Re: gEDA-user: Ok, who moved pin 4?

[Dan McMahill <dan@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Peter Clifton wrote:

>> First off, I'd like to see a print capability added, so that I could get 
>> check plots out of gerbv.  (Yes, pcb produces check plots, but when we 
>> get a gerber from someplace else, gerbv is the natural place to print 
>> check plots.)

Whats in cvs currently uses cairo for its graphics.  It should be pretty 
easy (or so I hope) to add pdf and postscript output.  At least thats 
part of what cairo claims to provide.  Unfortunately cairo seems to be 
slower than gdk for drawing.  I'm not sure if this is a fundamental 
cairo thing or something in the way gerbv uses it.

>>
>> Then, following up on Peter's 2nd comment, since gerbv has a robust 
>> gerber reader, it would be a great platform for plugins.  If there were 
>> an API that allowed a plug-in to walk the gerber file data structures we 
>> could implement all manner of translators, checkers, and back-end tools 
>> that could accept gerber from anyplace.  This would be valuable to me in 
>> creating a paste stencil back-end, for instance.
>>
>> Panelizing is independent functionality from the other two, also good. 
>> I'd certainly want the ability to print check plots directly from gerbv 
>> to go with it.
> 
> All good ideas. I'm afraid they won't come to much without attraction of
> developers though, as gerbv isn't actively developed at the moment. I
> hear Stuart and Ales have taken over maintainership.

You must not subscribe to the gerbv cvs list ;)  As Stuart noted, there 
has been a bunch of work just lately.

I'll note that if you're interested in panelizing a single board in a 
single orientation with pcb, then it wouldn't be hard to teach pcb to 
use the SR (step and repeat) RS-274-X command.  gerbv now understands 
that and correctly renders it.  Of course someone would need to figure 
out how to achieve the equivalent thing with the drill files.  But I 
also suspect that most users interested in panelizing boards are more 
interested in different boards in a single panel.

-Dan






_______________________________________________
geda-user mailing list
geda-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user