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

[John Doty <jpd@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Jun 29, 2010, at 12:57 PM, Mike Bushroe wrote:

>     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.

gattrib in is present state is a handy manual "touch up" tool, not a power tool.

>  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.

The way to do that in the current implementation is to put attributes in customized symbols rather than attaching them to symbol instances in the schematic.

>   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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John Doty              Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd.
http://www.noqsi.com/
jpd@xxxxxxxxx




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