Re: gEDA-user: howto toporoute?
On Tue, 2011-09-13 at 22:53 +0200, Kai-Martin Knaak wrote: Seems like the toporouter would need more than just GUI integration and user accessible parameters to become a viable option. :-| Sure -- in one of the last postings the author told us, that one year fulltime work ($50k) is necessary to finish it. And for other people it may be really hard to continue the project -- a complete rewrite may be easier? Have you tried the old PCB autorouter? When I tried it years ago it worked not really good, but in the meantime the author has made some serious improvements, as he told us. And, someone has reported about some success with an import/export script and the freerouting router. See http://archives.seul.org/geda/user/Jun-2011/msg00113.html ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
On Sat, 2011-09-10 at 10:19 +0530, Abhijit Kshirsagar wrote: On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 22:20, Dan Roganti ragoo...@gmail.com wrote: I wouldn't say wipeout, from looking at the current state of documentation, there's been a huge amount of work done there. I would suggest just making some additions and editing some parts to bring some attention to all of the important features. +1. There's lots of good documentation, but there are things missing and lots of details need to be added. I think it would be a very good idea to have some collection of documents (or at least link to these). I'm willing to help with the documentation since I do use gEDA regularly (and i'm not much help with the programming). ~Abhijit What we really should consider: A lot of documentation can be bad. Consider the toys from the big company with the damaged fruit: A reason for the success of the toys is that documentations seems to be not needed. A lot of documentation can make people think that it is very complicated. For gEDA/PCB we have collected a lot of documentation over the years -- some is obsolete/outdated/redundant now or covers details, which most people are not interested in -- at least not when starting with gEDA/PCB. Send to geda-user: Sat Sep 10 13:34:27 CEST 2011 ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
On Thu, 2011-09-08 at 09:22 -0500, John Griessen wrote: If anyone has some time for planning user interface changes, I have a few low level ideas Yes, a few people including me voted for this for years. That was one of the reasons for me starting my ruby gschem clone one year ago. Maybe the wedana html5 clone will support a new user interface? But for gschem: Some people seems to really love the current behaviour. For me, I never loved the many tool changes, and I was never able to remember all the key combinations. er is edit rotate, ve is view extend. For the later I am not really sure -- have not used gschem for a year. But because some people love the current behaviour, our only chance may be to add an additional alternative mode, which may be not really easy. When we are allowed to make that dramatic changes at all? Moving elements without have to select it first is really nice. And drag select and zoom into window if started on a void area. And panning if we move an element with middle mouse button. And of course starting nets when hitting pin or net ends. All without having to change the tool. That is fun for new users and part time users. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: CERN goes for KiCAD
Hello John, I am really happy (and a bit of surprised) that critical postings are still allowed for this list. On Tue, 2011-09-06 at 22:07 -0400, John Hudak wrote: You might want to consider import/export capability for the most widely used commercial product (not sure what that is at the moment). Import/Export is fine for all free/open available formats. Unfortunately many important formats are not free, so we would have to do reverse engineering or use confidential leaked documentation. Some of us refuse to do that, including me. An example is the specctre format. You may want to consider the following as well: 1) An updated tutorial that is accurate Yes, to make simple minded people happy we need all that. Smart people seems to have not really big problems with current gEDA state. The problem with simple minded people (like me :-) ) is, that they are consumers (stupid and greedy), with no intention and skills to really contribute. And they do not understand or care about the difference between free speech and free beer. Many of your points are easily to fix even for people with no programming skills, ie. writing new, really fine documentation. But it is hard, boring work, so I do understand that the developers prefer coding. DJ has done it very well with his http://www.delorie.com/pcb/docs/gs/gs.html -- unfortunately some beginners miss that tutorial. And it would be fine to have a few more clean and consistent documents like this. Do you think all that is really better for other tools? I am not convinced. Best regards, Stefan Salewski ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: pcb gtk: Toggle buttons for route styles?
On Thu, 2011-09-01 at 17:35 -0700, Russell Dill wrote: I'll just sit back and wish for auto-route style by net property. Yes, I still think that old wish would be an improvement. One more step from a painting program to real EDA. Having properties/attributes like width, clearance, impedance, max-length for traces, pins and pads may be an advantage for manual and auto-routing. I know from DJ that we already have PCB support of attributes for imported netlist -- but it may be very difficult to propagate it to each trace segment. And of course, some people prefer plain painting, if I remember the toporouter discussion correctly. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: gschem: Modifier keys for moving?
On Mon, 2011-08-29 at 10:07 -0700, Colin D Bennett wrote: Are you running an old version of GTK? My pcb tear-off menus are completely nonfunctional -- clicking menu items on the torn-off menu does not toggle the checkmark, for instance. Works fine for gtk+-2.24.4 and pcb-20100929 shipped with Gentoo Linux (AMD64). But tear-off menu may be deprecated for GTK3? ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
gEDA-user: gschem: Modifier keys for moving?
If my memory is correct, there are plans (have seen a patch at geda-dev long time ago?) to allow moving of objects without need of selecting them first for gschem1.8, as suggested in my draft http://www.ssalewski.de/PetEd.png Would it make sense to have modifier keys for moving? I would like rubberband mode for plain move, and no rubberband when SHIFT is hold down. I think currently we have to type or or use pulldown menu -- at least there should be an icon for fast toggling. And of course, there should be much more, i.e a combo-box for grid size with default values 100, 50, 25, 10 and entry field for custom values. (why these void area on the right of the 10 icons in gschem GUI?) ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: pcb HID GUI options: gtk, lesstif?
On Wed, 2011-08-24 at 13:53 -0400, DJ Delorie wrote: eh, one of the reasons I really like having two monitors is so I can I have four monitors (monitors are cheap!). layout on the main monitor, menus and dialogs on the left, pdfs on the right, schematic on the upper. More or less related: Gimp seems to prefer (default to) one large window now, as reported by heise yesterday. http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/GIMP-2-7-3-arrives-with-single-window-mode-1328585.html ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
gEDA-user: Shadows for selected symbols?
As you may know some time ago I had the idea of using shadow effects for highlighting of selected symbols in schematics. I put a picture on my page: http://www.ssalewski.de/PetEd.html.en (Picture may be too large for the page, you may have to use something like show picture in your browser to get a clear view.) I am using shadow, lighter color and thicker lines when elements are selected or the mouse pointer hovers over it. The effect is additive, strongest result when pointer hovers over an already selected element. It looks fine when zoomed in, but unfortunately it is not very easy to find all selected elements when the display is small. The largest disadvantage is, that we are limited with useful colors. What I like is the clamping of lower linewidth, and the ability to move elements without the need of first selecting it. Best wishes, Stefan Salewski ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: tragesym error - help please!
On Fri, 2011-08-12 at 14:27 -0400, John Hudak wrote: So I follow the tutorial on creating a gschem symbol I think I have seen similar reports a few times on this list, see http://archives.seul.org/geda/user/Mar-2011/msg00316.html http://archives.seul.org/geda/user/Mar-2011/msg00318.html and maybe the other postings of that thread. Unfortunately many people do not tell us when they finally solve the problem, so I have no idea what really was going wrong. I will send you a direct copy of this mail, due to moderation the list is very slow. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Constraint-based PCB footprint design
On Mon, 2011-08-08 at 03:47 +0100, Rob Spanton wrote: Hey all, I've recently been playing around with designing footprints by describing a set of constraints that position features relative to each other. This is rather than specifying the absolute co-ordinates of every feature. Interesting, but I have to admit that I think my one in better suited for regular shaped devices. (http://www.ssalewski.de/SFG.html.en) Do we have a list of all available generators? Would be useful to find the best one for a special type of footprint. Yours may be very good for irregular shapes, with not too many pads. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Linux Desktop für gEDA
On Thu, 2011-08-04 at 15:33 -0400, DJ Delorie wrote: just log out, Log out? Log OUT? What's that? ;-) Uptime 60 days, logged in 60 days ago... I can remember that you built something like a power meter some time ago. What is the power consumption of your box, and how much arctic polar ice have you melt in the last 60 days? Just switch it off (if not absolutely necessary) -- Nancy Reagan would say. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_Say_No ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: pcb GL can't render stretched arcs
On Sat, 2011-07-16 at 00:18 -0700, Andrew Poelstra wrote: There is a fairly informative discussion of this problem on SO: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2945337/how-to-detect-if-an-ellipse-intersectscollides-with-a-circle Or you may look at http://www.geometrictools.com/Documentation/Documentation.html http://www.geometrictools.com/Documentation/DistanceEllipse2Ellipse2.pdf ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: pcb GL can't render stretched arcs
On Sat, 2011-07-16 at 19:16 +0200, Karl Hammar wrote: Stefan Salewski: http://www.geometrictools.com/Documentation/DistanceEllipse2Ellipse2.pdf It seems a little too general and it is a 35MB download [1]. Their code seems to be in LibMathematics/Intersection/Wm5IntrEllipse2Ellipse2.cpp and at a quick glance it seems to be a lot of calculations. Do you have any experience about their library ? Regards, /Karl Hammar I am using their solution for Distance point to line segment, it is fine. Many other sources, as the mathematica site, confuses it with the simpler solution for an infinite line. But I was in need for distance to finite line segment -- and I was not smart enough to find that simple solution myself. Of course math for ellipses is more difficult, but I think the www.geometrictools.com page is really nice, I have bookmarked it. But I have not looked at their ellipses code. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
gEDA-user: CERN launches Open Hardware Licence 1.1
http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/CERN-launches-Open-Hardware-Licence-1-1-1276096.html ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: web version of gschem/pcb
On Mon, 2011-06-20 at 10:42 -0700, Josh Jordan wrote: I think it would be a big advance to port the gschem/pcb formats to javascript and svg. It would make geda accessible to every platform and really make it easy for new users to get started. It would make development easier if you only support a set of standards instead of different build environments that overall run on a minority of the systems out there. Javascript and SVG with local data can perform as well as any desktop application in 2d graphics. -Josh Jordan Please note: Recently someone wrote a HTML5 viewer for gschem schematics, and someone other reported about his effort to port gEDA file format to svg. You may find that in the archives for this list. Personally I would be happy if YOU can make a web based version -- if you have the time, skills and motivation to do it. (Although I do not see too much benefit for it, and I can not imagine that a web based PCB editor can compete with Peter C.'s GL branch. And for me other task, as continuing the orphaned toporouter or better integration of gnucap simulation would be of more benefit.) As you may know, I am working with low priority on a tiny gschem clone written from scratch in Ruby using Cairo and GTK. I have spent about 450 hours of work for that project now, and I am far away from an useful tool still. (I can read gschem files, draw, zoom, pan and move elements -- really very limited still.) Best regards Stefan Salewski ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: help request: gnetlist not reading scm files
On Tue, 2011-06-14 at 17:20 -0400, Ethan Swint wrote: For some reason, when I call gnetlist, e.g. gnetlist -g BOM2 asymmetric_3phs.sch -o bom.txt it encounters an error: Failed to read BOM2 scm file [/usr/share/gEDA/scheme/gnet-BOM2.scm] Backtrace: In current input: 1: 0* (BOM2 output.net) unnamed port:1:1: In expression (BOM2 output.net): unnamed port:1:1: Unbound variable: BOM2 The files are present and have read permissions. I'm using the bundled version in Fedora 14, geda-gnetlist-1:1.6.2-1.fc14 (x86_64). Anyone else run into a similar problem? Thanks, Ethan Guess: try bom2 as advertised from gnetlist -g help If that does not help, then we have to wait for a reply from smart people. I have no idea about the meaning of the error messages... ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Python: Task list ...
On Fri, 2011-05-27 at 13:33 +0900, John Doty wrote: Hmm, Python seems popular, Eagle, Windows, Basic, Java are popular too -- if popularity is your concern. Seriously -- I am not too happy that Python is praised, but Ruby is mentioned only a few times here. Both languages are very similar. Python is more popular in western countries, one reason is that it was available earlier here, why Ruby started in Japan. Ruby is more popular for web development, while Python is stronger in scientific world, numpy, mathplotlib ... ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Task list for: Solving the light/heavy symbol problem
On Thu, 2011-05-26 at 11:52 -0400, DJ Delorie wrote: Maybe we should aim at core gnetlist API being available in libgeda? Or in libgnetlist? What would this API provide? Would PCB need/want to use it? Unfortunately I was not able to follow all the discussions on this list, so maybe my question is already answered somewhere: What is the intended workflow gschem - PCB in future? Currently we have gsch2pcb (gnetlist) and I read that recent PCB can read gschem schematics direct -- I have no idea how PCB does this, is PCB using gnetlist, or only parsing the schematics files? (So gnetlist will become obsolete for gschem - PCB workflow?) The reason why I am asking: I would like to transfer extended information from schematics to initial PCB layout, i.e. position of elements (initial position of footprints should be similar to symbol position in schematics) and optional attributes for each net segment. My intention was to define something like an extended netlist format, which may contain footprint names and there position and nets with attributes (width, impedance, length, ...) Maybe all that is obsolete already -- sometimes development speed is so fast that I can not really follow... ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Reinventing the wheel
On Wed, 2011-05-18 at 19:26 +0200, Kai-Martin Knaak wrote: Russell Shaw wrote: I think Scheme could be made much more attractive in geda if it was adequately explained in documentation or a tutorial. +1 I wouldn't mind to learn (a new language). But to learn a new language by almost non-commented code is just too much of a barrier. ---)kaimartin(--- The problem in not only missing documentation, but the fact that not all geda guile code is really clean and beautiful, as stated by one of the experts some time ago on this list. I don't know if that is true, but I have seen that even experts had to work hard to make small improvements. I think that learning lisp/scheme/guile is an interesting (academic) task. But I think that gEDA is not a really good point to start learning, because: 1. the C-guile interaction and 2. the risk of breaking something. And finally: It is hard to see the real benefit of mixing c and guile in geda for simple people like me. For PCB C plugins seem to work fine. Guile may be really fine for writing extensions/exporters, but very few people really do it. And guile itself seems to be not a masterpiece of software -- gentoo package maintainers have to struggle with version conflicts, guile is not used much at all (OK, gimp has guile script support). ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Reinventing the wheel
On Tue, 2011-05-17 at 20:36 +1000, Russell Shaw wrote: On 17/05/11 02:44, DJ Delorie wrote: Hi, A schematic/pcb editor is not huge unless it's done in an inelegant way. A very first task i would do is create a decent gui for drawing the symbol and footprint in the schematic/pcb library, and make a decent library browser. Then i would make a drawing mode so that whatever symbol i click on in the schematic, will appear under the mouse in the pcb. Likewise, clicking a pcb symbol hilights it in the schematic. I'd design everything from the ground up to decent reverse annotations so that pin and gate swapping in the pcb appears in the schematic. Hierarchical schematics is a must too. By serializing all the gui actions internally, undo/redo and scripting is easy to add. Creating a schematic and pcb should be done productively within the first hour of never having used the program, yet have no limitations for power users. Everything in geda is 180deg opposite to what i'd do. gEDA/PCB may be not the ultimate tools, but they work not bad, when you have learned to use them. (I guess for KiCAD it is similar) Most other commercial tools, like the popular eagle, or the more than 10k Euro professional tools, needs a long learning period. I was told that companies consider a 3 month learning period with seminars for employees when they switch their 10k professionals tools. EDA design is different from custom office tools! And an application interface is not bad, just because it is not like latest Apple/Windows style. I really would be happy if we can try YOUR EDA suite soon -- but I know how fast these great projects can fail. Your sentence A very first task i would do is create a decent gui for drawing the symbol and footprint in the schematic/pcb library, and make a decent library browser. makes me not really confident. Best regards, Stefan Salewski ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Reinventing the wheel
On Tue, 2011-05-17 at 12:02 +0100, Peter Clifton wrote: Core features in the PCB editor can be pretty complex. We have a lot of code for dealing with polygon geometry, May we consider use of clipping libraries like http://angusj.com/delphi/clipper.php ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Reinventing the wheel
On Tue, 2011-05-17 at 23:35 +1000, Russell Shaw wrote: I was expert at using high-end HP DCS/PCDS on unix boxes 20 years ago before it got discontinued, and a few other cad systems since then. A very first task i would do is create a decent gui for drawing the symbol and footprint in the schematic/pcb library, and make a decent library browser. makes me not really confident. I've thought of all the implementation and usage problems for a *long* time. I've been coding on lower level problems for quite a while too. Great -- the FOSS EDA world really needs some more smart and active people. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Reinventing the wheel
On Tue, 2011-05-17 at 23:59 +1000, Russell Shaw wrote: Instead of blindly reinventing the wheel, i always look in detail at what currently exists. Maybe KiCAD is a better starting point for you? Written in C++ with wxWidgets, it is available for multiple OS including windows. Here in Germany KiCad is more popular than gEDA/PCB, even for Linux users. I do not really understand this, I have never find time and motivation to really test KiCad myself. While gEDA/PCB has some serious users and a large list of projects done with gEDA, KiCAD users seems to be more childreen type, making boards with a power LED and a led driver chip... On the KiCAD developer mailing list there is much activity, but there are only a few really smart and active developers, so development progress is slow. Indeed, nearly all windows KiCAD users seems to be only consumers, without any contributions. And there is Fritzing or Qucs -- Qucs has schematics and simulation support, but PCB backend is missing. Once I had the strange idea to implement a PCB or schematics mode for inkscape. Really crazy. Best wishes, Stefan Salewski ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Reinventing the wheel
On Wed, 2011-05-18 at 00:41 +1000, Russell Shaw wrote: The problem with KiCAD is 1) C++, 2) Qt. C++ was a *really* bad idea. Qt i don't like because it was fundamentally architected just for the sake of hiding code from users using the MOC preprocessor that used to be closed source. Anyway, it's C++ too. KiCAD uses wxWidgets, not (direct) QT. Qucs uses QT. Many people seems to like QT. When I started learning GUI programming for Linux some years ago, I decided for GTK, against QT. Because GTK is more in the spirit of FOSS. But most people seems to vote for QT, against GTK. Popularity of QT may drop, when there is less support from Nokia in future. C++: I have never managed to really learn it -- with a background in Pascal/Modula/Oberon I was never really happy with C++. But for a PCB layout tool C++ may be still the best choice. Ruby and Python are nice for non time critical applications. Vala may be a nice option, as long we are programming for GTK/Gnome. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Reinventing the wheel
On Wed, 2011-05-18 at 01:06 +1000, Russell Shaw wrote: I'm still studying geda, but if i did some real work on it, it would end up having an extra file format, extra guis, and a closer sch/pcb link. Maybe a good starting point is defining a new extended file format. (For current pcb footprint keepouts and copper arcs are missing...) If that format is fine, someone may write importers and exporters for gschem, PCB, maybe KiCAD. But even this is a big task -- some like the gschem format with position dependent meaning, some like XML, YAML, SVG. I think it is not a bad idea to have separate tools for schematic capture and PCB layout work -- the tasks are really different, sometimes done by different people. A closer coupling would be fine -- back annotation and cross probing. That is easier in an integrated tool. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Reinventing the wheel
On Mon, 2011-05-16 at 12:44 -0400, DJ Delorie wrote: I've always been interested in CAD programs and thought of making a schematic/pcb one from scratch. I've never truly understood why people would rewrite a (potentially) huge application set just because. Why not start with the existing tools and just rewrite the parts you're interested in? Like, start with pcb's HID modules but swap out the core? (and if you really want to get *that* involved in pcb layout tools, there *are* parts of pcb that could stand to be ripped out and replaced... ;) I have no idea whom you cite, sorry. Many people dream about designing and building an own house -- and most computer science students dream about writing a compiler from scratch -- at the beginning of the education. Later they learn how difficult it is (writing a good one for a complicated language) and do something easier. Of course, only a very young child can do really something from scratch -- older people always build on existing knowledge, even when they write new code. Reasons for writing from scratch: - licenses - other programming language - other GUI toolkit - other operating system - other target audience (Fritzing has other target than gEDA/PCB/KICAD - learning - fun CLANG -- gcc , wayland -- xfree86, inkscape -- xfig -- a few promising rewrites from scratch. I think for learning purposes writing something from scratch is always a good decision. In most cases improving existing software is much more pragmatic. In my opinion, writing a PCB layout tool from scratch is very much work -- at least 5k hours for a very smart guy. (A group of people may need much more than 5k hours total, because they have to agree on language and Toolkit before starting and may waste much time with discussions.) For a simple schematics editor the task is much easier in these days, we have support through nice OO languages like Ruby or Python, GUI Toolkits like GTK or QT, and drawing support by libraries like cairo. So it was my idea that writing a (basic) gschem clone can be done in 1k hours resulting in about 15k lines of code. I started writing just for fun in last summer, now after about 400 hours of work I think that my initial estimation was not too bad, I think 25% is done. But I am still learning GTK, Cairo and Ruby, so progress was slow. If I really should finish that work, what is the benefit? 15k lines of code instead of 120k, only Ruby code, instead of C mixed with guile, and a smarter user interface. Not much, but maybe a better skeleton for other contributors? I don't know. Today, I think that working on the PCB (Topo)-Router instead of a gschem clone would have been a much more valuable task. But until one year ago Anthony's progress was so awesome, that it was my feeling that I had not much to offer in that direction. Now Anthony an his router has vanished -- but still I think that that task is better suited for really smart people, smarter than me. From time to time, when I have contact to a smart one with interests in electronics and programming, I tell him about that topic. Now that Anthony's homepage has disappeared, it is even more difficult to catch smart guys. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: physics Re: Reinventing the wheel
On Mon, 2011-05-16 at 20:52 +0200, Stephan Boettcher wrote: John Doty j...@noqsi.com writes: Because when the theory is all epicycles and no physics, there's no foundation upon which to stand. Epicycles are no less physics than Keplers Laws. Epicycles really reminds me to gEDA. Both were great at their time, both still work. But today we can imagine more elegant tools. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: One more viewer for gEDA data.
On Fri, 2011-05-13 at 23:22 +0300, Павел Таранов wrote: Hi, I'd like to introduse project Wedana ([1]http://wedana.sf.net), which is based on the gEDA file format. This project is HTML5 renderer (and editor) for the gEDA file formats. A very interesting project. I was not aware that HTML5 (canvas) already supports editing of graphics -- can you point me to a description and a minimal example, like scribble-window? Is your project related to the suggested file format change to SVG recently proposed by Andrew Seddon? Do you intend to copy gschem editing behaviour? In my Ruby gschem clone I have used a more smart mode: I can move elements and net endpoints, select elements, zoom, pan -- and start new nets when clicking on pin or net ends. So we can do most basic operation in this smart mode, only for special operations we have to switch to dedicated modes. I really like that, but it is a little bit more complicated, I still have to spend some hours to get it really working. Best regards, Stefan Salewski ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: How to make a ground plane in PCB and attach all GND and VSS nets
On Mon, 2011-05-02 at 13:49 -0600, John Doty wrote: locate .sym | grep -i lm317 locate -i lm317 | grep .sym should give the same result, with less consume of resources. Indeed | grep .sym should be obsolete here. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: How to make a ground plane in PCB and attach all GND and VSS nets
On Mon, 2011-05-02 at 14:08 -0600, John Doty wrote: On May 2, 2011, at 1:58 PM, Stefan Salewski wrote: On Mon, 2011-05-02 at 13:49 -0600, John Doty wrote: locate .sym | grep -i lm317 locate -i lm317 | grep .sym should give the same result, with less consume of resources. Indeed | grep .sym should be obsolete here. Close, but grep treats the . as a wildcard, so the results include a couple of things that aren't symbols. Thanks -- I should never forget that most people on this list are really smart :-) (There may exist boxes without installed locate program, so it may be necessary to install a package like mlocate or slocate.) ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Wrong Pinout for LM337
On Thu, 2011-04-28 at 20:24 -0300, Daniel B. wrote: Hi geda-user@ The LM337 symbol (lm337-1.sym) has a wrong pinout. Seems that LM337 symbol shipped with geda has no associated footprint, so we can not definitely say that pinout is wrong. It may be better to say that pinnumbers do not match numbers in datasheet. Kai-Martin provides a version with associated footprint at gedasymbols: http://www.gedasymbols.org/user/kai_martin_knaak/symbols/analog/LM337.sym ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: RFC using SVG with semantic markup as an EDA format
On Sun, 2011-04-10 at 21:55 +0100, Andrew Seddon wrote: I am exploring the idea of using the Scalable Vector Graphics standard as an EDA format. https://github.com/seddona/svgparts Would be interested in your thoughts, there's a little more explanation on my blog. What would be the benefit of SVG? Arbitrary symbol sizes? We can scale our current symbols already, but a schematic with very many different symbol sizes will look strange. Indeed limited scaling may be fine, ie. scaling our 900 units long resistor to 800 or 1000 units length -- but pins should always end on a 100 grid multiple. (no that is not really needed to connect nets, but for ordered look.) Currently SVG export should be a trivial task due to cairo -- similar to PS and PDF export. Filled SVG paths are fine, we have it, still without editing support. Do we need other fancy graphics? I do not think so. Schematics design is not really art work. If we really want full SVG, we may consider a Schematic Mode for Inkscape. But Inkscape is really a large, complex tool. If it is possible to embedd all the elelectronics stuff like attributes, net connection, slots, ... in SVG file, then it may be OK. But the effort -- it is similar to a complete rewrite of gschem. And a rewrite -- again C and guile and GTK? PS: We may consider using inkscapes svg icon set for geda/pcb. Inkspape is GPL, so it should be OK. You may look at files /usr/share/inkscape/icons/icons.svg /usr/share/inkscape/icons/tango_icons.svg Very nice icon set, I intend using it for my plain ruby gschem clone. Best regards, Stefan Salewski ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: RFC using SVG with semantic markup as an EDA format
On Mon, 2011-04-11 at 23:18 +0800, Steven Michalske wrote: This is what I see as a benefit. If you go to a vendor's website you will find one or two EDA footprint and symbol files. But nothing that was a bell ringer for commonality. It would be nice to have a universal starting point. There is EDIF but I see EDIF as not being so useful, i think they tried to do too many things, and failed to get them all correct. As one file format to rule them all. I rather see svg symbol format, svg footprint format, and svg format. Steve For svg footprints we have two problems: We always have to convert it to old gerber format before sending to manufacturer. (Or to another format which manufacturers support, I think no one currently supports svg.) And if we scale footprints, we should not to forget to scale our (real word) components with the same factor. Of course, would be fine: If our case is too small for our device, just scale the whole thing down. :-) ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: RFC using SVG with semantic markup as an EDA format
On Mon, 2011-04-11 at 07:50 -0400, Ethan Swint wrote: On 04/10/2011 04:55 PM, Andrew Seddon wrote: I am exploring the idea of using the Scalable Vector Graphics standard as an EDA format. https://github.com/seddona/svgparts Would be interested in your thoughts, there's a little more explanation on my blog. You might want to check out Fritzing (fritzing.org). It targets non-EEs, but they have all of their graphics in SVG. The have a paper http://www.svgopen.org/2009/papers/33-SVG_in_Fritzing_a_Case_Study/ ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Attribute Net (without pin assignment) - for Power and Port Symbols
On Mon, 2011-04-11 at 23:25 +0100, Peter Clifton wrote: I would advise a note of caution. What some people do not like is the visible :1 in schematics -- can we simple suppress that output for symbols with only one pin and digit 1 after the : That would be a not too dangerous patch, because it concerns only graphical output. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: inherited attributes
On Fri, 2011-04-08 at 16:29 -0400, Vincent wrote: Here are the 2 sym original and the modified respectively. You have modified much... This is the output of gsymcheck for the second symbol, please check. stefan@AMD64X2 ~/ttt $ gsymcheck -vv s2.sym Read garbage in [/home/stefan/ttt/s2.sym] : Checking: /home/stefan/ttt/s2.sym Warning: Found the same number in a pinnumber attribute and in a net attribute [16] ERROR: Invalid pintype=PWR attribute ERROR: Invalid pintype=IN attribute ERROR: Invalid pintype=IN attribute ERROR: Invalid pintype=IN attribute ERROR: Found duplicate pinseq=6 attribute in the symbol ERROR: Found duplicate pinseq=6 attribute in the symbol 1 warnings found 6 ERRORS found ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: New mass attribute tool: gattrib_csv
On Sat, 2011-04-02 at 00:34 +0200, Kai-Martin Knaak wrote: Joshua wrote: I wrote a tool which exports and imports the properties from a project to and to a csv file. The format is simular to that of the bom2 format as it groups lines together which have similar data. This way I could use oocalc to mass edit the attributes. This is great! Yes. I always wondered, why geda tries to reinvent spread sheet wheels with gattrib. I think the gattrib effort is justified, when it can be integrated into gschem. I know -- different tools for different task. But for me creating a schematic is one task, we should have a graphical, and a spreadsheet view. I will try to realize something like that for my ruby gschem clone -- maybe in far future. I was indeed thinking of an attribute -- Speadsheet conversion -- for me the problem was, that schematics are not really flat, symbols have attributes and pins, and pins have again attributes. I still have to learn how that java program solves that problem. Best wishes, Stefan Salewski ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Two Power Supplies in gschem
On Sat, 2011-04-02 at 19:02 -0300, Daniel B. wrote: Hi geda-user@, I'm kinda new to gschem (in fact, first time learning a electronics cad software) and a little confused about the power pins issue. I read the geda-faq:gschem and found that it's a good practice to NOT hide the power pins. Is this related to the design of the symbol? Are there some (generic) attribute common to all symbols that makes the power pin visible? I'm trying to draw a circuit that uses 2 different power supplies, 12V and 5V. Are there any other good way to design this type of circuit? Any old topic in archive might be helpful too. Thank you in advance. A difficult point for beginners -- we should have an entry in the FAQ for this. Short answer: Symbols can have invisible power pin, i.e some logic gates symbols have entries like net=GND:7 or net=+5V:14 or net=VCC:14 If you put multiple such symbols on your schematic these pins (pin 7 or 14) are connected for the netlist, and later on the PCB board. Today often multiple voltages are used, so hidden power pins can generate problems, use of something like VCC can be bad, because it may stand for 3.3V and 5V and may generates unwanted shorts. So it may be better to always use explicit visible power pins -- use power pin like other ordinary pins, connect pins with nets. You may use Power-symbols like GND to give names to these nets, or you may use the netname attribute to give names to nets. Nets with the same name become connected. There is no magic to switch between visible and invisible pins, the author of the symbols decides how he wants it. Things become even more complicated when we put the visible power pins to a separate symbol instance. You may find examples for all kinds of symbols at http://www.gedasymbols.org/ DJs and Wilsons tutorial may help http://www.delorie.com/pcb/docs/gs/gs.html http://geda.seul.org/wiki/geda:gsch2pcb_tutorial It is not easy for beginners, and my english is really bad today, sorry. I hope someone other can explain it in better words. Best regards, Stefan Salewski ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Multi-Select with SHIFT, CTRL...
On Sat, 2011-03-19 at 13:14 -0700, Steven Michalske wrote: Scroll wheel: rotate selection or element under mouse pointer If nothing is selected and mouse pointer is over unpopulated area or SHIFT modifier is used: Zoom in/out Track pad users may want scroll to be scrolling So we should have an option to ignore the scroll wheel for rotate/zoom. Of course for zooming we should have additional keyboard and button support. And for zooming into a selection rectangle I currently consider using the middle mouse button. For rotating elements again we will have keyboard and button support -- but I think using the scroll wheel would be really fun, i.e for rotating text. If your toolkit allows for the apple trackpad gestures... That could add a few options into the mix PCB or gschem, one of them, has gesture support by a library -- once I have asked on this list about it, but it seem that nobody uses that. I have currently no idea about gestures, so I do not intend supporting it now. In net mode double left click ends the current net. Yes -- not a true double click (in a small time interval) but simple adding a net segment of length 0. As supported by gschem. ESC and maybe another key will also end net segments. LMBD + LMBU over hot pin end: start new net segment You added net end, but starting at the middle of a net segment is valuable too. Yes, but grabbing an element in the middle is used generally for moving or selecting, so we may have a conflict. We may try to resolve it, or have a Start new net button for that case. I consider a only onces mode beside real modal operation: For example, it may occur that we intend only a single mirror operation without leaving the current mode (comming back after one mirror operation) or we want a real mirror mode, where each click on an element will mirror that one. My current idea: If an element is selected/highlighted then mirror button or key will mirror that selected element. If noting is selected, then we will enter a permanent mirror mode. Additional, I will support highlight of elements, when the mouse pointer is hovering over it. Current highlight method is making colors brighter, move the element a few pixel to upper right, and draw a shadow, generating the impression of lifting the elements. Problem: We can not use white (pin) color, because there is no brighter shade of white, and shadow works not good for dark backgrounds. Of course we can always use fallback to a plain monochrome highlight color. Another method is drawing highlighted elements with thicker lines -- I have not tested that yet. Best regards, Stefan Salewski ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Tragesym template problem.
On Sat, 2011-03-19 at 15:57 -0700, Daniel Ross wrote: Hello, I am trying to fill out the Tragesym template for an ATmega128RFA1, but the script gives me an error when I pass it the CSV file (renamed to a .sch file): error: version attribut missing In the template, I had changed the example version number to 20110319 1, following the format of the template version number. I verified that the CSV file contains a version line. Has anyone out there found a solution to this problem? I am following the tutorial at http://geda.seul.org/wiki/geda:tragesym_tutorial;, using the OpenOffice template. Thanks, Dan. Hm -- have not used tragesym for more than a year. Tragesym is fine, but I do not like the documentation. Please note, input to tragesym is plain text. I really wonder why they advertise use of spreadsheet, I have always used a plain text editor. (OK, spreadsheet may be fine if you try to copy from pdf datasheet...) Do not call tragesym input .sch, that is for schematics. I used .txt extension, it is plain text. The version should be not current date, if I remember correctly, but something related with gschem version. I think that version is copied to symbols, if it is to high, gschem may refuse loading the symbol. My final guess: There may be something wrong with your input file for tragesym, maybe in front of version line. Watch in a plain text editor. You may find working tragesym input files for testing at www.gedasymbols.org. Or fill in tragesym's template.txt with a text editor, leaving version line unchanged. Of course, some people prefer djboxsym, available at www.gedasymbols.org. But tragesym is fine for me. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
gEDA-user: Multi-Select with SHIFT, CTRL...
Is there a guide how multi-select should work for tools like PCB and gschem? I have done a short google search and some test with PCB and gschem, but I am not really sure that I fully grab it. I think we should have these actions: Select Add_To_Selection Subtract_From_Selection Toggle I think we are free to use SHIFT and CTRL modifiers for left mouse button. Each for element under mouse pointer or in selection rectangle. And yes, I continue working on my Ruby gschem clone, from time to time. It is some labor, but I think it is worth the effort. Best regards, Stefan Salewski ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Multi-Select with SHIFT, CTRL...
On Fri, 2011-03-18 at 17:26 +0100, Stefan Salewski wrote: Is there a guide how multi-select should work for tools like PCB and gschem? OK, found the gnome guide -- have too read it: http://library.gnome.org/devel/hig-book/2.32/hig-book.html http://library.gnome.org/devel/hig-book/2.32/hig-book.html#input-mouse ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Multi-Select with SHIFT, CTRL...
On Fri, 2011-03-18 at 19:17 -0400, DJ Delorie wrote: shift-leftclick on object Don't forget about select-region, select-touching, select-touching-line, etc. I guess that is not too common in schematics? Here is my current draft for my gschem clone: Peted intended user interface behaviour -- first draft -- LMBD: Left mouse button down (press) action LMBU: Left mouse button up (release) action MMBD: Middle mouse button down (press) action MMBU: Middle mouse button up (release) action RMBD: Right mouse button down (press) action Our intention is to have a smart AUTO mode which will allow to do the most common actions fast with minimal effort (beside traditional special modes like Move, Net, Erase, Line, Arc, Text, ...) These action include: Select, move, copy, delete, rotate, start new net. LMBD over element: Start moving element, LMBU will terminate action, element is unselected LMBD + LMBU over element (no motion): select element, unselect all other SHIFT + LMBD + LMBU over element: add element to selection CTRL + LMBD + LMBU over element: toggle element, leave other unchanged LMBD over unpopulated area: start selection rectangle No modilier: elements in rectangle will become selected, other unselected SHIFT modifier: add elements in rectangle to selection, other unchanged CTRL modifier: toggle state of elements in rectangle, other unchanged MMBD: put a copy of selected element(s) to position of mouse pointer special case: MMBD over selected element: detete it if nothing is selected or SHIFT modifier is used: panning RMBD: Context sensitive menu open Scroll wheel: rotate selection or element under mouse pointer If nothing is selected and mouse pointer is over unpopulated area or SHIFT modifier is used: Zoom in/out LMBD + LMBU over hot pin end: start new net segment Missing: Zoom into rectangle For element properties we will not use a popup window opened by double click, but a separate area at the left or right of the main window. Properties of selected elements are displayed in this area and can be modified. This area can be used for various other purposes, i.e. symbol library preview, color selections, ...It should be possible to fully shrink this area. At the bottom of the main window we may have an area for log messages. We should try to allow multiple instances of our GUI window, showing different or the same content. For the last case, we can display an overview in one window, while we work on details in a different window, maybe both windows can reside on different monitors. Of course it should be possible to use only one window, and switch between different content. Have I forgotten common important actions? ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Multi-Select with SHIFT, CTRL...
On Fri, 2011-03-18 at 19:47 -0400, DJ Delorie wrote: Don't forget about select-region, select-touching, select-touching-line, etc. I guess that is not too common in schematics? select-region is *very* common. Of course I will support selection with a rectangular bounding box. Does your select-region mean an arbitrary shaped area? select-touching-line would be really handy to select a group of angled lines, without selecting the non-angled lines they're connected to. Basically, you draw a line with the select tool, and anything that line touches is selected. Sure, this is a MODE we can implement -- currently I consider the most common actions, which should be accessible very easy, in best case only with the mouse, or with mouse and a modifier key. My goal is to prevent many mode switches. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Multi-Select with SHIFT, CTRL...
On Sat, 2011-03-19 at 00:41 +0100, Stefan Salewski wrote: LMBD + LMBU over hot pin end: start new net segment I mean: LMBD + LMBU over hot pin end or existing net end: start new net segment For starting a new net segment from void area we will have to activate net mode. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Metric, Imperial, Rounding, DRC, and board houses
On Mon, 2011-02-21 at 15:23 -0700, Russell Dill wrote: I'm starting a new design and all my components are metric based, including a few 1mm pitch BGA components. I'd really like to do the layout in metric, but I'm worried about two factors. The first of which is that PCB does not yet have the option to store things internally in metric (at least from what I understand) so rounding may occur on that end. In addition, my board house rounds everything to 2.4 format (0.1 mil). I can envision several scenarios where my design meets DRC in PCB, but fails when I send it to the board house. What is my best option? Just use imperial units and cope with weird grids? Use metric spacing, but recalculate DRC based on worst case rounding? Some other option? Use metric grid/unit, I guess most of us use that. Internal resolution is 0.01 mil, which is good. Of course nm would be better. One problem for me was, that a few 0.01 mil garbage lines were generated for the layout. Not a big problem. Some not really smart people have tried to use a very very fine grid, 0.01 mm or so. That is like using no grid at all, I call that silly. Try to use a useful basic grid like 0.25mm grid if most of your parts have 0.5mm pitch -- I think that was what I did, I am not sure. Important: Enable snap to pads/pins, so you can make good connections to imperial parts which are not on the metric grid. my board house rounds everything to 2.4 format (0.1 mil). Strange -- so pitch of metric parts may vary from pad to pad a bit. That was a problem in very old days of PCB, when 1mil internal units was used. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: gsch2pcb cannot find components
On Mon, 2011-02-21 at 17:45 -0500, Vincent wrote: Hello, Can any body help? Thank you in advance. Vinny In your working directory there may exist configuration files called project, gafrc, gschemrc or similar. Ensure that these contain valid information, i.e. paths to symbols, footprints are valid. And try to remember what you have changed in your box. Installed a new developer gEDA, compiled from source? Deleted or moved files? ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: symbol net usage
On Thu, 2011-02-17 at 08:57 -0500, George M. Gallant, Jr. wrote: I have created a symbol for the TI ADS1298. It has multiple power pins, DVdd, DVss, ADvv, AVss. For test purposes, I declared 1 of the pins as a net. Loadiing the schematic gives: Read garbage in [ads1298-1.sym] : net=AVdd:21 Is there a tutorial available that describes the proper syntax for using the net feature? The intent here is to guarantee that the design check tools can verify the power connections. (3 reviewers missed a AVss routed to AVdd!!!) Looks not wrong for me -- I would try capital letters only and maybe a pin number with only 1 digit -- for testing. http://www.geda.seul.org/wiki/geda:na_howto there may be a similar newer copy available... ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
gEDA-user: Open Source Hardware (OSHW) Definition 1.0
http://freedomdefined.org/OSHW mentioned today by german heise magazin http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Open-Source-Hardware-Definition-veroeffentlicht-1189508.html ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: PCB bug: only names, draw a line, undo: segfault
On Sun, 2011-01-30 at 14:48 +0100, Stephan Boettcher wrote: PCB version 20100929 Compiled on Nov 8 2010 at 05:46:11 Debian sid. gtk. - Settings-Only Names - draw a line - hit 'u' for undo. - segfault. Works fine for Gentoo AMD64, tested empty board and tut1.pcb. PCB version 20100929 (GTK) ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: speed of the gschem GUI
On Sat, 2011-01-22 at 06:21 +0100, Kai-Martin Knaak wrote: Hi. While working on a fairly large schematic I noticed that panning in gschem is way less snappy than the same circuit rendered as PDF in evince or kpdf. There is no benchmarking available. The ratio seems like 10. While my schematic pans in gschem with 3 to 5 FPS, it is definitely beyond 30 FPS in the PDF renderers. Since both applications deal with lines and characters, I'd naively expect similar performance. Or did I miss something? Is there any hope to speed up the gschem GUI? ---)kaimartin(--- Yes, cairo drawing looks fine and is easy to use, but is not very fast. That is why Peter C. used native OpenGL for PCB. Of course there are various strategies for increasing the speed. One is to draw all to a larger buffer and copy only the visible part to the window on the screen, this may make panning/scrolling very fast, but has overhead in used memory consumption, and zooming will be slower. A good strategy is always to have a bounding box for each element, and to draw only elements when their bounding box overlaps with the visible part on screen. So not rely on cairo's clipping. One may consider buffering strategies, i.e. buffer each symbol, buffer part of the visible screen. For me that worked not very fine. You may try to do profiling cairo's drawing, that is what is suggested from cairo developers. I still have to learn how to do that. Or you may consider employing cairo's GL backend. You may look at the cairo list, i.e http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lib.cairo/20970 Please let us know if you have first results. Best regards Stefan Salewski ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Symbol question – suggestions?
On Wed, 2011-01-05 at 14:32 +0100, Johnny Rosenberg wrote: A single 74_pwr.sym can not work for 14 and 16 pin parts, so I really recommend to do not use a 74_pwr.sym at all, but one for 14, and one for 16 pins devices. I think I called my one at gedasymbols 74xx-14N-Pwr-1.sym. But the 74LV4066 is 14-pin with GND at 7 and Vcc at 14, just like an ordinary 7400 and more. The problem is: If you have a symbol called 74_pwr.sym people may use it -- some may use it for 14 pin devices, some may use it for 16 pin devices. You may be smart enough to use it correctly -- other may not always. If there are chances for confusion, then we should use more specific files names. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Symbol question – suggestions?
On Tue, 2011-01-04 at 21:14 +0100, Johnny Rosenberg wrote: comment=Use 74_pwr.sym for supply I wrote it some months ago... A single 74_pwr.sym can not work for 14 and 16 pin parts, so I really recommend to do not use a 74_pwr.sym at all, but one for 14, and one for 16 pins devices. I think I called my one at gedasymbols 74xx-14N-Pwr-1.sym. Does the 74-series version differ in layout from 4066? May be. I am not sure I got the pin numbers right (or how to use pinseq vs pinnumber). It may be better to be sure. For pin type you may simple use pas for passive, as in resistors. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Reacquainting to geda and pcb
On Tue, 2011-01-04 at 16:09 -0500, Rob Butts wrote: How can I see the components and their footprints? Menu Window- Library ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Reacquainting to geda and pcb
On Tue, 2011-01-04 at 16:19 -0500, Rob Butts wrote: Thanks! So if I use a 1206 smt component I should set the footprint value in gschem to smt1206 or smt1206.ele? Generally use the file name, .fp can be missing. So 1206 or 1206.fp may be fine -- I use 1206. Of course these files should be in your library. You may consider doing DJ fine tutorial and maybe the wiki/wilson tutorial too. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Reacquainting to geda and pcb
On Tue, 2011-01-04 at 16:32 -0500, Rob Butts wrote: So you should have a .fp text file in a library for each footprint used in a design? For the newlib footprint format each footprint is indeed an own file, and generally newlib is recommended. For oldlib/m4 footprints are generated at the fly by calling macros -- I think it it mentioned in the wilson tutorial and maybe in the PCB documentation. I have only used m4 when I started with PCB years ago, now i am using only newlib, have forgotten all about m4, sorry. http://www.delorie.com/pcb/docs/gs/gs.html http://geda.seul.org/wiki/geda:gsch2pcb_tutorial ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
gEDA-user: Does Google do not like us any more?
From time to time I have problems finding my own geda postings again. Just tried a google search for site:archives.seul.org Boettcher huge mess Gives no results for me -- should give http://archives.seul.org/geda/user/Dec-2010/msg00491.html Is there a better way for searching? ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
gEDA-user: Wiki cleanup?
Some weeks ago I wrote On Thu, 2010-12-23 at 16:32 +0100, Stephan Boettcher wrote: Documentation of gEDA, including PCB is a huge mess, [...] Indeed, I fully agree in my heart, Do we really need this in the wiki: http://geda.seul.org/wiki/geda:pcb_tips#what_s_this_business_about_flashed_pads http://geda.seul.org/wiki/geda:faq-pcb#is_it_true_that_pcb_is_limited_to_exactly_8_copper_layers_and_2_silkscreen_layers http://geda.seul.org/wiki/geda:faq-pcb#is_it_true_that_pcb_has_no_concept_of_a_solder_mask_or_paste_mask_layer http://geda.seul.org/wiki/geda:faq-pcb#is_it_true_that_pcb_has_no_way_to_make_a_mechanical_layer_to_show_the_physical_outline_of_the_board_and_its_dimensions I do not think that these are FAQs today. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Does Google do not like us any more?
On Tue, 2011-01-04 at 23:10 +, Peter TB Brett wrote: On Tuesday 04 January 2011 22:55:39 Stefan Salewski wrote: From time to time I have problems finding my own geda postings again. Just tried a google search for site:archives.seul.org Boettcher huge mess Gives no results for me -- should give http://archives.seul.org/geda/user/Dec-2010/msg00491.html Is there a better way for searching? Have you tried GMANE? Peter Seems to work better. I was not aware that GMANE works for gEDA lists. Maybe we should place a note at gpleda.org about that. Some people may use only google resticted to site archives.seul.org. (Without limiting the search to lists or sites we do get too many results for terms like PCB, footprint'... ) ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Autorouter - distance to pins
On Tue, 2011-01-04 at 22:03 -0400, Cam Farnell wrote: Is there a way to set the minimum distance that the autorouter leaves between tracks and pins? I've looked in the manual, tried setting DRC Minimum copper spacing, tried enabling Settings-Enforce DRC clearances but the autorouter still runs tracks closer to pins than I would like. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks Cam Farnell I guess you are referring to the default router, not the toporouter. http://pcb.gpleda.org/pcb-20100929/pcb.html#Autorouter Select Route Styles at the left, increase clearance before starting the router. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Does Google do not like us any more?
On Wed, 2011-01-05 at 03:27 +0100, Kai-Martin Knaak wrote: Stefan Salewski wrote: I was not aware that GMANE works for gEDA lists. Maybe we should place a note at gpleda.org about that. done. http://geda.seul.org/wiki/geda:mailinglists ---)kaimartin(--- Thanks, GMANE works fine. For me google still refuses, tried Boettcher huge mess site:www.seul.org I think I had similar problems with www.seul.org years ago, I was thinking site:archives.seul.org works better for google. But not really good, finds only a few entries. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: series of gnetlist backend patches
On Mon, 2011-01-03 at 14:24 +0100, kai-martin knaak wrote: +1 Please don't introduce additional road blocks to double purpose schematics for pcb and simulation. I wonder if slotdef in a symbol is a good thing at all. If I place an OpAmp in a schematic -- should I decide for dual or quad really at this moment? Or better later in the PCB layout process. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
gEDA-user: Soft and Hard symbols
I guess all this was discussed on the list multiple times in the past, so this is more a note to myself... I think it may be useful to have two types of symbols, soft and hard. Hard symbols have an footprint attribute and maybe additional hard properties. Soft symbols are simple an OpAmp or a resistor -- only type, no parameters defined. For schematic entry the use can select Add soft symbol or add hard symbol (if he exactly knows what he wants). If a schematic contains soft symbols, then there is an additional step necessary before PCB layout can start: Selecting footprints and slots -- this step may be supported by databases. (The user may have the optional choice to generate hard symbols from soft ones by specifying footprints and other hard facts in an early input stage.) Note, this is not what we currently have with our light/heavy symbols. The point is, that we should make a strict decision, not make a soft transition from light to heavy but adding some attributes. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Soft and Hard symbols
On Mon, 2011-01-03 at 16:04 -0800, Edward Hennessy wrote: On Jan 3, 2011, at 8:20 AM, Stefan Salewski wrote: I guess all this was discussed on the list multiple times in the past, so this is more a note to myself... I think it may be useful to have two types of symbols, soft and hard. Hard symbols have an footprint attribute and maybe additional hard properties. Soft symbols are simple an OpAmp or a resistor -- only type, no parameters defined. For schematic entry the use can select Add soft symbol or add hard symbol (if he exactly knows what he wants). If a schematic contains soft symbols, then there is an additional step necessary before PCB layout can start: Selecting footprints and slots -- this step may be supported by databases. (The user may have the optional choice to generate hard symbols from soft ones by specifying footprints and other hard facts in an early input stage.) Besides allowing attributes to contain a value representing unknown or be empty, I don't see why the application needs to know the difference between a hard and soft symbol. If the schematic editor allows empty attributes and allows the user to edit these attributes, wouldn't it be capable of the functionality requested above? At least the slotdef attribute is an example where we currently have to make a decision in an very early design stage. If I know that I may need some OpAmps or logic gates for my design, I may want to do not care about single, dual or quad packages when drawing the schematic. But currently we have to pick one of these types -- later we may have to replace it. For many tasks heavy/hard symbols may be fine -- when we know in advance what we need. But I really would like to have the ability to do a top down design: OpAmp - VoltageFeedback - FetInput - Dual - SOT8 Similar like selection at Digikey -- and now I remember postings of DJ, I really should read his http://www.delorie.com/pcb/component-dbs.html and try to understand it. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: TI-TINA Spice and gEDA
On Fri, 2010-12-31 at 16:30 -0800, Oliver King-Smith wrote: I have been having problems with LTSpice simulating some components from TI. Why, what was not working? LTSpice with wine and Linux? I was thinking of looking at TINA-TI spice program. Has anyone tried going from gschem to TINA? So gschem - LTSpice works fine? How did you do it? I have tried TINA-TI once with Windows-XP -- not too bad for evaluating properties missing in the datasheet. But you can not really trust the spice models, one was very wrong. You may still find my problem mentioned in sci.electronics.design, but they have fixed it now. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: No-Net Copper
On Sat, 2011-01-01 at 10:33 -0500, Rick Collins wrote: Why is no-net copper useful? Rick -- use copper like silk, i.e for text, marks... -- some like to have copper below screws, for mechanical reasons -- use copper where it does not hurt, i.e if milling your boards or to save chemicals ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: European symbols?
On Sat, 2011-01-01 at 18:42 +0100, kai-martin knaak wrote: * what is the intended use of the attribute device=7400 ? I think I have used and suggested once to put not plain text strings like 7400 onto the symbol, but use an attribute, it may have been device. device may be reserved for spice, so I may have used value attribute, which should be a better choice. But still I suggest using attributes for the visible text -- one advantage is that we can modify it in the schematic, i.e. to 74HCT00. OK, lets look at http://geda.seul.org/wiki/geda:master_attributes_list Symbol only Attributes device device= is the device name of the symbol and is required by gnetlist. device= should be placed somewhere in the symbol and made invisible. Still I do not really understand that... ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: No-Net Copper
On Sat, 2011-01-01 at 12:57 -0500, Rick Collins wrote: At 11:54 AM 1/1/2011, you wrote: On Sat, 2011-01-01 at 10:33 -0500, Rick Collins wrote: Why is no-net copper useful? Rick -- use copper like silk, i.e for text, marks... -- some like to have copper below screws, for mechanical reasons -- use copper where it does not hurt, i.e if milling your boards or to save chemicals If you are milling a board, do you layout the material not removed??? Kai-Martin and I only answered your simple question: Why is no-net copper useful? Have you ever tried to use gEDA's PCB now? ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: European symbols?
On Fri, 2010-12-31 at 14:10 +0100, Johnny Rosenberg wrote: __ | | | |\ | |-––– | | |__| I've seen those too, but they are not the same as those I learned at school and have used all my life. Well, I guess that I need to make my own symbols then, and that it's no point sharing them since I am the only one who use them. Thanks for all the input. The basic ones are of course mentioned at wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic_gate But the main advantage of that shape may be, that complicated devices like http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/56/74LS192_Symbol.png/220px-74LS192_Symbol.png as used in some (german) VHDL/FPGA textbooks are available. I have no idea where to get a list of all that complicated pictures. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: European symbols?
On Fri, 2010-12-31 at 01:06 +0100, kai-martin knaak wrote: Johnny Rosenberg wrote: I looked at the gEDA symbols site, but it was very hard to find anything useful in this matter, since there was no ”preview” thing involved as far as I can see. You may point your browser to http://gedasymbols.org This is a website dedicated to symbols, footprints and other geda related stuff contributed by users. It presents previews of symbols and footprints on mouse click. Is there a complete set of symbols like the default one, but with IEC symbols instead or do I need to make them all by myself? I tend to draw my symbols the way they were taught in German university courses. So they are likely IEC compliant, but no guarantee. I can't be the only European user of this program, can I…? Surely, you are not! :-) ---)kaimartin(--- I think he was asking about these rectangular boxes, as used in german textbooks, Tietze/Schenk or Reichardt/Schwarz. Indeed I have not seen these on your page or gedasymbols at all, so you may give the full link... ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Working on a tiny schematics editor
On Thu, 2010-10-07 at 19:31 +0200, Stefan Salewski wrote: Some weeks ago I started working on a very basic schematics editor, compatible with current gschem file format. I am writing it in Ruby, using GTK/Cairo. No, the project is not death... I just managed to draw to a GTK drawing area, with zooming/panning/scrolling support. So very friendly people may already consider it a viewer for gschem schematics :-) See bottom of this page: http://www.ssalewski.de/PetEd-Demo.html.en I think one reason for start writing it was my desire to assign attributes/classes to subnets, to transfer this information to PCB to support manually- and auto-routing with already specified parameters for traces. I think, even if Anthonys Toporouter is in deep coma currently, such an application makes still some sense. So I can not promise that I will NOT continue this effort. I would be interested how many people can run the demo script (peted.rb) from the top of the above page. Are the needed rcairo bindings shipped with distributions like Ubuntu? If not, then it may be easier for people to install the whole gEDA package than to get such a short ruby script running. :-( Best wishes for the new year, Stefan Salewski ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Working on a tiny schematics editor
On Sun, 2010-12-26 at 09:28 -0500, George M. Gallant, Jr. wrote: Ran without any user intervention on Fedora 13. Installed Ruby some time ago without knowing if I would ever use it. Fine! Depending on the window sizing, either the top/bottom horizontal line heights or the left/right vertical line widths do not display fully. Yes, I think that is the intended behavour for this demo: I draw the outer rectangle exactly on the bounding box of my world, so the half thickness of the outer lines are clipped. When the aspect ratio of the rectangles world is not the same as that of the GTK window, then the GTK window is padded, so we can see full thickness either at left/right or top/bottom. For real applications we will generally increase the bounding box of our world a bit, at least so width that line thickness is not clipped. Intentionally I do allow only zoom in, not zoom out. So we can zoom to 1:1 full view fast with a few turns of the mouse wheel. I like this. If we need additional space in our world, we can always increase the bounding box. Some space we already have if the aspect ratio of world/window differs. I may support full zooming out, but for this some modifications of the behaviour of scrollbars/adjustments is necessary, and then we will need a special action to get 1/1 full view again. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Working on a tiny schematics editor
On Sun, 2010-12-26 at 11:30 -0500, Bob Paddock wrote: I would be interested how many people can run the demo script (peted.rb) from the top of the above page. Are the needed rcairo bindings shipped with distributions like Ubuntu? If not, then it may be easier for people to install the whole gEDA package than to get such a short ruby script running. :-( Under Gentoo I get this, and rcairo is installed: ruby peted.rb peted.rb:206:in `paint': undefined method `create_cairo_context' for #Gdk::Window:0x7fda529d2f90 ptr=0xcd7840 from peted.rb:122:in `darea_configure_callback' from peted.rb:69:in `initialize' from peted.rb:231:in `call' from peted.rb:231:in `show_all' from peted.rb:231:in `initialize' from peted.rb:268:in `new' from peted.rb:268 Great! I really need some support for my open Gentoo Bugzilla Bugs related to this: http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=302943 http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=338512 Please try to execute /usr/share/doc/ruby-pango-0.19.4/sample/pango_cairo.rb If that fails, please add some comment to above bug reports. Then I can increase the pressure on Gentoo people fixing that. If you will, you can fix this bug manually, as explained in the bug reports. Thanks Stefan Salewski ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Working on a tiny schematics editor
On Sun, 2010-12-26 at 17:47 +0100, Stefan Salewski wrote: Please try to execute /usr/share/doc/ruby-pango-0.19.4/sample/pango_cairo.rb If that fails, please add some comment to above bug reports. Or try /usr/share/doc/ruby-gtk2-0.19.4/sample/misc/cairo-pong.rb Should fail too, with the same message as my script. All related to the missing rb_cairo.h -- some Gentoo people seem to think that it is obsolete, but it seems to be needed on some boxes. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Working on a tiny schematics editor
On Sun, 2010-12-26 at 12:38 -0500, John Doty wrote: Stephan, this project is interesting. I'll try it on Ubuntu when I get back to Noqsi. I think I'll pass on trying it on a Mac for now (all I have here in Cambridge). I am puzzled, however, by your motivation: I wrote something about it in my initial post: http://archives.seul.org/geda/user/Oct-2010/msg00122.html On Dec 26, 2010, at 8:48 AM, Stefan Salewski wrote: I think one reason for start writing it was my desire to assign attributes/classes to subnets, to transfer this information to PCB to support manually- and auto-routing with already specified parameters for traces. Semantics like this are the responsibility of gnetlist back ends, not gschem. Indeed, the limits of our ability to continue to extend gEDA seem primarily to derive from semantics inappropriately wired in to the gnetlist front end, and to a lesser extent in gschem. The kludginess of some back ends derives from the same problem. There is nothing in gschem that prevents attaching arbitrary attributes to net segments. Unfortunately, the gnetlist front end insists on digesting the data according to rigid (and sometimes wrong!) theories of its semantics before handing it to the back end. In most cases the digested data is just what the back end writer needs (that's why simple back ends are easy to write with just a tiny bit of Scheme knowledge), but if it's not things become difficult. In this case, there appears to be no way to access net segments or their attributes from a gnetlist back end. I know all this from earlier discussions. For me there were three ways: 1. Accept current state. 2. Learn some scheme/guile, dig into the gschem/gnetlist code, try to improve it, hope that is accepted by Ales and others. 3. Write from scratch 1. is what I did for some years. I think that gschem/gnetlist works ok, with Peter C.'s cairo drawings it looks not bad. But we all see that there is no more active development. Older developers with guile knowledge retire, so simple fixes and extensions become nearly impossible. New developers are rare, and they do not like to crawl all that old mixed c/guile code. 2. is what I should have done -- maybe? 3. is the most fun. Early after starting with gEDA, my feeling was that a complete rewrite would be a good idea. The problems: Much work. The questions: Which language, which GUI Toolkit. My current feeling is: Writing a basic schematic editor, with PCB netlist export, can be done in 1k hours from a smart person, so it is not impossible. I don't think that I am really smart, and I am currently still learning GTK, so I have no good chances to get something powerful as gschem in 1000 hours. But on the other hand, now, after about 200 hours of work, I have already a very basic viewer for schematics. In only 1000 lines of Ruby code. Printing, saving the file again, moving symbols around, that all should be very easy. Netlist generation for PCB: I guess it should be not too difficult and fun. I have to admit that I have no clue about hierarchical design at the moment, I have never done that with gschem. Adding all that dialogs, storing/loading configuration, and all the other details will consume much time, but is very easy. Of course, Ales H. has done fine work in old days. When he started in 1998 -- most computers where driven by relays or vacuum tubes, with tape storage and teletyper output ;-) -- mixing guile and C may have been a good idea. Today we have GTK with Cairo and nice OO languages like Ruby. That makes writing schematics editors and netlist generation much easier. And Ruby is really a friendly language, so that the project should become more open. I guess the total code base will not be more than 10k lines. Collaboration is of course limited by all the different languages and GUI toolkits. Some may prefer Python/C ++/C#/D/Java/Vala/Lua and other, or QT/FLTK/wxWidgets. And maybe OpenGL. All that is true for PCB also -- a complete rewrite would be not a fully stupid idea. But I think there is not so much benefit of OO languages and modern toolkits for PCB. Gerber generation, polygon handling, DRC, Autorouter, all that is very difficult, it has not become easier in the last 10 years. And for performance reasons interpreted languages are of course no option anyway. Best regards Stefan Salewski ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Working on a tiny schematics editor
On Sun, 2010-12-26 at 18:57 +0100, Stephan Boettcher wrote: Stefan Salewski m...@ssalewski.de writes: I think one reason for start writing it was my desire to assign attributes/classes to subnets, to transfer this information to PCB to support manually- and auto-routing with already specified parameters for traces. Why do you need a gschem replacement for that? I'd think all you need is a new netlister. I have to modify the netlister and gschem -- gschem tries to be smart and makes one single net when multiple net segments are in a straight line. We have discussed all that long time ago -- some people said that all that is easy to do, and I really believe that it is possible. But there are so many small, easy and useful fixes for gschem, but nobody does it. Kai-Martin tried something, I think related to netlist, but failed. Maybe not so easy at all? ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Working on a tiny schematics editor
On Sun, 2010-12-26 at 14:01 -0500, Bob Paddock wrote: Is your box also AMD64 no multilib profile? I did not recall what I'd installed, and it looks like no specific profile is set, which might be the problem in itself: Interesting. For me no-multilib is marked with the star, and I do not really like to change it. As soon as you have added some comments to the Bugzilla reports I will contact some smart gentoo developers, they should manage to fix it. ste...@amd64x2 ~ $ eselect profile list Available profile symlink targets: [1] default/linux/amd64/10.0 [2] default/linux/amd64/10.0/desktop [3] default/linux/amd64/10.0/desktop/gnome [4] default/linux/amd64/10.0/desktop/kde [5] default/linux/amd64/10.0/developer [6] default/linux/amd64/10.0/no-multilib * [7] default/linux/amd64/10.0/server [8] hardened/linux/amd64 [9] hardened/linux/amd64/no-multilib [10] selinux/2007.0/amd64 [11] selinux/2007.0/amd64/hardened [12] selinux/v2refpolicy/amd64 [13] selinux/v2refpolicy/amd64/desktop [14] selinux/v2refpolicy/amd64/developer [15] selinux/v2refpolicy/amd64/hardened [16] selinux/v2refpolicy/amd64/server ste...@amd64x2 ~ $ ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Working on a tiny schematics editor
On Sun, 2010-12-26 at 14:33 -0500, John Doty wrote: On Dec 26, 2010, at 2:10 PM, Stefan Salewski wrote: I have to modify the netlister and gschem -- gschem tries to be smart and makes one single net when multiple net segments are in a straight line. Doesn't putting: (net-consolidate disabled) in gschemrc fix that for your purpose in gschem? I have no doubt that gnetlist needs work here. Indeed, it works fine. I really wonder why we all missed that option when we discussed that subnet topic last summer. http://archives.seul.org/geda/user/Aug-2010/msg00470.html http://ssalewski.de/gEDA-Netclass.html.en Still some extents for gschem may be useful, i.e fast attribute assignment, and maybe different visible appearance (colors) of different net segments. But it really works without modification, great. The more difficult part may be still netlist generation without discarding the net-attributes for segments. I do not know, but I can remember that someone with guile/gnetlist experience told us in our discussion last summer that it is possible to modify gnetlist, but that it would take some time for him. OK, shame on me for missing that option. But I do not think that this really proves that a gschem rewrite is obsolete. There are so many similar problems, wishful improvements. All big task currently, no one really does it. Such an improvement should take at most some hours in Ruby. And this example unfortunately shows one weak point of gEDA: The initial authors and experts have retired, functionality may be already there, but most of us do not know or understand it. Best regards Stefan Salewski ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: pcb export eps bottom silk
On Mon, 2010-12-27 at 01:27 +0100, Michael Theurl wrote: Hello List, I try to export the TOP and BOTTOM eps files http://geda.seul.org/wiki/geda:pcb_tips#how_can_i_print_the_bottom_side_of_the_board pcb -x eps --layer-stack silk,solderside .. The wiki calls it solderside, not only solder. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Creating new symbols
On Sat, 2010-12-25 at 09:17 +0100, kai-martin knaak wrote: Stefan Salewski wrote: And that is a real problem. gschem should really be able to to this automatically when saving symbols. IMHO, it should not. Every translation breaks instances of the symbol in existing schematics. A better solution would be the notion of an origin, similar to the diamond in pcb footprints. ---)kaimartin(--- Hm... Following the documentation we always have to do the translation to 0/0, when we save a symbol. When we really have to do it always, it can and should be done automatically. Indeed, I can remember that I onece forgot that translation, got a broken symbol with pins not aligned to 100 multiples of grid and start symbol creation again from scratch, because I was not sure how to fix it after storing to disk. But I have never really investigated this step. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: gEDA Wikibook ?
On Sat, 2010-12-25 at 09:50 +0100, kai-martin knaak wrote: Stefan Salewski wrote: Not always a low entry barrier is a real benefit. Wikipedia beats each and every encyclopedic dictionary in existance. Nupedia, with the same aim but higher barrier produced less than 100 article were started of which a mere 24 passed the review process in the three years the project lasted. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nupedia Yes, wikipedia is great, but it is very special. Basically each entry is a own topic, so a single author can work on one entry, without a clue off the rest. Most of the time this works, but still sometimes this leads to redundancy. For writing a book having many authors often is a problem, two or 3 authors can be already to much. Here in germany we use the term many cooks destroy the foot, viele Köche verderben den Brei. When wikipedia started years ago, most access to Internet was possible from universities only, restricting many fools. Today a really large part of new stuff in wikipedia is being deleted soon, for various reasons. That may be necessary to ensure quality standards, but make some authors unhappy. And finally, Wikipedia has very many proofreaders, this ensures quality. For more special wikis things are worse, you can find outdated, wrong and silly entries. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…
On Fri, 2010-12-24 at 12:43 +0100, Johnny Rosenberg wrote: Now I'd like to save my ”new” symbol somewhere. There is not really a reason to save it, because you have only moved the text around and modified the alignment mark. OK, added a value attribute. For the current schematic, you can simple make Copies of this symbol, you only have to change the value if necessary. Saving symbols or making your own collection is more useful for greater changes, i.e heavy symbols with footprint attribute and ordering number... For me, remembering where I have stored such a custom symbol is not easy, so sometimes I simple copy symbols from existing schematics. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…
On Fri, 2010-12-24 at 12:32 +0100, kai-martin knaak wrote: The description refer to the position of the alignment mark relative to the text itself. For gschem 1.6.1 there is still one strange thing, which I mentioned years ago on this list, and still do not really understand: If we rotate symbols 180 degree, text is made upright again by special logic in gschem, so that it may look like the symbol is not rotated at all. For this invisible rotation, text alignment mark works wrong, left/right top/bottom is exchanged. This can confuse people. That may be a problem of patches, we try to get a special behaviour for a special case, do not see all consequences. May work for a special case, but give strange results in other cases. So I can understand, that sometimes developers refuse to accept patches. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Toporouter VERY slow?
On Fri, 2010-12-24 at 12:10 +0100, kai-martin knaak wrote: Anthony Blake wrote: I'm not going to be working on PCB anymore. This is sad news, indeed. :-| And it will not improve chances of the gEDA project to get accepted for a Google Summer of Code again! ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: gEDA Wikibook ?
On Fri, 2010-12-24 at 16:20 +0100, kai-martin knaak wrote: I have to agree with timecop on this issue: The problem that needs to be solved, is not connected to the file format. It about finding authors. This is the big benefit of the wikibook concept. The entry barrier is as low as it can possibly get. Contribution is allowed to literally everyone. Click on the edit button and go ahead. Not even login with a fake name necessary. Wikimedia provides an environment where this approach works. ---)kaimartin(-- Not always a low entry barrier is a real benefit. In the technical world, there are good reasons for the use of uncommon screws, so that fools can not open dangerous devices. In the Internet world: Nearly all people now have access to information, this is great. But so many seems to think that they have to add silly content everywhere -- newsgroups, Internet platforms, blogs, facebook, all filled with silly stupid stuff, the same questions and comments again and again, more than one typo in each line, written without any grammar from people without real names. I really try to get not in close contact with all that dirt, but sometimes you have a problem which wikipedia can not explain, you have to do a google search and gets all that dirt before useful content. Often I have seen people new to a project, they were exited and started a tutorial about that... Some weeks later they discovered how much work it is, they stop working on it, but often the pages with headlines but no contents remain for years in the net. But my conclusion is not, that a fully open wiki is a bad idea for gEDA -- I am not sure. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Creating new symbols
On Fri, 2010-12-24 at 22:24 +0100, Stefan Salewski wrote: On Fri, 2010-12-24 at 22:16 +0100, Stephan Boettcher wrote: File-Save But first it is important Some of your fine explanations may be already at http://geda.seul.org/wiki/geda:gschem_symbol_creation More is here: http://geda.seul.org/wiki/geda:faq-gschem#gschem_symbols And how we can use our own libraries may be explained here: http://geda.seul.org/wiki/geda:faq-gschem#gschem_configuration_customization Really not too bad. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Creating new symbols
On Fri, 2010-12-24 at 20:34 +0100, Johnny Rosenberg wrote: At http://www.geda.seul.org/wiki/geda:gsch2pcb_tutorial the following is written: ”When all the edits are done, it's very important when editing symbols to do a Edit→Symbol Translate to zero before saving. And that is a real problem. gschem should really be able to to this automatically when saving symbols. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Moving positioning diamond in PCB
On Fri, 2010-12-24 at 16:37 -0800, blueeag...@gmail.com wrote: I was wondering if someone could tell me how to move the positioning diamond in PCB or how to move the the foot print itself so it is centered over the diamond. Usually, I have to take several hours to move everything in the *.fp file itself. Z.K. Kai-Martin gave you the link how you can make footprints from inside of PCB: http://geda.seul.org/wiki/geda:pcb_tips?#how_do_i_edit_change_an_existing_footprint How do I edit/change an existing footprint? Copy selection to buffer ([ctrl-c]). The position of the crosshair will determine the origin of the resulting footprint. And I told you that you may use other tools for footprint creation. I have no intention what your goal is, and for people without real name I do not care too much. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: get-package-attribute sometimes returns ? - ID: 3114991
On Thu, 2010-12-23 at 15:18 +0100, Armin Faltl wrote: I'll provide my symbols and footprints with this features: * symbols are smaller than the standard library Why? I think the only reason to shrink all symbols is because relation to default text size? (Note, we can always enlarge title block.) Of course we should ensure that the active pin end rest on 100 multiples of grid. Graphics ending on odd grid points may be ok, but personally I prefer integer values of 100, 50, 25, 10 only... I think when I considered symbols shape last time, I was thinking about enlarging OpAmp symbols, it was my feeling that they are small compared to diodes... And for my taste text default size is to large in 1.6.x printout, I patched that. Maybe in near future I will use my Ruby gschem clone for printout... I hope to see your contributions soon... ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: gEDA Wikibook ?
On Thu, 2010-12-23 at 16:32 +0100, Stephan Boettcher wrote: Documentation of gEDA, including PCB is a huge mess, [...] Indeed, I fully agree in my heart, but I have at least two good reasons why I do not call it loud: - It will discourage people to contribute - I respect the people who wrote something - I have done no contribution myself And, there is at least some fine documentation, DJs beginner Tutorial! Maybe one problem is, that most of the docs are owned by Ales, who has retired long time ago. Maybe a new platform with free access would be fine? Personally I do not think that different people can contribute really high quality documentation at all -- stupid people will contribute silly stuff, verbosity and redundancy may occur, outdated stuff will persist. But on the other hand, it is clear that a single person or small group can not do the large effort to write high quality gEDA/PCB documentation. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: get-package-attribute sometimes returns ? - ID: 3114991
On Thu, 2010-12-23 at 22:38 +0100, Armin Faltl wrote: Stefan Salewski wrote: On Thu, 2010-12-23 at 15:18 +0100, Armin Faltl wrote: I'll provide my symbols and footprints with this features: * symbols are smaller than the standard library Why? There are many request from various people for smaller symbols on this list. When used at normal scale the symbols of std. parts look clumsy to me too, so I didn't complain but made smaler ones. I think, that shrinking by using wrong page frames for printing is a good trick but a bad solution. It is not at trick! The title block names are misleading, that is true and confuses users. But there is no reason to prefer a special title-block like A4, all are fine, some people as Kai-Martin use no real block at all, only a arbitrary rectangle and fields for text. Of course it is fine when people try to contribute, but some basic understanding of concepts may be helpful. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: get-package-attribute sometimes returns ? - ID: 3114991
On Thu, 2010-12-23 at 14:05 -0800, Colin D Bennett wrote: smaller won't achieve any improvement. (Except in relation to default text size, perhaps.) That is very similar to my thinking. I have to admit that I have complained about too large text in 1.6.x printout, but now I think its my own fault, I have populated the title block to dense. (But still, I would like a function to scale all text.) Symbols look all different, in various professional documents. So we may discuss the relation in size between symbols, pin length, line thickness, aspect ratio, placement of text. Shrinking all -- well, sometimes I do waste my time too. A point I was really thinking about was placement of text, various shapes/rotations/sizes in one file, and invisible text. It may make sense to have an easy ways to select different shapes/sizes/rotations of the same symbol. We may do that by placing the data in the same file, so we can easy select it, or link different shapes together by filenames. A popup box may provide different shapes. We may consider text boxes, which can have different content, i.e. a primary box, which can show refdes in one view, or value in another view, and secondary boxes, which can show footprint, spice-model... And I am not really happy with handling of invisible text. We handle it like visible text, but hide it. So we have to position it carefully, just in case we may make it visible for changing. Maybe some text, like version, license, datasheet, which is always invisible, should be a special class, which is always accessed from editing window. Something like gattrib build in into gschem. Sorry, I have no solution currently. Best regards Stefan Salewski ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…
On Fri, 2010-12-24 at 00:00 +0100, Johnny Rosenberg wrote: Yet another newbie question then: I tried to enter a value of a resistor You can change the alignment mark of text, select the text, and select Edit/Edit Text from menu. In the popup window there is an alignment field. Not sure if that was your problem, sorry. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…
On Fri, 2010-12-24 at 00:31 +0100, Johnny Rosenberg wrote: Value: → Enter ”390k”. Does it look nice? It certainly does not on my system. Am I doing this right at all? May it be related to your OHM sign? I never use it, and I do not see it often in professional sheets. It ok if you want it, may work if gschem supports it and your box in configured fine, i.e. for utf-8. Please try without that sign for testing, maybe you can provide a picture of the problem. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…
On Fri, 2010-12-24 at 00:38 +0100, Stefan Salewski wrote: On Fri, 2010-12-24 at 00:31 +0100, Johnny Rosenberg wrote: Value: → Enter ”390k”. Does it look nice? It certainly does not on my system. Am I doing this right at all? Ah, now I understand you problem: You want to place the text inside the box of the (german) rectangular resister box. Well, you can move the text whereever you want. Grab it with the left mouse key and move it. It may be useful to align center, and it may be necessary to decrease font size. Sorry, have not used -- 123k -- layout ever. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: get-package-attribute sometimes returns ? - ID: 3114991
On Thu, 2010-12-23 at 14:05 -0800, Colin D Bennett wrote: I haven't nailed down what it is that bothers me, but I have recently made my own versions of capacitors, resistor, diodes, and LED symbols that are more _compact_ than the gschem stock library versions. One point which confuse me still, is why line width of many symbols shipped with gEDA is 0. Is that really a good solution? When zooming in, green lines stays very thin, while pins become thicker. For printout there seems to be a special line width patch? I do understand that zero line width can be useful, i.e. to determine the smallest possible width of an output device. And zero width will remain still thin when zoomed in. But I do not understand why this is really useful for symbol graphics. For Cairo very this lines vanish, so additional consideration is needed when drawing symbols... ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: How to make a foot print
On Wed, 2010-12-22 at 13:34 -0800, blueeag...@gmail.com wrote: I was wondering if someone could give me a good step by step on how to make a foot print. Many footprints are available, some shipped with PCB, some at gedasymbols.org, some at http://www.luciani.org/geda/pcb/pcb-footprint-list.html You can draw footprints in PCB program, it it described somewhere. You can use generators, some graphical, some command line based like footgen or my http://www.ssalewski.de/SFG.html.en You can try to understand the footprint file format, reading http://www.brorson.com/gEDA/land_patterns_20070818.pdf or my summary http://www.ssalewski.de/PcbFootprintRef.txt ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Hierarchy Refdes and Component Values
On Thu, 2010-12-23 at 00:18 +0100, kai-martin knaak wrote: If the refdes of a resistor in the layout reads 3R12 I know it is on page 3 of my schematics printout. Some people may read 3R12 as 3.12 OHM, I have seen such notations somewhere, i.e. 4R7 for 4.7 Ohm. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: overlapping via changes
On Thu, 2010-12-23 at 00:40 +0100, kai-martin knaak wrote: Kai-Martin Knaak wrote: Thanks. I'll put this to the wiki. http://geda.seul.org/wiki/geda:pcb_tips?#i_want_to_draw_two_vias_very_close_to_each_other_but_pcb_won_t_let_me ---)kaimartin(-- Wiki writes: I want to draw two vias very close to each other, but PCB won't let me! Unfortunately, older versions of PCB not only prevent you from pacing overlapping vias but dropp them on load. In december 2010 this overly cautions behavior was fixed. If you really need overlapping vias, you have to install a version of pcb younger than that. The 2011 version of PCB still won't allow you to place vias so close that their holes overlap. However, it won't complain if you mangaged to work-around this restriction. E.g. place tiny vias and increase their size afterwards. One may write: PCB versions before xxx prevent you from placing overlapping vias and drop them on load. Since December 2010 overlapping of annular ring is allowed, but overlapping holes are still restricted. If you really want overlapping wholes, you can place small vias close together and then increase the diameter. Kai Martin, you your English is much better than mine, but please try to be not to verbose. And watch for typos, dropp and pacing. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
