> * I would probably do it in Python, cause Python is a good > rapid-prototyping language.
There is a thread about that right now on the wxWindows user list, some say yes, some say no. I've never used Python yet, so I'll say nothing. > Whenever I have to write stuff in C, I spend most of my time chasing > down pointer problems, which is a real PITA. http://www.splint.org/ and http://www.gimpel.com/ for Lint. > that I still don't "grok" pointers completely. Yes it can be confusing. If you start learning at the assembly language level then move to 'C' they make more sense. http://www.function-pointer.org/ > schematics are small, "speed of program running" is not as important > as "speed of program development". Yes. > * I could certainly create a program which reads & writes a tab > separated list of values. However, wouldn't it be better to just > integrate your GUI with a file handling/parsing back end directly? I already do that with my ref-designator program, that is not that part I don't know how to do. On the command line I read the files in order of the 'page'. File A is page one etc., so you can restart the numbering on each file/page. The format I read and build is FILE\t\LINE_NUMBER\tREFDES_PREFIX\tREFDES_DIGITS Because a component always has a REFDES I always know what line to overwrite. What I don't know how today, because I have not spent time reading the file format docs (so far), is how to insert an attribute, versus replacing the attribute that I do now. Lets say I have REFDES=U1, and there is no existing foot print in the schematic. I add a footprint in the GUI. Now what do I do with it to get it in inserted in the schematic, in the right place? > How does that work? Or is there a better way? If you have a > preferred data structure, what is it? I'm just working with a long string, of tab separated values. I know by their position what field they are. #define TOKEN_FILE (0) #define TOKEN_LINE_NUMBER (1) #define TOKEN_REFDES_PREFIX (2) #define TOKEN_REFDES_DIGITS (3) KISS principle. > your GUI code which handles the spreadsheet datastructure. > Note that I have not programmed spreadsheets & am totally unaware of > what the "cannonical" spreadsheet data structure looks like. I'm just doing treating it as a simple X/Y grid. -- http://www.softwaresafety.net/ http://www.unusualresearch.com/ http://www.bpaddock.com/
