Re: gEDA-user: FUNDING
Hi Everyone, I realise that I am joining a very established thread, but I'd like to put forward 2 cents worth. Please don't be offended if what I'm saying isn't the same as your opinion. I have used gEDA as the main (but not only) tool for EDA in my company for two and a half years, I don't fully understand it - but I can use it for everything that I need to do (principally draw schematics layout PCBs). I know companies that would like to use gEDA, but must support a back catalogue of designs that were created using other tools. That is to say that they have no choice but to pay for their EDA tools. These people do pay alot for thier tools, but they have no chioce! As a gEDA user, I am not tied to it, and can use whatever software suits me. In an open software model, the companies choose to use a given tool because it is the most cost effective in an open marketplace. Whilst anyone who uses the tool is grateful to those who have created it, they don't owe anything to the developers who have published their source. Guilt complexes won't work on any shrewd business person; and I doubt those tactics are what we want to be doing if we are to encourage the adoption of gEDA as a standard tool in the industry anyway. This sounds very negative, so I'll try to describe how I think funding might be found. Because of the GERBER standard, FOSS stands a chance of creating competitive tools for EDA, this is much more difficult in areas where open standards don't exist. I don't know if this has come up before in this thread, but my opinion is that we may be able to shake down the relevant industry groups government bodies. gEDA is special because it opens the marketplace to SMEs. It seems to me that empowering individuals and companies is the purpose of groups like the IEEE ( the IET in the UK). Maybe they could spare some money for the development of a tool that could bring a new standard to the development of electronic products? Right now there is a big push to help small business hit by the recession - perhaps governments might have the right buttons pushed too? FOSS is about community and openness and opportunities for all... right? Another option, that may not be acceptable to all, is that in the UK RS Farnell both recently acquired small PCB development companies(DesignSpark eagle respectively). The intention being the companies adopt the free tool which integrates easily with their catalogue and then buy more from them. This would be great if they hadn't bought such poor tools (IMHO)! Perhaps the same or other catalogue companies could be convinced that they should pay for a little development to put in an automatic search or part number-attribute feature (and thereby support development of some other features too). I know that few developers would volunteer to develop the parts library for the entire Digikey catalogue, but if the money was right wouldn't it be a worthwhile venture!? This API could then be open to other companies to integrate catalouges too (so gEDA would remain unaffiliated). Finally, If a company spent 4k on a developer, they could contract them directly. As I understand the gpl (and I'm not a legal professional!), they wouldn't have to publish the developers work. They could legally branch from the main tree and continue to use their competitive advantage (in-house) since they'd spent the money to have feature X in their tool chain. It would be silly to give this to their competitors too, so the expectations for donations must be *much* lower so that companies and individuals get the features they want at a bargain price! A while ago a couple of us tried to organise gEDA training, and despite enthusiasm from the community, I had real trouble persuading those who didn't use it (which was kind of the point) - I had some success with a 30 page ebook proposal to the IEEE (which anyone would be very welcome to take over as I have financial constraints that mean that it has become dormant). Regards Andrew -- ╒═╕ Andrew Whyte MEng CEng ╞═╡ @ - a...@paramita-electronics.com ⌨ - www.paramita-electronics.com ☎ - +44 (0) 79 81 01 61 85 ╘═╛ ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Text in PCB elements
Armin Faltl wrote: The GUI might look up letters as footprints in the library and arrange them to yield human readable text. This sounds like recursive call of footprints to me No. In this scenario, the footprints do not contain real, editable text. What looks like text to humans is just lines in silk, or pads in copper to pcb. - what is the advantage to proper text rendering by the routines that do it for silk refdes? * No need to change the core engine of pcb * No change in footprint format As a consequence, it would be easier to code and implement. It has the same implications to footprint file format as any other rendering method. There is a difference: The rendering happens on footprint creation time. It is irreversible, meaning, the text cannot be edited after the fact. ---)kaimartin(--- -- Kai-Martin Knaak tel: +49-511-762-2895 Universität Hannover, Inst. für Quantenoptik fax: +49-511-762-2211 Welfengarten 1, 30167 Hannover http://www.iqo.uni-hannover.de GPG key:http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?search=Knaak+kmkop=get ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Blogging about gEDA development
On Sun, 12 Dec 2010 02:43:19 + Peter Clifton pc...@cam.ac.uk wrote: http://pcjc2.blogspot.com/2010/12/geda-development.html I hate SourceForge - Ok, that one was just me! no you are not! slow, paralyzing, unusable. launchpad has some issues too, but imho it would be a good choice. ps: Comments on this blog are restricted to team members. not really in favor of crowd-sourcing spirit ;) launchpad logins can be used for openid authentication btw ;) -- Kind regards/Mit freundlichen Grüßen, Stefan Tauner ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Blogging about gEDA development
On Mon, 2010-12-13 at 11:15 +0100, Stefan Tauner wrote: On Sun, 12 Dec 2010 02:43:19 + Peter Clifton pc...@cam.ac.uk wrote: http://pcjc2.blogspot.com/2010/12/geda-development.html I hate SourceForge - Ok, that one was just me! no you are not! slow, paralyzing, unusable. launchpad has some issues too, but imho it would be a good choice. ps: Comments on this blog are restricted to team members. not really in favor of crowd-sourcing spirit ;) I'm not sure when I set that - and team members seems odd. launchpad logins can be used for openid authentication btw ;) I knew that. Shame they don't (yet) let you log IN with someone else's OpenID. -- 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!) Tel: +44 (0)1223 748328 - (Shared lab phone, ask for me) ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Blogging about gEDA development
On Mon, 2010-12-13 at 15:31 +, Peter Clifton wrote: ps: Comments on this blog are restricted to team members. not really in favor of crowd-sourcing spirit ;) I'm not sure when I set that - and team members seems odd. I've switched comments on for OpenID authenticated users. -- 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!) Tel: +44 (0)1223 748328 - (Shared lab phone, ask for me) ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Text in PCB elements
Kai-Martin Knaak wrote: There is a difference: The rendering happens on footprint creation time. It is irreversible, meaning, the text cannot be edited after the fact. I think I got you now: you want to place one footprint per character or generate a footprint, that displays your text - before I thought you want to have a way, that char-footprints can somehow be referenced in another footprint. Still I believe, that extension of the footprint format to contain text is the way to go. Text can be rendered in pcb, so the routines must be there. Truetype fonts etc. discussed lately are a completely different issue ofcourse - but I can live with fonts as is. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Text in PCB elements
On Mon, 13 Dec 2010 23:28:25 +0100 Armin Faltl armin.fa...@aon.at wrote: Kai-Martin Knaak wrote: There is a difference: The rendering happens on footprint creation time. It is irreversible, meaning, the text cannot be edited after the fact. I think I got you now: you want to place one footprint per character or generate a footprint, that displays your text - before I thought you want to have a way, that char-footprints can somehow be referenced in another footprint. Still I believe, that extension of the footprint format to contain text is the way to go. If footprints are extended to allow text elements to be included, then I really hope that general polygons will be allowed too. That would allow users nearly unlimited flexibility, for instance: - Easy to create a trapezoidal pad (as requested on this list recently). - Simple to include text in arbitrary fonts using PostScript-pstoedit-pcb. This is decent substitute for real fonts in pcb for static text that rarely changes. Regards, Colin ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Random thoughts on the future interface of PCB
If you switch to gEDA, will you want a native windows build? Help with that from anyone who is up on windows is on the wanted list. I've been poking at 'the perfect windows version' for some time, will give up on that for now. I think I just make basic canvas and figure how to to get the basic HID stuff going. Is there any step by step guide to get a new HID up and running (besides trolling the list here for the last few years with grep)? One thing I don't recall be doing before is that I want to use wxWindows, so it would have its own main() loop. Whats the best way to deal with that? And getting installer up and running is probably another story. Dan put together a NSIS based installer based on some of my work, it has been part of the PCB distribution for years. Only thing it really lacks is an icon. Not sure it has been updated to the latest version if NSIS but that should not be hard. See the win32 subdirectory. Unless I missed the change, direct printing under windows does not work, and the library manager is broken under Windows due to the way paths are handled. Exporting to PostScript works now when using GhostView under Windows to print that way. -- http://blog.softwaresafety.net/ http://www.designer-iii.com/ http://www.wearablesmartsensors.com/ ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Random thoughts on the future interface of PCB
Is there any step by step guide to get a new HID up and running 1. Copy the nohid hid. Hard-code a drawing surface and zoom values, work on getting the pcb drawn correctly *at all*. 2. add in code for zooming, scrolling, flipping, etc. 3. Add in menus and shortcuts. 4. Add in all the other dialogs (attributes, netlist, pinout, etc) 5. ... 6. Profit! ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: FUNDING
Another option, that may not be acceptable to all, is that in the UK RS Farnell both recently acquired small PCB development companies(DesignSpark eagle respectively). The intention being the companies adopt the free tool which integrates easily with their catalogue and then buy more from them. This would be great if they You know a distributor fails it when the only way to lure in customers is by providing some half-assed EDA software which happens to have all their parts catalog footprints/symbols available. Digikey doesn't need to do that because they actually have things in stock, ship fast, and have worldwide free shipping deals for any reasonable kind of order, so they don't need to buy gEDA or Eagle to keep repeat customers. I had to order something from RS few days ago because their stuff arrives next day to my location as opposed to worst case 4 days wiht DigiKey Worldwide UPS, and I ended up paying $12 for *100* 1000pF capacitors. for $12 on Digikey you get a 4000-piece *REEL*. That and every resistor I had specced for the project I couldn't actually GET from RS. I had to waste time recalculating vreg resistors so i could match my order with shit RS had in stock. Ridiculous! Of course all this WAS available from DigiKey I just had to have it asap. So what ended up being a couple bags of resistors/caps/vregs cost me ~$90 from RS which would have been at most $16 from Digikey. Of course this is customer money and it just ended up being passed to them, but this is still stupid. I don't care how much money they poured into their stupid DesignSpark shit, their stuff is overpriced, in-stock selection is ridiculous, and their website is fucking unusable (how about sorting shit by stuff that's actually IN STOCK and not comes from another country in 2 weeks - its almost impossible to actually tell the difference between these 2 conditions because in stock indicator in the table is both GREEN in these times.) Anyway tl;dr version: RS sucks, DesignSpark sucks, Eagle sucks, buying a EDA suite to pimp to your customers as the only benefit of your shitty stock/price practice = stupid. Also any designer too lazy to make symbols/footprints for a new part should just /quit. my $0.02 worth. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Random thoughts on the future interface of PCB
It won't be perfect until its compilable by VStudio IDE and debuggable inside it as such. As long as GCC is involved in any equation of building software for Windows, no developer (who is actually paid to develop Windows software) is going to even touch it. I look forward to trying your LLVM port, when will be be ready? http://llvm.org/ ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: FUNDING
On 12/13/2010 08:23 PM, timecop wrote: Another option, that may not be acceptable to all, is that in the UK RS Farnell both recently acquired small PCB development companies(DesignSpark eagle respectively). The intention being the companies adopt the free tool which integrates easily with their catalogue and then buy more from them. This would be great if they You know a distributor fails it when the only way to lure in customers is by providing some half-assed EDA software which happens to have all their parts catalog footprints/symbols available. Digikey doesn't need to do that because they actually have things in stock, ship fast, and have worldwide free shipping deals for any reasonable kind of order, so they don't need to buy gEDA or Eagle to keep repeat customers. I had to order something from RS few days ago because their stuff arrives next day to my location as opposed to worst case 4 days wiht DigiKey Worldwide UPS, and I ended up paying $12 for *100* 1000pF capacitors. for $12 on Digikey you get a 4000-piece *REEL*. That and every resistor I had specced for the project I couldn't actually GET from RS. I had to waste time recalculating vreg resistors so i could match my order with shit RS had in stock. Ridiculous! Of course all this WAS available from DigiKey I just had to have it asap. So what ended up being a couple bags of resistors/caps/vregs cost me ~$90 from RS which would have been at most $16 from Digikey. Of course this is customer money and it just ended up being passed to them, but this is still stupid. I don't care how much money they poured into their stupid DesignSpark shit, their stuff is overpriced, in-stock selection is ridiculous, and their website is fucking unusable (how about sorting shit by stuff that's actually IN STOCK and not comes from another country in 2 weeks - its almost impossible to actually tell the difference between these 2 conditions because in stock indicator in the table is both GREEN in these times.) Anyway tl;dr version: RS sucks, DesignSpark sucks, Eagle sucks, buying a EDA suite to pimp to your customers as the only benefit of your shitty stock/price practice = stupid. Also any designer too lazy to make symbols/footprints for a new part should just /quit. my $0.02 worth. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user Why do you bother to subscribe to this list? Its obvious that $0.02 is worth more than your opinions. George ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: FUNDING
Why do you bother to subscribe to this list? Its obvious that $0.02 is worth more than your opinions. Why do you bother replying? Is it to show you agree or disagree? ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: FUNDING
On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 2:23 PM, timecop time...@gmail.com wrote: Anyway tl;dr version: RS sucks, DesignSpark sucks, Eagle sucks, buying a EDA suite to pimp to your customers as the only benefit of your shitty stock/price practice = stupid. Also any designer too lazy to make symbols/footprints for a new part should just /quit. Yeah, I don't think we should be trying to integrate the symbol/footprint library with some vendors database or webservices. We already have a decent footprint/symbol library.. But it would be worth replacing the footprints data structures code and adding a decent padstack editor. I think DJ proposed this as part of the LinuxFund work.. has there been any progress towards this? Cheers, Anthony ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
