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

[Steven Michalske <smichalske@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Sep 4, 2010, at 8:49 AM, Andrew Poelstra <asp11@xxxxxx> wrote:

> 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?
> 
Think BIG designs,  a bloated file format will hurt.  And I want PCB on my iPad.  It has OpenGL ES,  that would be putting it on a phone....

> 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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