Re: gEDA-user: [RFC 5/6] Use of X server clipboard

[DJ Delorie <dj@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> > A program should do one thing well.  Capturing circuit information
> > (regardless of what that is) and providing that to a layout system
> > (regardless of what *that* is) is that one thing here.
> 
> As stated by you, that's two things.

Sigh.  I'll try to word it as one thing.  "Be a design capture
front-end for layout systems".  Please don't get all anal-retentive on
me.

> Yes, let's not set our scope too narrow. Specializing on the gEDA- 
> pcb flow is exactly the sort of narrow scope I wish to avoid.

That's not what I meant, and you know it.  I get enough of that crap
at work, I don't need it here too.

gschem should specialize at being a way to get circuit designs from
the user's brain to a layout system.  I don't care which layout system
it is, but once the user has chosen one, gschem should integrate with
it fairly well.  If the user copies from gschem and pastes in pcb, it
should do the right thing for feeding information into pcb.  I don't
care if it's the gschem executable, some scheme script, a callout to
gnetlist, or email to your mother's neighbors that makes it happen.  I
just want it to happen, and I want it to appear seemless and obvious
to the user.

If gschem has to use a bunch of specialized "do only one thing well"
helpers, so be it.  I just don't think it's right to expect all the
users to know how to run each program separately.  gschem should have
enough hooks in it to allow any layout system to (somewhat) seamlessly
integrate with it, through whatever helpers and middleware are needed.
Users shouldn't have to exit gschem, run gattrib, exit that, run
gsch2pcb, run pcb, exit that, run "make", run gschem again, ad
infinitum.  They *can* but they shouldn't *have to*.

> but gEDA->Osmond is working so well for my MIT projects that it
> makes me wonder.

So use Osmond, I don't care.  You should be able to copy/paste from
gschem to Osmond too, and have the right footprint show up there.  Or
did you want a separate gschem_to_osmond_gui_cut_paste program to do
that for you?


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