On Wed, 2007-11-07 at 09:44 -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > I am looking using gEDA/gaf for my own activities and ran across an archived > newsgroup exchange providing a critique of gEDA/gaf and a call for user input > on what's important to them. Is there a gEDA/gaf page with a checklist of > capabilities, e.g. http://www.4pcb.com/index.php?load=content&page_id=46 ?
Such checklists will _always_ be horribly biased... If we are to take on face value that there is _nothing_ important that the 4pcb software can't do, then we'd be very naive. I did look at the list in detail.. there are a few points where we answer "no" or "weak suppport", however others where we'd answer "no, and thats the way we like it", such as the avoidance of a single integrated application for all tools. We focus on a very modular approach, and it proves very flexible. We're also working on tighter integration between these programs, but the distinction drawn in the linked table that it should be a "single application" is bogus. Some weaknesses / features we don't have, and comments...... We don't do a DRC restricted to certain components (I'm not sure why you'd want to). We don't do auto-placement (not for real layout anyway), this is a rather tricky problem, probably requiring more black magic than auto-routing. I'm pretty sure that in all systems, a layout engineer will place the key components, even if they let an auto-placer deal with less critical items. We don't auto-route nets in schematic mode. This isn't a great weakness, but perhaps a time-saving (optional) feature we'd consider adding in the future. We don't have context sensitive help. We do have a wiki full of information, and a very active user-community, so help is easily available (far better than most online help in many applications). Our parts "database" is a key weakness, mostly due to the amount of work involved maintaining a symbols / footprints database. There are a couple of community driven sites which archive contributed symbols though, so the shipped set of symbols isn't definitive. (We're actually hoping to cut that set down to a bare minimum, and provide better means to manage contributed symbol sources.) We don't at present support text based coordinate entry, but its been talked about and may be added in due course. Copy-paste works intra-application instance, but not into the X11 buffers. This could be improved, but hasn't seemed to be a difficulty for many people in practice. We support multiple copy-paste buffers in both gschem and PCB, which can be a power-user feature. PCB doesn't have a good footprint browser (preview - can be done and search are notably missing). Features not mentioned in the table... they probably don't have.... Output of schematic netlist to 30+ different formats (looking at the exporters, there might be a few duplicates in functionality. There are 37 below, and it isn't hard to write new ones..) gnet-allegro.scm gnet-gsch2pcb.scm.orig gnet-protelII.scm gnet-bae.scm gnetlist.scm gnet-redac.scm gnet-bom2.scm gnet-mathematica.scm gnet-spice.scm gnet-bom.scm gnet-maxascii.scm gnet-spice-sdb.scm gnet-calay.scm gnet-osmond.scm gnet-switcap.scm gnet-cascade.scm gnet-pads.scm gnet-systemc.scm gnet-drc2.scm gnet-partslist1.scm gnet-tango.scm gnet-drc.scm gnet-partslist2.scm gnet-vams.scm gnet-eagle.scm gnet-partslist3.scm gnet-verilog.scm gnet-futurenet2.scm gnet-partslist-common.scm gnet-vhdl.scm gnet-geda.scm gnet-PCBboard.scm gnet-vipec.scm gnet-gossip.scm gnet-pcbpins.scm gnet-gsch2pcb.scm gnet-PCB.scm Schematic wide / design wide editing of component meta-data (attributes) from a spread-sheet like application, "gattrib". Scripting languages to perform operations (ok, the higher end tools have this and probably exceed our capabilities, but still.. we have it). Fully hierarchical design support Workflow agnostic schematic editing. -- Peter Clifton Electrical Engineering Division, Engineering Department, University of Cambridge, 9, JJ Thomson Avenue, Cambridge CB3 0FA Tel: +44 (0)7729 980173 - (No signal in the lab!) _______________________________________________ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user