Re: gEDA-user: Functional blocks and PCB format changes

[Andrew Poelstra <asp11@xxxxxx>]

On Sat, Sep 04, 2010 at 01:16:01AM -0400, Rick Collins wrote:
>
> Don't hold back, tell us how you really feel!
> 
> The spec is large because it addresses a wide range of design
> aspects, which is one of the great reasons for using it, one file
> for the entire design, schematic, layout, mechanical, etc, even
> board lay up.  So the compatibility issue is moot because any one
> app only needs to deal with the portion that applies to it.  Just
> don't muck with the other parts.
> 
> The "heavy" issue is a red herring (are you planning on hosting this
> on a cell phone maybe?)  No PCB file format is going to be easy for
> humans to read.  Bandwidth?  Back to the MCU in the cell phone I
> guess.  "Ugly", now there is a great technical argument.
> 
> But I suppose it is better to re-invent the wheel.  There is no
> reason to try to foster any sort of compatibility in file formats
> between all the different CAD tools.  There are always conversion
> programs to be written, no?
>

This is not an emotional argument, but a technical one, and the
choice is not between XML and reinventing the wheel. (Sadly, my
Lisp suggestion has been shot down - by better arguments than
popularity, I might add. ;) There are other formats to consider,
and yes, inventing one might be an option.

How do you know PCB won't ever run on cell phones, or over a
slow network link, or on an embedded device or network PC or
overtaxed virtual machine? How do you know we won't one day
need to work with 1000-layer boards when suddenly it /does/
matter how heavy the file format is?

Unless you want feature-parity with other CAD programs, it
is impossible to have file-format-parity. So no matter what,
conversion programs will have to be written. Creating similar
file formats won't help anything, other than to limit our own
format, and potentially cause problems if PCB and another CAD
program are able to open (and corrupt) each other's files.


Andrew



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