Re: gEDA-user: get-package-attribute sometimes returns ? - ID: 3114991
On Fri, 2010-12-24 at 02:14 +0100, Stefan Salewski wrote: On Thu, 2010-12-23 at 14:05 -0800, Colin D Bennett wrote: 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... This proves to be a problem with print output via cairo, but not with on-screen rendering, as we clamp the minimum width to be equal to one screen pixel at a given zoom level. -- Peter Clifton Electrical Engineering Division, Engineering Department, University of Cambridge, 9, JJ Thomson Avenue, Cambridge CB3 0FA Tel: +44 (0)7729 980173 - (No signal in the lab!) Tel: +44 (0)1223 748328 - (Shared lab phone, ask for me) ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: get-package-attribute sometimes returns ? - ID: 3114991
On Dec 23, 2010, at 7:33 PM, Armin Faltl wrote: Of course it is fine when people try to contribute, but some basic understanding of concepts may be helpful. my basic understanding is, that text in the title blocks is meant to be as large as it should be, and that something named A4 should be printed on A4. Everybody's basic understanding differs. I'm with Stefan here, but you have different perceptions. That's how it goes with gEDA. With a flexible toolkit, there are going to be many approaches. This is a good thing. John Doty Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd. http://www.noqsi.com/ j...@noqsi.com ___ 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 Dec 23, 2010, at 9:18 AM, Armin Faltl wrote: John Doty wrote: On Dec 19, 2010, at 6:38 AM, kai-martin knaak wrote: Everybody has their own working style: the library cannot possibly cover everybody's. True. However it does not preclude the existence of a library that reasonably matches the needs of a large group of users. The other EDA packages I had the chance to work with, did a much better job at the library front. You could get quite far with their default library. My eagle oriented colleagues hardly dive into the symbol and/or footprint creation business. And they can't go all the places gEDA can go. There is nothing whatever preventing somebody from constructing a symbol library that matches *their* notion of a reasonable gEDA flow. Publish on gedasymbols. I can't stand the reiteration of this stupid argument any longer. Whoever offered me a page on gedasymbols, please do so now. DJ Delorie d...@delorie.com is the operator of the site. I'll provide my symbols and footprints with this features: * symbols are smaller than the standard library * all symbols and footprints are guaranteed to conform to IPC-7351B by definition with some shortcut-names as I like them as links * where IPC-7351 doesn't define behaviour there is an auxiliarry document describing what is done Excellent! Go for it! For extra credit, make the symbols friendly to the SPICE flows we have. But that's a bunch of extra work, and there are some serious difficulties with making symbols both SPICE-friendly and pcb-friendly at this time. I certainly won't object if you don't try to go there. Download-count will decide, who is right. There is no right. There are many ways to use gEDA. The folks who design hydraulic systems with gEDA won't use your symbols, but that doesn't make them wrong. A symbol library specifically designed for a particular purpose is a good thing, period. But a popularity contest is not a good way to judge the most effective software. If your library enables a single significant product to come out of gEDA (such as Matt Ettus's USRP), you should count that as a major success. John Doty Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd. http://www.noqsi.com/ j...@noqsi.com ___ 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
Armin Faltl wrote: Whoever offered me a page on gedasymbols, please do so now. IIRC, this should be DJ Delorie Welcome to the exclusive club of gedasymbols contributors! ---)kaimartin(--- -- Kai-Martin Knaak Öffentlicher PGP-Schlüssel: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=getsearch=0x6C0B9F53 ___ 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: get-package-attribute sometimes returns ? - ID: 3114991
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. ___ 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, 23 Dec 2010 16:11:18 +0100 Stefan Salewski m...@ssalewski.de 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? I think the only reason to shrink all symbols is because relation to default text size? (Note, we can always enlarge title block.) I have to chime in and say that I too have thought the default symbols look too large. However, after more thought I am not sure that is the full story since size of symbols is all relative, so making them all smaller won't achieve any improvement. (Except in relation to default text size, perhaps.) 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. By more compact I don't mean just scaled down, but less wasted space in extra protrusions, etc. They are also a bit smaller in relation to connector and IC pin spacing so that they are easier to place in a real layout with connectors and ICs. I am still playing with this to see what works best for me, but having a compact, yet readable and uncluttered (e.g., not having to route nets far out of the way because a resistor takes up too much space). It would be interesting to see examples of what various people think are beautiful schematics in terms of the symbols. For instance, I think ChaN's schematics generally have a nice clean compact appearance (e.g., http://elm-chan.org/works/vp/vp.png). Regards, Colin ___ 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: It would be interesting to see examples of what various people think are beautiful schematics in terms of the symbols. For instance, I think ChaN's schematics generally have a nice clean compact appearance (e.g., http://elm-chan.org/works/vp/vp.png). Horowitz and Hill is probably a good place to look. Also, the analogue parts in the above schematic is nice (aside from complete lack of anti-aliasing), but I don't rate the layout of the connectors or digital parts. Not sure what it is.. but they seem a little cramped. Also, the preset resistor looks somehow cramped compared to the nicely proportioned resistors. I think they are the same size though. Perhaps both need lengthening a tiny bit. -- Peter Clifton Electrical Engineering Division, Engineering Department, University of Cambridge, 9, JJ Thomson Avenue, Cambridge CB3 0FA Tel: +44 (0)7729 980173 - (No signal in the lab!) Tel: +44 (0)1223 748328 - (Shared lab phone, ask for me) ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: 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: get-package-attribute sometimes returns ? - ID: 3114991
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. By more compact I don't mean just scaled down, but less wasted space in extra protrusions, etc. They are also a bit smaller in relation to connector and IC pin spacing so that they are easier to place in a real layout with connectors and ICs. exactly, I also prefer 200 spacing on larger parts to 300 and clumsy numbering ___ 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: get-package-attribute sometimes returns ? - ID: 3114991
John Doty wrote: Repeat after me: the library symbols are only starting points. Which is a pity and a major weakness of geda/pcb. Everybody has their own working style: the library cannot possibly cover everybody's. True. However it does not preclude the existence of a library that reasonably matches the needs of a large group of users. The other EDA packages I had the chance to work with, did a much better job at the library front. You could get quite far with their default library. My eagle oriented colleagues hardly dive into the symbol and/or footprint creation business. Hierarchy-Down Symbol Delete the offending attribute. File-Save As Hierarchy-Up Delete old symbol, add new in its place. Is that really so hard? A GUI oriented work-flow recommended by John D. (!) ---)kaimartin(--- -- Kai-Martin Knaak Öffentlicher PGP-Schlüssel: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=getsearch=0x6C0B9F53 ___ 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 Dec 19, 2010, at 6:38 AM, kai-martin knaak wrote: John Doty wrote: Repeat after me: the library symbols are only starting points. Which is a pity and a major weakness of geda/pcb. Have you used other tools? It's unavoidable for anything that can tackle a broad range of projects. gEDA isn't just for hobbyists, you know. Everybody has their own working style: the library cannot possibly cover everybody's. True. However it does not preclude the existence of a library that reasonably matches the needs of a large group of users. The other EDA packages I had the chance to work with, did a much better job at the library front. You could get quite far with their default library. My eagle oriented colleagues hardly dive into the symbol and/or footprint creation business. And they can't go all the places gEDA can go. There is nothing whatever preventing somebody from constructing a symbol library that matches *their* notion of a reasonable gEDA flow. Publish on gedasymbols. But I predict that such a person would get numerous complaints from users. All of the symbol complaints seem to come from people who want gEDA to follow a narrow path that is *obviously* to them the path that suits most users, but in fact would only suit a modest subset. I personally use gEDA for about six kinds of incompatible flow (overlapping categories, take with much salt). 1. Breadboard Stock symbols, nothing fancy. 2. Small scale printed circuit. Stock symbols, attach footprint names the layout person will recognize. 3. Large scale printed circuit. Largely project-specific heavy symbols. Footprints in symbols, not usually promoted or attached. Try to get layout contractor to tell me what footprint names they want. 4. SPICE simulation of circuits for printed circuit realization Stock symbols, attach the extra attributes. It is presently impractical to simulate schematics as drawn for printed circuit layout. If we could move the semantic processing out of the gnetlist front end, it would be possible to write a SPICE netlister that would work without requiring you to redraw such things. 5. Capture of circuit topology for symbolic analysis (-g mathematica). These are necessarily small circuits, so I mostly use stock symbols. 6. VLSI design Only a few of the stock symbols are useful here. I've published (on gedasymbols) a collection of symbols matching the OpenIP VLSI library. One nice thing though, is that at least for the layout flow my customer uses there is no conflict between the semantics of layout and the semantics of simulation, so the netlists I send for layout are verifiable in simulation. Hierarchy-Down Symbol Delete the offending attribute. File-Save As Hierarchy-Up Delete old symbol, add new in its place. Is that really so hard? A GUI oriented work-flow recommended by John D. (!) Well, in truth, I'm more likely to: locate whatever.sym cp the-selected-version-of-whathever.sym ProjectSymbols/whatnow.sym gschem ProjectSymbols/whatnow.sym Fix the symbol fs Before ever placing it. Often there's already a suitable version in some other project, no fix needed. John Doty Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd. http://www.noqsi.com/ j...@noqsi.com ___ 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
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2010 21:56:28 -0700 From: John Doty j...@noqsi.com Subject: Re: gEDA-user: get-package-attribute sometimes returns ? - ID: 3114991 On Dec 16, 2010, at 9:29 PM, c...@eugeneweb.com wrote: I'm not sure we're on the same page here. That pice of legacy code is what we want to remove. We don't want any code to reinterpret attributes. For the short term we would like to change a few probramatic symbols so we don't have to have special cases in the code. But the ? is there to tell you, when looking at the symbol in gschem, that you *need* to edit the attribute (I use those symbols a lot). Yes, agreed that is why it is there. However you may not see it unless you click on show inhereted attributes, and because they are inherited you can't delete them. You can only delete the promoted ones after which the inherited ones take over again. Sometimes I use the blocks without the file name, just a value attribute to get a one liner. Other times I start with one type of block but change it to another, so I can see cases where a particualr attribute becomes superfluous. I'm puzzled here, because I thought Stuart was the author of both spice-sdb and the symbols in question, so the WTF? is strange. Yes and it is causeing confusion so I would like to find a better way to handle it. In any case, it seems to me that the user should get an error message (from spice-sdb) in this case, as an explicit ? here means that the user has neither set the attribute to something useful nor deleted it as irrelevant. However the WTF? snipit is allowing it to fail silently. John Doty Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd. http://www.noqsi.com/ j...@noqsi.com Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2010 08:21:45 + From: Peter TB Brett pe...@peter-b.co.uk Subject: Re: gEDA-user: get-package-attribute sometimes returns ? - ID: 3114991 So what you are saying is that you think we should get rid of the WTF? function in the code, but not modify the symbol library? Peter -- Peter Brett pe...@peter-b.co.uk Remote Sensing Research Group Surrey Space Centre Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2010 07:52:15 -0700 From: John Doty j...@noqsi.com Subject: Re: gEDA-user: get-package-attribute sometimes returns ? - ID: 3114991 On Dec 17, 2010, at 1:21 AM, Peter TB Brett wrote: I think there's nothing wrong with file=? in the symbols. It indicates that the you have failed to supply a required filename. Or an optional filename. (create-file-info-list), the WTF? function in spice-sdb, should issue a diagnostic if the file name is ?. Perhaps that could be a quick fix but currently it fails silently. Right now, all that results from substituting unknown is that it silently omits the file, which is surely wrong behavior. You won't even know there's a problem until you run SPICE, which has its own troubles with generating diagnostics that clearly identify the problem. Yes there surely are problems with ambiguous errors though it's common to reference the wrong file too, and you would still have to fix it at that level. There are other problems with that function, too. Even if you give spice-sdb no reason to inspect included file contents (use -I --nomunge), it does so anyway. This can make building a subcircuit library tricky. If you want the automatic file inclusion for subcircuits to work you must build the library in topological order, because the included file must exist at netlist generation time even if you're not including it at that time, and have no dependence on its contents. John Doty Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd. http://www.noqsi.com/ j...@noqsi.com Well that might not be that hard to fix, but one thing at a time. It seems what we want is for the attributes to show up where we can see them eg. have them promoted. This implicitly suggestes that they need values filled in. We also need the option of deleting them without them coming back to haunt us from the inherited attributes. I think in my original post I suggested something like this. Clif ___ 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 Dec 18, 2010, at 3:19 PM, c...@eugeneweb.com wrote: Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2010 21:56:28 -0700 From: John Doty j...@noqsi.com Subject: Re: gEDA-user: get-package-attribute sometimes returns ? - ID: 3114991 On Dec 16, 2010, at 9:29 PM, c...@eugeneweb.com wrote: I'm not sure we're on the same page here. That pice of legacy code is what we want to remove. We don't want any code to reinterpret attributes. For the short term we would like to change a few probramatic symbols so we don't have to have special cases in the code. But the ? is there to tell you, when looking at the symbol in gschem, that you *need* to edit the attribute (I use those symbols a lot). Yes, agreed that is why it is there. However you may not see it unless you click on show inhereted attributes, and because they are inherited you can't delete them. You can only delete the promoted ones after which the inherited ones take over again. Sometimes I use the blocks without the file name, just a value attribute to get a one liner. Other times I start with one type of block but change it to another, so I can see cases where a particualr attribute becomes superfluous. Easy enough to make another symbol. Repeat after me: the library symbols are only starting points. Everybody has their own working style: the library cannot possibly cover everybody's. I'm puzzled here, because I thought Stuart was the author of both spice-sdb and the symbols in question, so the WTF? is strange. Yes and it is causeing confusion so I would like to find a better way to handle it. Fix spice-sdb to issue an error rather than ignoring the file. In any case, it seems to me that the user should get an error message (from spice-sdb) in this case, as an explicit ? here means that the user has neither set the attribute to something useful nor deleted it as irrelevant. However the WTF? snipit is allowing it to fail silently. That's right. That's the problem. Better to fix that than to paint over it. John Doty Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd. http://www.noqsi.com/ j...@noqsi.com Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2010 08:21:45 + From: Peter TB Brett pe...@peter-b.co.uk Subject: Re: gEDA-user: get-package-attribute sometimes returns ? - ID: 3114991 So what you are saying is that you think we should get rid of the WTF? function in the code, but not modify the symbol library? Peter -- Peter Brett pe...@peter-b.co.uk Remote Sensing Research Group Surrey Space Centre Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2010 07:52:15 -0700 From: John Doty j...@noqsi.com Subject: Re: gEDA-user: get-package-attribute sometimes returns ? - ID: 3114991 On Dec 17, 2010, at 1:21 AM, Peter TB Brett wrote: I think there's nothing wrong with file=? in the symbols. It indicates that the you have failed to supply a required filename. Or an optional filename. (create-file-info-list), the WTF? function in spice-sdb, should issue a diagnostic if the file name is ?. Perhaps that could be a quick fix but currently it fails silently. It's the right fix. Right now, all that results from substituting unknown is that it silently omits the file, which is surely wrong behavior. You won't even know there's a problem until you run SPICE, which has its own troubles with generating diagnostics that clearly identify the problem. Yes there surely are problems with ambiguous errors though it's common to reference the wrong file too, and you would still have to fix it at that level. Sure. But if I put in the wrong filename, my folly is generally obvious. If the problem name is ?, it's more confusing. It apparently confused Stuart, and he's a pretty smart guy. There are other problems with that function, too. Even if you give spice-sdb no reason to inspect included file contents (use -I --nomunge), it does so anyway. This can make building a subcircuit library tricky. If you want the automatic file inclusion for subcircuits to work you must build the library in topological order, because the included file must exist at netlist generation time even if you're not including it at that time, and have no dependence on its contents. John Doty Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd. http://www.noqsi.com/ j...@noqsi.com Well that might not be that hard to fix, but one thing at a time. It seems what we want is for the attributes to show up where we can see them eg. have them promoted. This implicitly suggestes that they need values filled in. We also need the option of deleting them without them coming back to haunt us from the inherited attributes. Hierarchy-Down Symbol Delete the offending attribute. File-Save As Hierarchy-Up Delete old symbol, add new in its place. Is that really so hard? I think in my original post I suggested something like this. Clif ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http
Re: gEDA-user: get-package-attribute sometimes returns ? - ID: 3114991
In any case, it seems to me that the user should get an error message (from spice-sdb) in this case, as an explicit ? here means that the user has neither set the attribute to something useful nor deleted it as irrelevant. So what you are saying is that you think we should get rid of the WTF? function in the code, but not modify the symbol library? Peter -- Peter Brett pe...@peter-b.co.uk Remote Sensing Research Group Surrey Space Centre - Original message - On Dec 16, 2010, at 9:29 PM, c...@eugeneweb.com wrote: I'm not sure we're on the same page here. That pice of legacy code is what we want to remove. We don't want any code to reinterpret attributes. For the short term we would like to change a few probramatic symbols so we don't have to have special cases in the code. But the ? is there to tell you, when looking at the symbol in gschem, that you *need* to edit the attribute (I use those symbols a lot). I'm puzzled here, because I thought Stuart was the author of both spice-sdb and the symbols in question, so the WTF? is strange. John Doty Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd. http://www.noqsi.com/ j...@noqsi.com ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user ___ 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 Dec 17, 2010, at 1:21 AM, Peter TB Brett wrote: So what you are saying is that you think we should get rid of the WTF? function in the code, but not modify the symbol library? I think there's nothing wrong with file=? in the symbols. It indicates that the you have failed to supply a required filename. (create-file-info-list), the WTF? function in spice-sdb, should issue a diagnostic if the file name is ?. Right now, all that results from substituting unknown is that it silently omits the file, which is surely wrong behavior. You won't even know there's a problem until you run SPICE, which has its own troubles with generating diagnostics that clearly identify the problem. There are other problems with that function, too. Even if you give spice-sdb no reason to inspect included file contents (use -I --nomunge), it does so anyway. This can make building a subcircuit library tricky. If you want the automatic file inclusion for subcircuits to work you must build the library in topological order, because the included file must exist at netlist generation time even if you're not including it at that time, and have no dependence on its contents. John Doty Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd. http://www.noqsi.com/ j...@noqsi.com ___ 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
To fix it in a uniform way I think we need to standardise what we use as a place holder for an attribute. Sould we explicitly put unknown or ?? Unfortunitly gschem won't let you put a null string. Hi Clif, Since at the moment gnetlist internally uses the string unknown to indicate a missing attribute, so that would be the logical choice to use instead of ? at this time. In the longer term, I would actually quite like it to be legal to have attributes with zero-length values. However, that would obviously be a more complicated patch. I think that the spice-sdb backend should continue to choke on blah=? attributes, for now. Regards, Peter -- Peter Brett pe...@peter-b.co.uk Remote Sensing Research Group Surrey Space Centre - Original message - Hi Gang, This is about a patch I submitted a while back because myself and others didn't understand the souce of the ?. Patrick found it though. They are from the spice A.. blocks. The value of some of the unpromoted attributes are ?. Apparently they are place holders to remind someone to add real values in the same way R? is a place holder for a refdes. The other choice is to not list attributes without useable values, but then you don't have the reminder of which ones to fill in. This gets used like a short version of the add attribute drop down menu, however you have to click on show inherited attributes to see them. Though most people don't do that and then wonder where the errors come from. ;-) If neither of those choices sound good then I have an off the wall one. We could allow null value attributes which are always promoted so you would see them, and this would be a poor mans form in which you have the option of providing their values, or even deleting them. Get-package-attribute would return unknown for attributes which exist but have null values. Any thoughts? Clif ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user ___ 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 Thursday 16 December 2010 20:43:23 c...@eugeneweb.com wrote: Ok so we toss current patch in 3114991. Done. Should I make a new one that replaces all the ? in symbols / blocks with unknown? That sounds like a good idea, actually. If spice-sdb should choke on any remaining ? it runs across, then I guess my second patch (3117075) is good to go. Did you see my e-mail from last Thursday? I've forwarded it in this e-mail in case you missed it. There are a couple of things I wouldn't mind changed, if possible. It seems that another example of attribute placeholders is the footprint=none convention. The zero-length values feature might allow us to clean up other special cases as well. Possibly, yes. Thanks for your work on this. Peter -- Peter Brett pe...@peter-b.co.uk Remote Sensing Research Group Surrey Space Centre ---BeginMessage--- Hi Clif, Firstly, patch 3114991 (get-package-attribute sometimes returns ?). Two important things: a) If there is not actually a text object attached to a part with the value file=? attribute somewhere, we have a problem. gnetlist/libgeda really shouldn't be manufacturing attributes with the value ?. A proper fix really needs to get to the bottom of why this is happening. b) The name behaviour of that C function will be completely changing in the next few days, so your patch won't apply (see patch 3071482 -- I am currently working with the author to finalise this). I can't accept this patch in its current form, sorry. If you don't have time to track down where the ? values are coming from, please file a bug and I'll try and figure it out at some point. Secondly, patch 3117075 (spice-sdb -- Several fixes / Cleanups). a) Please split whitespace changes into a separate patch which *only* changes whitespace. I personally avoid touching whitespace if possible. ;-) Actually, this patch would have been better split into a series of patches, each of which does one particular clean-up... b) Syntax for `define' when defining functions. Here's something I wrote yesterday: I would greatly appreciate it if the implicit lambda form of `define' was used in all new code, i.e.: (define (allsame? x) (null? (delete (car x) (cdr x This is preferred in new Scheme code because it eliminates a set of braces and an additional keyword, while being unambiguous. Additionally, this syntax means that the second s-expression in the definition matches the prototype of the function, which aids in documentation. Finally, the implicit `define' form supports docstrings, which although we don't currently use, we may well use in the future. c) `spice-sdb:filter-map'. I'm not sure I understand why you can't just use `filter-map'...? d) Changes to prototype of `spice-sdb:write-net-names-on-component' seem sensible. e) `get-net-name' modifies its argument. Looking at the code, it's not clear to me why this is actually necessary -- could you explain, please? :-) Thanks! Peter -- Peter Brett pe...@peter-b.co.uk Remote Sensing Research Group Surrey Space Centre signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ---End Message--- signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ 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 Dec 16, 2010, at 2:50 PM, Peter TB Brett wrote: Should I make a new one that replaces all the ? in symbols / blocks with unknown? That sounds like a good idea, actually. I'm not happy with this. The ? is in those symbols for a reason. I do not believe the core code should be trying to outsmart the symbol and back-end designer (Stuart in this case). That said, spice-sdb needs some work on reasonable behavior in case of error John Doty Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd. [1]http://www.noqsi.com/ [2]...@noqsi.com References 1. http://www.noqsi.com/ 2. mailto:j...@noqsi.com ___ 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
Hi John, Did you see my initial post on this? Maybe I got it wrong but I tried to understand the intent as best I could and present my thougths: Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2010 22:30:33 -0800 (PST) From: c...@eugeneweb.com Subject: gEDA-user: get-package-attribute sometimes returns ? - ID: 3114991 To: geda-user@moria.seul.org Hi Gang, This is about a patch I submitted a while back because myself and others didn't understand the souce of the ?. Patrick found it though. They are from the spice A.. blocks. The value of some of the unpromoted attributes are ?. Apparently they are place holders to remind someone to add real values in the same way R? is a place holder for a refdes. To fix it in a uniform way I think we need to standardise what we use as a place holder for an attribute. Sould we explicitly put unknown or ?? Unfortunitly gschem won't let you put a null string. The other choice is to not list attributes without useable values, but then you don't have the reminder of which ones to fill in. This gets used like a short version of the add attribute drop down menu, however you have to click on show inherited attributes to see them. Though most people don't do that and then wonder where the errors come from. ;-) If neither of those choices sound good then I have an off the wall one. We could allow null value attributes which are always promoted so you would see them, and this would be a poor mans form in which you have the option of providing their values, or even deleting them. Get-package-attribute would return unknown for attributes which exist but have null values. Any thoughts? Clif The only pice of code that currently deals with the ? is this one: ;; sometimes get-package-attribute returns ? instead of unknown. WTF? This should fix that . . . (if (string-ci=? model-file ?) (set! model-file unknown)) -- We're just trying to move toword a more uniform way of handling it. Clif Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2010 18:58:20 -0700 From: John Doty j...@noqsi.com Subject: Re: gEDA-user: get-package-attribute sometimes returns ? - ID: 3114991 On Dec 16, 2010, at 2:50 PM, Peter TB Brett wrote: Should I make a new one that replaces all the ? in symbols / blocks with unknown? That sounds like a good idea, actually. I'm not happy with this. The ? is in those symbols for a reason. I do not believe the core code should be trying to outsmart the symbol and back-end designer (Stuart in this case). That said, spice-sdb needs some work on reasonable behavior in case of error John Doty Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd. http://www.noqsi.com/ j...@noqsi.com ___ 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 Dec 16, 2010, at 7:44 PM, c...@eugeneweb.com wrote: Hi John, Did you see my initial post on this? Yes. The only pice of code that currently deals with the ? is this one: ;; sometimes get-package-attribute returns ? instead of unknown. WTF? This should fix that . . . (if (string-ci=? model-file ?) (set! model-file unknown)) -- We're just trying to move toword a more uniform way of handling it. But that's not uniform. In this case, attribute value is explicitly set to ? in the symbol. Now, when an attribute value is *explicitly* set by the schematic or symbol designer, there shouldn't be anything in the common code that changes it. Making special cases like this is a move *away* from uniform handling of attributes. John Doty Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd. http://www.noqsi.com/ j...@noqsi.com ___ 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
I'm not sure we're on the same page here. That pice of legacy code is what we want to remove. We don't want any code to reinterpret attributes. For the short term we would like to change a few probramatic symbols so we don't have to have special cases in the code. Clif Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2010 19:58:26 -0700 From: John Doty j...@noqsi.com Subject: Re: gEDA-user: get-package-attribute sometimes returns ? - ID: 3114991 On Dec 16, 2010, at 7:44 PM, c...@eugeneweb.com wrote: Hi John, Did you see my initial post on this? Yes. The only pice of code that currently deals with the ? is this one: ;; sometimes get-package-attribute returns ? instead of unknown. WTF? This should fix that . . . (if (string-ci=? model-file ?) (set! model-file unknown)) -- We're just trying to move toword a more uniform way of handling it. But that's not uniform. In this case, attribute value is explicitly set to ? in the symbol. Now, when an attribute value is *$ John Doty Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd. http://www.noqsi.com/ j...@noqsi.com ___ 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 Dec 16, 2010, at 9:29 PM, c...@eugeneweb.com wrote: I'm not sure we're on the same page here. That pice of legacy code is what we want to remove. We don't want any code to reinterpret attributes. For the short term we would like to change a few probramatic symbols so we don't have to have special cases in the code. But the ? is there to tell you, when looking at the symbol in gschem, that you *need* to edit the attribute (I use those symbols a lot). I'm puzzled here, because I thought Stuart was the author of both spice-sdb and the symbols in question, so the WTF? is strange. In any case, it seems to me that the user should get an error message (from spice-sdb) in this case, as an explicit ? here means that the user has neither set the attribute to something useful nor deleted it as irrelevant. John Doty Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd. http://www.noqsi.com/ j...@noqsi.com ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
