Re: gEDA-user: newbie, couple of Q's about gschem

[Gene Heskett <gene.heskett@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Saturday 13 October 2007, Peter Clifton wrote:

First, before I forget, thanks Peter.

>On Sat, 2007-10-13 at 08:39 -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
>> Complaint #1 is that the diode bridge symbol is about 1/8th the area of a
>> landscape letter page, occupying many times the real estate that the DPDT
>> relay symbol occupies.  And for a newbie, no obvious way to scale it or
>> them to a more pleasing and usable size.  Did I miss it in my menu
>> searches?
>
>gschem's symbols aren't scalable. Many of the components are drawn
>larger than you might expect for the size title block which bears a
>particular paper size as its name (Its size is probably right when
>taking gschem "world" coordinates as mils though).
>
>Usual solution is to increase the size of the title block you're using
>for one which matches the aspect ratio of the paper you're going to
>print on. That or draw your own symbols.
>
>> Complaint #2 is that while I can see the connection dots in color on
>> screen, they are not nearly so obvious when printed in black & white, and
>> it would be very handy if the much older ')' style of non-connecting
>> crossover symbol was available, but again I couldn't find it.
>
>It is possible to print in color, I'll answer that under point 3. As for
>the ) crossover, gschem doesn't support it. You can draw arcs and lines,
>but if you ever wanted to netlist the output, these wouldn't show up.
>(See the "Add" menu).
>
>If you use them, a tip for making little arcs small enough. The "grips"
>for manipulating them will all overlap as the arc is small. Get the
>angles / size right from the dialog box when you place the arc, then
>box-select and use "em" (edit move) or "ec" (edit copy) to position
>them. Also "er" (edit rotate) might be handy.
>
>> I assume there is a symbol editor too, but I didn't look very hard for it.
>
>gschem is a symbol editor too. You can change the "filter" in file-open
>and open .sym files.
>
>To draw one, either start from an existing. (You can click a symbol,
>then go to the hierarchy menu and choose "down symbol"). Just save
>somewhere you've got write access, perhaps in your project directory.
>
>You'll need to add a component source line to your project's gafrc file.
>(If you don't have one, just drop an empty file, and place in it the
>line:
>
>(component-library "./")
>
>(Or some path to where you saved).
>
>> For what I wanted to do, it would have been not only nice, but also
>> intuitive, if a symbol when selected and floating, ready to place, would
>> be zoomable with the mouse wheel in order to scale it for a more usable,
>> pleasing size. As it worked, the mouse wheel still zooms the main page,
>> not the symbol other than it followed the main pages size changes too.
>
>Thats a nice idea, assuming no-one is so opposed to scalable symbols.
>Certainly it might be nice as something you can turn on/off. The main
>issue would be for multiple pin components where each pin has to land on
>gschem's 100x100 grid.

Mmm, that would seem to call for a 'zoomable' 'yes'|'no' attribute in the 
symbol as a solution for that.  No idea how hard it would be to code that up 
though since its been close to a decade since I coded anything more complex 
than a bash script, something this machine has quite a few of, doing things I 
got tired of making typo's while trying to do them by hand.  Arthritic 
fingers that don't always hit the right key accurately don't help...

Some of today's parts need 50 and 25 mill grids too. :)

>> Complaint #3, and minor, is that the printout is B&W.  Even when fed to a
>> color capable printer.
>
>This can be changed. This time in a file called "gschemrc", drop the
>line:
>
>(output-color "enabled")
>
>(Or edit the system one installed under
>$PREFIX/share/gEDA/system-gschemrc, or drop a per user one in
>~/.gEDA/gschemrc

Did that and found its verbatum, black background & all.  Turned it back off 
after one page since epson has raised the price of a black cartridge to over 
30 dollars now.

>
>Hope this helps.

It does, and thanks again Peter.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
"The chain which can be yanked is not the eternal chain."
		-- G. Fitch


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