Re: gEDA-user: footprints -- novice`s problems

[Dan McMahill <dan@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Stefan Salewski wrote:
> My gEDA distribution shipped with Gentoo-Linux comes with many m4 
> footprints, but with very few newlib footprints.
>
> So i started using m4, ignoring the warnings in the 
> documentation.
>
> After reading 
> http://geda.seul.org/wiki/geda:pcb_tips#how_do_i_add_a_footprint_library_to_pcb
> more carefully "...M4 footprints more complicated, but many of 
> them are broken. That is, lots of footprints which appear in the 
> M4 libraries canât be made to netlist correctly by gsch2pcb.", 
> it is not surprising to me that i had trouble trying to use m4 
> footprint CONN_USB. 

This comment is sadly inaccurate and really should be removed.  As far 
as I know, _all_ of the m4 footprints can netlist correctly (in that you 
get a footprint that loads into pcb with no syntax errors) with 
gsch2pcb.  Also, there are quite a large number of pretty good 
footprints which were generated with the m4 system.  In particular,

~amp, ~amphenol, ~bourns, ~cts, ~geda, ~johnstech, ~minicircuits, and 
~panasonic

should all be in pretty good shape.  The vendor specific ones implement 
some vendor specific footprints which to the best of my knowledge are 
all correct and the ~geda one has been moving towards being more 
compliant with IPC recommendations.

> I think shipping gEDA/gaf with very few newlib footprints and 
> broken m4 footsprints is very harmful for new users.

I haven't gotten out the measuring tool to verify dimensions, but I have 
no problems instantiating a CONN_USB.  What problems were you having?

As usual, with footprint libraries though, it takes a large amount of 
effort to produce a library of good size with good quality control. 
Personally, I pretty much never use a footprint from anywhere unless 
I've validated it myself.  That said, there is a large collection at 
gedasymbols.org.

-Dan


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