Re: gEDA-user: Reinventing the wheel

[John Doty <jpd@xxxxxxxxx>]

On May 17, 2011, at 7:45 AM, Russell Shaw wrote:

> A well-stocked workshop is nothing more than a multitool workshop.

With that attitude, you'll botch the job.

> There's
> no reason why a schematic and pcb editor can't have tight coupling and
> still interact with all external tools.

The architectures are different. To flexibly interact with external tools, you need the interfaces to be simple text files. Anything more complex is a serious barrier, in general.

> The only disadvantage to external
> tools is that an interface layer is needed.

A separate piece of complex code for every interface, yes. This isn't too bad in gEDA, because we don't try to integrate the diverse collection of downstream tools with gschem: it's a pretty clean, simple flow.

> The coupling could simply be
> an ipc protocol between separate programs.

Specialized IPC is good in its place. General-purpose IPC is complex, fragile, and always less flexible than intended.

---
John Doty              Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd.

This message contains technical discussion involving difficult issues. No personal disrespect or malice is intended. If you perceive such, your perception is simply wrong. I'm a busy person, and in my business "go along to get along" causes mission failures and sometimes kills people, so I tend to be a bit blunt.



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