Re: gEDA-user: geda for "open hardware"

[Bill Gatliff <bgat@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

John Griessen wrote:
>
> I approve of John Doty's project dir oriented method of managing symbol and footprint libraries.
>   

I may be under-caffeinated, but isn't there already a menu/cmdline
option to tell gschem to pull symbol definitions into the sch file when
they're found/added to a schematic?  With that information and version
attributes, gschem could ask, "I found a newer symbol definition in the
system, update the schematic file?" at startup.

I have recently learned about the really-handy way gschem lets you
descend into a symbol definition file from a schematic, so that you can
edit it.  When I go back "up" into the schematic, I select Edit|Update
Symbol and the display (at least) updates.  Seems like that
functionality is partially what the OP is talking about.

> get gEDA past a big complaint of newbies, "the standard library seems incomplete!"

There was recent discussion on this list on ideas to make
gedasymbols.org (or something like it) available as a symbol library to
gschem/pcb.  I think that those ideas (along with a management strategy
for the resource) would also help to both reduce the complexity of a
default gaf installation and also make it easier to distribute new
symbols and footprints.

> Some kind of error handling coding might be needed for the case of opening a reference design three years older than
> current gEDA tools.
>   

Shouldn't be a problem if the design files also incorporate the
footprints and symbols used.  So long as the overall syntax of the
design files themselves is maintained...


b.g.


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