Re: gEDA-user: multi-part symbol support

[Kai-Martin Knaak <kmk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 28 Jul 2009 17:29:32 -0600, John Doty wrote:

>> Not, if the information is included via embedded symbols.
> 
> That's an even worse barrier to reuse, analogous to embedding header
> file contents in your C code.

If you don't like embedding, don't do it.
But please don't preach your work-flow as the only way to go.
I didn't say whether, or not I like, or do embedding. 

BTW, I just noted, that symbols cannot be unembedded when there is no 
equivalent symbol in a library around. It cannot be edited either. This 
is clearly a missing feature, almost a bug. It should be possible to 
unembed and save locally. In the light of this missing feature I revoke 
my statement: Currently information stored in embedded symbols does 
indeed present an obstacle to re-use.
I'll file a bug report on this.


>> I don't propose to attach the footprint, or any other attribute
>> anywhere else than to the symbols.
> 
> That's not the issue. Why attach the footprint to the symbol at all?

There seems to be a misunderstanding about the meaning of "attach". Even 
if your symbol files don't contain any footprint attribute, you still 
attach footprints to symbols via gattrib or some other script. The pcb 
backend of gnetlist wouldn't know which footprints to collect for the 
layout.


>> And it will act in an intransparent, user unfriendly way in case of
>> errors. Just like gschem already does, when it runs into problems with
>> the config files. Silently failing to read the rest of the file made me
>> scratch at my head more than once. Generalized syntax comes at a price.
> 
> Handling errors of that sort in Scheme code is easy. Wrap the (read) in
> a (catch) that reports the error. Another good reason to do this in the
> back end.

scheme syntax in attributes still adds the complexity of a turing 
complete language at a place where next to no syntax is necessary. Note, 
that not implementing scheme syntax for list_of attributes does not 
preclude use of scheme in attributes in any way. 

---<(kaimartin)>---
-- 
Kai-Martin Knaak
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