Simon, Compatible? Why not just go with the fork? Kicad isn't going anywhere anyway. Easy enough to make it read (and maybe write) your old files so you can come along, or not, when you want.
I did a year of full-time development that we not considered. It was already a fork. That one would read and write the same files as always. I don't think that you should assume that this is a programmer design fight. I wanted these features because I was desgining a 14-layer 10GHz Optical card and I *needed* them as a user. I wanted plot-and-go because I am an Engineer and I wanted to Engineer the card, not have some chemical jockey do it for me. I was working with 5 and 7mil LVDS and CMI pairs and low and behold, someone put integer trig functions in kicad instead of using, oh, gee, the floating point processor. Well, when the internal unit is a 1/10 mil and you have a 5 mil line, the trig functions have a round-off error at a 45-degree angle and DRC fails at each bend of the differential pair. Annoying? DRC was rendered useless. So what, I change them to 4.9 mil and put on the fab drawing that all 4.9 mil lines are to be made 5 mil lines? Don't think so. This is but one example of about 20 serious problems with kicad. You encounter them whenever you attempt a card more advanced than a dimmer switch. --brian On Tue, 22 Nov 2011, Simon Turner wrote: > Well thank you ! just to make the end users life a misery ? Hopefully > you can at least keep them compatible if you must split and make sure > versions remain compatible. KiCAD is a nice program although it needs > work doing to it. Please don't ruin the only option we do have in the > hobbyist world for a serious PCB suit. > View of an end user ! -- Brian F. G. Bidulock � The reasonable man adapts himself to the � [email protected] � world; the unreasonable one persists in � http://www.openss7.org/ � trying to adapt the world to himself. � � Therefore all progress depends on the � � unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw �
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