Re: gEDA-user: pcb refdes name restrictions?

[Peter Clifton <pcjc2@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 2006-11-03 at 09:57 +0000, Peter Baxendale wrote:
> > >The parser starts at the end, moving towards the start of the string and 
> > >strips off lower case characters until it encounters any non-lowercase 
> > >character, then it stops. Thus Rp4 will be a valid element name. This 
> > >has been documented in the manual for at least 5 years now since I first 
> > >wrote that code. From the pcb manual:
> > 
> > 	It might be useful to put this information in gEDA/gaf's attribute
> > guide under refdes as well.  Filed bug to remind us:
> 
> Yes, thanks, that's a good idea. It's at the schematic entry stage when
> you're choosing refdes values, so it would be handy to mention it there,
> even though strictly it's a pcb issue, not gEDA/gaf. Sorry I missed the
> pcb manual bit - I could have saved myself and others some time and also
> some noise on this list if I'd seen it.

Whilst this statement may be controversial, I'm inclined to believe that
anything you have to dig deep into a manual to discover isn't obvious
enough in the program :). There are of course exceptions, as no-one
expects a complicated EDA package to be learnt solely through feeling
your way around the gui.. it simply isn't productive to do so. OTOH,
this is how beginners learn, and was exactly how I started.

I like to see what people trip over in real life. Even if there is an
"answer" in a manual somewhere, perhaps there is a better way.

Amusing aside: a few times I found myself poking at the source to see if
I could implement a feature / behaviour in PCB / gschem, only to find it
was there already and I just didn't know how to activate it! Now, the
source-code is my manual!

I had a great computer science teacher at A-Level... when you took a
program to her for testing, rather than inputting the proper numbers
(which as a developer, you do), she would randomly press all the
keyboard keys until something broke. A great lesson in input validation!

Peter B and I were looking at the possibility of introducing some
plugable input validation / auto-complete modules into the gschem
attribute editing system. The down side of course, is these must be
configured (by default if you will) to understand what attributes are
necessary, and what is legal.

One idea was "footprint" (assuming your config states that validation
and auto-complete for this attribute should be for "PCB", not some other
layout package).

The user setting the footprint attribute would auto-complete with a
drop-down list of the available footprints - obviously requires a
knowledge of how / where PCB finds its footprint lists, or a library
interface to this functionality in PCB.

Another thought was even to (optionally) bring up the PCB footprint
window with a GUI preview. (Suitably library'fied if possible to avoid
code duplication)

I already have too much work backed up to get on with this right now,
but if people feed back that this might be useful, it will go higher on
the todo pile. (Right after finishing the DBus support in PCB and making
xgsch2pcb place nice with it).

Regards,

-- 
Peter Clifton

Electrical Engineering Division,
Engineering Department,
University of Cambridge,
9, JJ Thomson Avenue,
Cambridge
CB3 0FA

Tel: +44 (0)7729 980173



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