Re: gEDA-user: GAttrib refdes appends '.'

[DJ Delorie <dj@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> What's the crux of the heavy/light argument?

It boils down to "do I offer the user a NAND gate, or a 74ALS00ND?"

> Why can't a symbol file have a light description, and an associated
> heavy description in a separate file, and have it so when a user
> adds the component, she chooses which 'heavy' attributes to include?

*My* opinion is to have a separate database mapping light symbols to
all the heavy data. So you'd have a huge number of rows starting with
"NAND Gate", each enumerating a specific instance of a physical nand
gate, which you could use to narrow down the search.  Example: you'd
Pick the SOT-14 footprint (down to 114 choices, and this sets the PCB
footprint too) then the ALS family (10 choices) then commercial spec
(3 choices) then Digikey (1 choice).  Blam!  Your symbol becomes a
heavy symbol.

Same for resistors - pick a value, then a package, then a tolerance,
then a vendor, etc.  You'd probably put in the value early in the
design, and worry about the rest later.

But since this requires programming to support, and I'm busy with
other things, I'm keeping it as an "alternate view" rather than a
proposal.