gEDA-user: Recap of remaining metric-conversion work

[Andrew Poelstra <asp11@xxxxxx>]

Hey all,

On a recent bug report, Peter C. asked for a summary of the
remaining work needed for the metric conversion. Here you go:


It has been a busy week for me so no progress in the last
eight days or so. Even so, it's been a long time since my
last update...

On my personal branch I have made a fair bit of progress
that has not been pushed. I don't want to publish these
changes yet because I'm still reordering and revising them.

Another reason not to push is that I have converted PCB.Grid
and Settings.Grid from double to Coord (an integer unit). This
causes -severe- rounding errors for people using metric grids
with cmil base units.

Anyway, here are the commits I have made but not pushed:

  1. Introduce Coord and Angle units, set a bunch of BDimension,
     LocationType and int variables in global.h to one of these.
     Convert pcb-printf to use these (including adding %ma spec
     to print angles).

  2. Convert grid units to Coord. Set mm/mil autodetect code to
     look for multiples of 127nm (see bug lp-811393), though I
     doubt this will work properly with cmil base units.

  3. Add scale-factor lookup functions to pcb-printf and make
     GetValue use this instead of its own table. Now there is
     only one table of units, in pcb-printf.c, and everything
     should be using it.

  4. Upgrade unit structures in pcb-printf. Now units have a
     "real" suffix that pcb uses internally and in file.c, and
     an internationalized copy of the same suffix.

     Also, there are 5 step values for GUI spinboxes to replace
     the mess of arbitrary mm/mil dependent steps used by Gtk.

     Finally, there is a new structure for the stuff in the
     Increments tab under Gtk preferences. There is no way to
     edit this. The Increments tab is still defunct (see bug
     lp-699464) and I have removed --grid-increment-mm, etc,
     from the command-line options.

  5, 6. Minor cleanups in main.c, gpcb-menu.res, that I missed
        in my old unit-macro patches.

  7. Remove Settings.grid_unit_mm, support arbitrary units instead.
     The "grid_units_mm" flag is now emulated, along with the new
     "grid_units_mil" flag. This is so the GUI menu checkboxes still
     work.

     There is no visible change by this except that you can do
     SetUnits("in"), say, with any unit supported in pcb-printf. No
     way to save this in file-format, though (see lp-811393 again).

     This is why I stuck default precision values, spinbox steps,
     increments, etc, in pcb-printf. The GUIs no longer assume the
     user will only use mm or mil. (They really have no clue what's
     in that pcb-printf table. In principle we could allow the user
     to introduce his own units to the table and it would work.)

     You can also use the command-line flag --grid-units. Pass this
     any supported suffix. --grid-units-mm does not work.

  8. Tell file.c to use %mr, make %mr only output unsuffixed cmils.
     This is because the %mc [cmil, no suffix] specifier internationalizes
     its output, whereas %mr is designed to be consistent.

  9. Audit undo.[ch], thermal.c, set.[ch], rubberband.c for proper
     unit handling, introduce Coord type.

  10. Update hid/gtk/gui-config.c to read new --grid-units command-line
      option. (Didn't realize this was necessary before.)


REMAINING WORK

In principle, just audits. The ones I have done so far have been quick
and easy, essentially just replacing LocationType/BDimension with Coord,
using Angle, using NormalizeAngle() and Distance() instead of repeating
code. Nothing deep.

I may even have been done by now except that when auditing search.c, I
found the arc-intersection problems that lead to a recent long thread
on this board. When I get a free moment (probably not till tomorrow) I
will just post a bug report and move on, "fixing" the unit handling
without fixing the actual algorithm.

I expect that aside from that, everything left will be easy. I just need
to spend some time and git'er'done.

After all the source has been audited, I can commit the small changes to
const.h that actually do the conversion. Then I'll push and you guys can
jump on me for all the bugs I've caused.


-- 
Andrew Poelstra
Email: asp11 at sfu.ca OR apoelstra at wpsoftware.net
Web:   http://www.wpsoftware.net/andrew/



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