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

[sdb@xxxxxxxxxx (Stuart Brorson)]

> 
> 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 can’t be made to netlist correctly by gsch2pcb.", 

> 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.

Dan,

Please blame me for this verbiage in the wiki.  It was a reflection of
my experience at the time, along with some SWAGs about what would work
and what would not.  I am trying to steer newbies into diections which
are known good, and don't require futzing around to make work.

I am eager to make ammends.  Please feel free to update the text in
the wiki to reflect the current state of things.  If you prefer, just
send me some text and I will be happy to stick it in the wiki. 

> > it is not surprising to me that i had trouble trying to use m4 
> > footprint CONN_USB. 

Moving forward, I wonder if doing some systematic QC on the footprints
distributed with gEDA/PCB would be a good thing.  Perhaps we all sit
down at a Free Dog gathering and just go down the list of footprints,
instantiating each one and verifying that it works?

Stuart



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