Re: gEDA-user: gattrib not a good spreadsheet editor

[Mike Bushroe <mbushroe@xxxxxxxxx>]

     That said, it looks like your are talking about using an editor for
     the the
     job gattrib does? That would be neat. Even better would be, if the
     file were
     in spread sheet format. Seems to me, gattrib has a hard time
     reinventing the
     spread sheet GUI wheel. The result feels pretty awkward when
     compared to
     gnumeric, oocalc and the like.
     How about this: Use the gschem parser of gattrib to synthesize an
     intermediate file in comma separated spread sheet format. Pipe this
     file to
     gnumeric/oocalc/whatever. The user manipulate values and attributes
     and
     saves. The non GUI gattrib application detects the changes and
     writes them
     back to the original gschem file. I haven't inspected the code yet.
     But I'd
     expect the this rewrite back-end to be already there in the gattrib
     source.
     If a user feels like not using a spread sheet application he or she
     can use
     scripting to manipulate the intermediate file as well.
     Ouups, I am guilty of dreaming about perfect solutions, too ;-)

   When I was working on my last project, when I was having so many
   problems, I learned what gattrib was for and started using it. But I
   found that even it was cumbersome and hard to use.  Global search and
   replace does not work. Opening a new schematic page after finishing the
   first one does not work. And worst of all, if an attribute was not set
   in any symbol in the schematic file, there was no column for it in
   gattirb. Taking a cue from John Doty, I was trying to create the
   schematic pages light, then add footprints and other data in gattrib.
   But if I did that completely, then there was no column for footprints
   and no obvious way to add it. And when I put in a place holder
   footrpint file name, I was not able to replace all of them at once with
   the correct file name in gattirb. Ditto for fixing laboriously written
   in footprints from gschem that had misspelled the file name.
       If there was some way to use an existing spreadsheet program to do
   that actual editing, and there was a local resource file to indicate
   which columns to always include, even if they currently have no
   entries, that would greatly improve the functioning of gattrib, at
   least for me.
     Just my 2 kopecks worth.
   Mike


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