and it still
just about works with the new component library. The preview doesn't
display (some GDK_GC not setup, probably as the main layout window
hasn't been initialised), but I doubt this would be too hard to fix.

-- 
Peter Clifton

Electrical Engineering Division,
Engineering Department,
University of Cambridge,
9, JJ Thomson Avenue,
Cambridge
CB3 0FA

Tel: +44 (0)7729 980173 - (No signal in the lab!)



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