Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2011-01-04 Thread Peter Clifton
On Fri, 2010-12-31 at 10:34 -0700, John Doty wrote:

  Without offending anyone I hope, I think it would be fair to say there
  is ONE current gEDA developer, and I think you would struggle to point
  out anything detrimental Peter Brett has done to the project.
 
 Well, Peter, at least, thinks of you as a developer. And there's DJ,
 who is certainly influential, energetic, and brilliant, but has a
 dangerously narrow focus. Then there's Patrick Bernaud. Bas Gjeltes
 and I tried to contribute a patch for the attribute censorship bug,
 but Patrick grabbed it, unfactored my Guile code, found a problem that
 broke drc2, and then dropped it. Is Patrick a developer? At least,
 he's a gatekeeper. Maybe refactoring and fixing the drc2 bug will be
 my New Year's day project. Then we'll see if this problem can *ever*
 be solved.

As I said, no offence was meant to anyone else who has contributed, or
is contributing code to the project. I was mostly confining myself to
think of those with commit access, and / or major code projects cooking
which I know of.

(That is why I don't consider myself an active gEDA developer at the
moment.. all of my spare effort is going into PCB, and any patches I had
outstanding for gEDA are pretty stagnant.)

[snip]

  (Yes, Peter B and I are friends, so I'm biased - but I think this all
  bore saying.)
 
 I think we can all be friends. Disagreement does not imply malice.

Well said ;)

(And I forgive Peter B for being an emacs user ;))

-- 
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)



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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values?

2011-01-02 Thread Patrick Bernaud
John Doty writes:
  [...]
  Then there's Patrick Bernaud. Bas Gjeltes and I tried to contribute a patch 
  for the attribute censorship bug, but Patrick grabbed it, unfactored my 
  Guile code, found a problem that broke drc2, and then dropped it. 

Maybe you can elaborate on your last sentence: what did I drop
exactly?


Patrick the gatekeeper


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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values?

2011-01-02 Thread John Doty

On Jan 2, 2011, at 2:50 AM, Patrick Bernaud wrote:

 John Doty writes:
 [...]
 Then there's Patrick Bernaud. Bas Gjeltes and I tried to contribute a patch 
 for the attribute censorship bug, but Patrick grabbed it, unfactored my 
 Guile code, found a problem that broke drc2, and then dropped it. 
 
 Maybe you can elaborate on your last sentence: what did I drop
 exactly?

The work-around for the drc2 incompatibility. Where is it?

 
 
 Patrick the gatekeeper
 
 
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John Doty  Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd.
http://www.noqsi.com/
j...@noqsi.com




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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values?

2011-01-02 Thread Patrick Bernaud
John Doty writes:
  [...]
  The work-around for the drc2 incompatibility. Where is it?

You remember that I am not the person proposing the initial patch,
only one reviewer?

Beside with the example I proposed, it is not an incompatibility,
but merely a (valid) warning triggered by the new code. 

Of course it has to be addressed and that's why I mentionned it as
part of my review.


Patrick


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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values?

2011-01-02 Thread John Doty

On Jan 2, 2011, at 3:23 AM, Patrick Bernaud wrote:

 John Doty writes:
 [...]
 The work-around for the drc2 incompatibility. Where is it?
 
 You remember that I am not the person proposing the initial patch,
 only one reviewer?

You did more than review: you thoroughly rewrote it in a way that makes it more 
difficult to read, repair, reuse, and override if needed. You dismissed 
factoring that helped put the back end writer in control as crippling the 
API. It seemed to me you wanted ownership of that code. You can have it if you 
want it. If not, I'll try to find time to finish it.

The political difficulty of improving the factoring in this small area has me 
discouraged about any serious improvement in the flexibility of gnetlist. The 
existing back ends will constrain it to remain an unusually powerful and 
flexible tool within its box, but the box will never expand very much.

In the meantime, at Noqsi Aerospace, we've been developing lambda-geda which 
is potentially a much more flexible schematic processor. Right now we use it 
for schematic to schematic transformations, but netlisting is certainly a 
potential application area.  So that's where my focus will inevitably move in 
the future. 

 
 Beside with the example I proposed, it is not an incompatibility,
 but merely a (valid) warning triggered by the new code. 
 
 Of course it has to be addressed and that's why I mentionned it as
 part of my review.

We agreed it has to be addressed, yes. But who should address it?

---
John Doty  Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd.

This message contains technical discussion involving difficult issues. No 
personal disrespect or malice is intended. If you perceive such, your 
perception is simply wrong. I'm a busy person, and in my business go along to 
get along causes mission failures and sometimes kills people, so I tend to be 
a bit blunt.



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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values?

2011-01-02 Thread Patrick Bernaud
John Doty writes:
  [...]
  We agreed it has to be addressed, yes. But who should address it?

Since it was so kindly asked, I did: my full (and final as far as I am
concerned) patch set for this issue follows this message (so our
fellow readers will get a chance to understand what we are talking
about).

Note that the fix in gnet-drc2.scm will not survive long:
'drc2:check-slots' bitterly need to get a full rewrite (as we already
discussed). And I will do that as soon as this issue is
settled. Still, and as a side note, look how much beneficial a change
from unknown to #f (as value for no- or unknown attribute) would be.


Patrick


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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values?

2011-01-02 Thread John Doty

On Jan 2, 2011, at 10:18 AM, Patrick Bernaud wrote:

 Still, and as a side note, look how much beneficial a change
 from unknown to #f (as value for no- or unknown attribute) would be.

Different layers. unknown is is the appropriate return when the back end will 
simply put the result in the output file. #f is the appropriate return when the 
back end will process the result. So, the high level factor, 
(gnetlist:get-package-attribute) should continue to yield unknown, but I 
would agree that it would be beneficial for the lower level 
(gnetlist:get-all-package-attributes) to yield #f. Although perhaps '() would 
be more consistent.

---
John Doty  Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd.

This message contains technical discussion involving difficult issues. No 
personal disrespect or malice is intended. If you perceive such, your 
perception is simply wrong. I'm a busy person, and in my business go along to 
get along causes mission failures and sometimes kills people, so I tend to be 
a bit blunt.



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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values.

2011-01-02 Thread Bert Timmerman
Hi Kai-Martin, 

 -Original Message-
 From: geda-user-boun...@moria.seul.org 
 [mailto:geda-user-boun...@moria.seul.org] On Behalf Of 
 kai-martin knaak
 Sent: Saturday, January 01, 2011 4:32 AM
 To: geda-u...@seul.org
 Subject: Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values.
 
 Bert Timmerman wrote:
 
  ARE there any current gEDA developers?
  
  
  Yes, I think there is lots of patches or patch series in SF 
 to prove 
  that.
 
 For 2010 there were exactly 16 patches in the geda tracker:
 http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=161080atid=818428
 I wouldn't call this lots of. None of these patches was 
 supplied by one of the people mentioned in gpleda.org/people.html
 
 ---)kaimartin(---
 --
 Kai-Martin Knaak
 Öffentlicher PGP-Schlüssel:
 http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=getsearch=0x6C0B9F53
 
 

Sorry for the confusion, looks like I did not have the right glasses on, I
made my remark w.r.t. the pcb patch tracker.

Kind regards, Bert Timmerman.



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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2011-01-01 Thread bobo
On Friday 31 December 2010, John Doty wrote:
 I think we can all be friends.

You are the one making enemies.

 Disagreement does not imply
 malice.

In your case, it does.


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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-31 Thread Peter Clifton
On Wed, 2010-12-29 at 13:18 -0700, John Doty wrote:

 Divorce gEDA from pcb. Create a schematic plugin for pcb, since that
 seems to be what pcb users want. The flexibility of the
 gschem/gnetlist flow is unnecessary to hobbyists. The current
 developers are dangerously pcb-centric.

ARE there any current gEDA developers?

That is slightly rhetorical, as I know Peter Brett is doing some
thankless, but HUGELY important work on refactoring the gschem drawing
code into a separate library.

This library will be important to the project as it opens the
possibilities for creating external previewers, thumbnailer's, library
managers, command line printing tools etc.. which don't require gschem
to render graphics. Some day I hope PCB can do this too.

Peter has also done work on guile APIs recently. (I'll confess not to
have followed that particularly closely, but it was not in any way PCB
specific).


Without offending anyone I hope, I think it would be fair to say there
is ONE current gEDA developer, and I think you would struggle to point
out anything detrimental Peter Brett has done to the project.

His dedicated work on thankless tasks have helped keep things alive at a
time when gEDA development has / had otherwise completely stagnated.

(Yes, Peter B and I are friends, so I'm biased - but I think this all
bore saying.)

-- 
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)



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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-31 Thread John Doty

On Dec 31, 2010, at 8:37 AM, Peter Clifton wrote:

 On Wed, 2010-12-29 at 13:18 -0700, John Doty wrote:
 
 Divorce gEDA from pcb. Create a schematic plugin for pcb, since that
 seems to be what pcb users want. The flexibility of the
 gschem/gnetlist flow is unnecessary to hobbyists. The current
 developers are dangerously pcb-centric.
 
 ARE there any current gEDA developers?
 
 That is slightly rhetorical, as I know Peter Brett is doing some
 thankless, but HUGELY important work on refactoring the gschem drawing
 code into a separate library.

Yes, and I'm successfully running his branch here. This is indeed important. 
Go, Peter!

 
 This library will be important to the project as it opens the
 possibilities for creating external previewers, thumbnailer's, library
 managers, command line printing tools etc.. which don't require gschem
 to render graphics. Some day I hope PCB can do this too.
 
 Peter has also done work on guile APIs recently. (I'll confess not to
 have followed that particularly closely, but it was not in any way PCB
 specific).

You think it wasn't, but the habit of thought that considers pcb as the only 
back end worth considering has colored it. In particular, we've sparred over 
the nature of the API: Peter doesn't understand that there is *no* invariant 
semantic processing suitable for all flows. The midlayer should start at 
parsed, unprocessed schematics.

And as a gnetlist back-end writer, Peter's Guile code scares me. He avoids pure 
functional programming wherever possible in the name of efficiency. This is 
dangerous, as it is difficult for the user to anticipate where his side effects 
might bite if they reuse his code. As somewhat who grinds very large projects 
through gnetlist, I would be the first to ask for efficiency to be given 
priority if it was a significant problem. It isn't.

But Peter also has some very good notions about Guile code. I recently took 
some of his suggestions as input to a refactoring of my Osmond back end. The 
whole thing collapsed to just 18 LOC, and I think his suggestions also improved 
readability despite my initial skepticism.

 
 
 Without offending anyone I hope, I think it would be fair to say there
 is ONE current gEDA developer, and I think you would struggle to point
 out anything detrimental Peter Brett has done to the project.

Well, Peter, at least, thinks of you as a developer. And there's DJ, who is 
certainly influential, energetic, and brilliant, but has a dangerously narrow 
focus. Then there's Patrick Bernaud. Bas Gjeltes and I tried to contribute a 
patch for the attribute censorship bug, but Patrick grabbed it, unfactored my 
Guile code, found a problem that broke drc2, and then dropped it. Is Patrick a 
developer? At least, he's a gatekeeper. Maybe refactoring and fixing the drc2 
bug will be my New Year's day project. Then we'll see if this problem can 
*ever* be solved.

 
 His dedicated work on thankless tasks have helped keep things alive at a
 time when gEDA development has / had otherwise completely stagnated.

That kind of argument will never move me. There is no value to fixing what 
isn't broken. There's nothing wrong with stagnation of code in itself (the 
stagnation of TeX is a sign of near perfection). Peter's narrowly focused on 
code, not broadly focused on application. That has its good points, but also 
its dangers. Coding purely for code's sake on a toolkit that's in successful 
production use is not generally a good idea.

Peter's current work must stand on the importance of refactoring as a means for 
resolving the conflicts between the various ways we use (and want to use) gEDA, 
I think. And I expect it will be a good thing by this criterion, but that won't 
come automatically.

 
 (Yes, Peter B and I are friends, so I'm biased - but I think this all
 bore saying.)

I think we can all be friends. Disagreement does not imply malice.

John Doty  Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd.
http://www.noqsi.com/
j...@noqsi.com




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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values.

2010-12-31 Thread kai-martin knaak
Bert Timmerman wrote:

 ARE there any current gEDA developers?
 
 
 Yes, I think there is lots of patches or patch series in SF
 to prove that.

For 2010 there were exactly 16 patches in the geda tracker:
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=161080atid=818428
I wouldn't call this lots of. None of these patches was 
supplied by one of the people mentioned in gpleda.org/people.html

---)kaimartin(---
-- 
Kai-Martin Knaak
Öffentlicher PGP-Schlüssel:
http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=getsearch=0x6C0B9F53



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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-29 Thread Levente Kovacs
On Sat, 25 Dec 2010 00:50:07 -0600
Vanessa Ezekowitz vanessaezekow...@gmail.com wrote:

 * If the part in question can usually be described by a single value,
 for the purposes of the signal flow in the schematic that is, then
 give it a default of value=0.

That is bad. You have to think twice that is it a 0 Ohm resistor, or do I
missed to attach normal value of that device?
 
 * If it is a discrete part that is specified entirely by its part
 number rather than a measurement, like a diode or a transistor, then
 pick a reasonable default; value=1N914 or value=2N.

Again. Is it the default or real? Nobody knows.

 * If the part is something like a logic IC, use the standard name of
 the part in the fastest commonly available series for that particular
 gate; value=74F74 or value=74HCT245.
 
 * If none of these fits, then leave the value= attribute off
 entirely, since the user would have no choice but to get creative
 anyway.

That will make gnetlist to crash! :-) Believe me I tried! I spent nights
manually seeking for this. Don't do it.

What I do is I keep my symbols light. Sometimes it doesn't even have
pin-numbers! After I made my design, I update all my symbols, and attributes
with an updater script, which pulls everything from a MySQL database.


Levente

-- 
Levente Kovacs
http://levente.logonex.eu




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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-29 Thread Stephan Boettcher

John Doty j...@noqsi.com writes:

 A better netlister for simulation is difficult as long as the gnetlist
 front end has hard-coded semantics, especially for hierarchy and
 slotting.

Last year (June 2009) LWN published a very nice series by Neil Brown
about successful design pattern in the Linux kernel.  A lot of that is
applicable to any sizeable project.

One pattern is to define (midlayer) interfaces like the gnetlist backend
interface in terms of library functions.

 http://lwn.net/Articles/336262/

To fix gnetlist, the hardcoded semantics shall not be pushed to the
backend, but offered as a library function, to be pulled in by the
backend.  The infrastructure provided by the library shall offer various
levels to access the netlist data.  The toplevel shall provide the
current hardcoded semantics to the existing backends, but future backends
may choose to use replace the top level call by copies where some
critical second level calls are replaced. Such copies, when universally
usefull, can be moved from the backend to the library at some point.

Somebody who (unlike me) actually knows how that interface looks like
right now, may comment on how much actually needs to change.  I can
imagine that it's not a lot, since this is really a classical case for
said design pattern.

-- 
Stephan



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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-29 Thread Johnny Rosenberg
2010/12/29 Levente Kovacs leventel...@gmail.com:
 On Sat, 25 Dec 2010 22:01:43 +0100
 Johnny Rosenberg gurus.knugum-re5jqeeqqe8avxtiumw...@public.gmane.org 
 wrote:

 Hm… I start to regret that I asked the question in the first place…

 We are very good at making wars. We make wars on what kind of fileformat to
 use, what kind of documentation tool to use, what is gschem used for etc.

 So don't regret it, it is getting common.

 Lets make a vi vs. emacs war!

Yes, that's do that! He he he… Or maybe not…

I used Emacs a lot in the early 1990's, especially for IRC and playing
MUD an things like that, but these days I don't use any of them. I
found that with a few plugins and some configuration, gedit does
everything I need a text editor for, so far at least.

Well, off topic in any case.

Johnny Rosenberg



 Levente

 --
 Levente Kovacs
 http://levente.logonex.eu


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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-29 Thread John Doty

On Dec 29, 2010, at 6:23 AM, Stephan Boettcher wrote:

 
 John Doty j...@noqsi.com writes:
 
 A better netlister for simulation is difficult as long as the gnetlist
 front end has hard-coded semantics, especially for hierarchy and
 slotting.
 
 Last year (June 2009) LWN published a very nice series by Neil Brown
 about successful design pattern in the Linux kernel.  A lot of that is
 applicable to any sizeable project.
 
 One pattern is to define (midlayer) interfaces like the gnetlist backend
 interface in terms of library functions.
 
 http://lwn.net/Articles/336262/
 
 To fix gnetlist, the hardcoded semantics shall not be pushed to the
 backend, but offered as a library function, to be pulled in by the
 backend.  The infrastructure provided by the library shall offer various
 levels to access the netlist data.  The toplevel shall provide the
 current hardcoded semantics to the existing backends, but future backends
 may choose to use replace the top level call by copies where some
 critical second level calls are replaced. Such copies, when universally
 usefull, can be moved from the backend to the library at some point.
 
 Somebody who (unlike me) actually knows how that interface looks like
 right now, may comment on how much actually needs to change.

Well, a typical net-centric flat netlist back end may conveniently grab a list 
of the nets it needs to process from the variable all-unique-nets, defined in 
gnetlist-post.scm. That's great, but in fact it's just a trivial extract from 
the primitive (gnetlist:get-all-unique-nets). Then, there's the primitive 
(gnetlist:get-all-nets) that doesn't check for uniqueness. 

So, while there's a bit of incipient pattern like you describe, it's not very 
deep, and it's strangely tangled. Why have *two* primitives here? *Neither* of 
them is really a primitive operation. At the very least 
(gnetlist:get-all-unique-nets) could be defined in terms of 
(gnetlist:get-all-nets). 

Then, why always invoke (gnetlist:get-all-unique-nets) to construct 
all-unique-nets whether it's needed or not? One answer here is that the front 
end has already done the heavy work beforehand, so it costs very little, but 
shouldn't the front end only be doing this on demand?

  I can
 imagine that it's not a lot, since this is really a classical case for
 said design pattern.

The real difficulty here is the complexity of the Guile-C interface. The 
functions and data on the C side are accessible to the midlayer only to the 
extent that somebody does the (difficult) work of exporting them. The C front 
end is very procedural, performing much semantic processing regardless of 
whether the back end ever requests the results. Not a good match to the 
factored, functional approach.

The existing API, despite all this chaos, is truly excellent for small-scale 
flat printed circuit board netlisting, and unusually extensible beyond that. 
But it falls down in places where it inappropriately inflicts the semantics of 
small-scale flat printed circuit board netlisting on different flows, 
especially DRC and simulation. I cannot think of *any* semantic processing of 
schematics that is universally appropriate for all flows.

A truly well-factored gnetlist would thus have only one primitive function for 
processing schematics: parse a schematic file. The schematic semantics would 
all be in midlayer functions. The back end and other plugins could use these 
(or not) as needed. But that's a fair amount of work. At Noqsi, we're playing 
around with the beginnings of something like this at 
https://github.com/xcthulhu/lambda-geda.

John Doty  Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd.
http://www.noqsi.com/
j...@noqsi.com




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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-29 Thread DJ Delorie

Levente Kovacs leventel...@gmail.com writes:
 So don't regret it, it is getting common.

I wish it weren't so common.  Such wars are a pointless waste of time
and serve only to drive valuable contributors away.  Soon, the only
people working on gEDA/PCB will be those who enjoy complaining, as
there will be nobody left willing to wade through the bitter arguments
and actually write code.

So let me make this perfectly clear - if you're not willing to write
code, your complaints about how others write code will fall on deaf
ears.  As far as I know, those of us who DO write code, do it for purely
selfish reasons - we benefit from our own work.  We've said this before,
it should be no surprize to anyone.

OTOH if you have suggestions on how to make gEDA/PCB better - easier to
use, more functional, etc - feel free to voice them.  If you can back
them up with a solid design and usability models, that's even better.
Discussions about the details and caveats are to be expected!

But as soon as the discussion degrades into yet another bikeshedding,
the instigators of said bikeshedding have lost all credibility with me.

New users - ask your questions without regret.  There are no bad
questions.  Harvest the answers that are useful and ignore the crap.


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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-29 Thread John Doty

On Dec 29, 2010, at 12:51 PM, Stephan Boettcher wrote:

 John Doty j...@noqsi.com writes:
 
 On Dec 29, 2010, at 6:23 AM, Stephan Boettcher wrote:
 
 I can imagine that it's not a lot, since this is really a classical
 case for said design pattern.
 
 The real difficulty here is the complexity of the Guile-C
 interface. The functions and data on the C side are accessible to the
 midlayer only to the extent that somebody does the (difficult) work of
 exporting them. The C front end is very procedural, performing much
 semantic processing regardless of whether the back end ever requests
 the results. Not a good match to the factored, functional approach.
 
 Than that is the interface that needs to be morphed according to the
 prescribed pattern: the C-Guile interface.  
 
 And when that's the case, a clean C-API that can be exported to Guile,
 Python, Ruby, C++, Fortran, ... just dreaming.

Will you settle for a clean Haskell API that can be exported to Scheme and Lua? 
Things get a bit eccentric when you have a logician coding for a physicist ;-)

John Doty  Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd.
http://www.noqsi.com/
j...@noqsi.com




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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-29 Thread John Doty
As one of the principal troublemakers, let me comment.

On Dec 29, 2010, at 11:18 AM, DJ Delorie wrote:

 
 Levente Kovacs leventel...@gmail.com writes:
 So don't regret it, it is getting common.
 
 I wish it weren't so common.

Then show a real commitment to the toolkit, not just to pcb for hobbyists. Lip 
service to the idea that you won't damage the toolkit doesn't count. My own 
work flow has been damaged by thoughtless changes, most seriously by the 
promote footprints by default change.

  Such wars are a pointless waste of time
 and serve only to drive valuable contributors away.

You assume contributions are good. But there's no bottom to worse. gEDA is 
pretty good as is: there are a lot more ways to damage it than improve it.

If the current crop of developers actually used the tool to some approximation 
of its breadth of application, I'd feel much better.

  Soon, the only
 people working on gEDA/PCB will be those who enjoy complaining, as
 there will be nobody left willing to wade through the bitter arguments
 and actually write code.

Those of us actually using the toolkit to its limits, and extending it with 
scripts and plugins, don't count in this valuation. But gEDA's unique strength 
lies there, I think. There are plenty of free/cheap alternatives for hobbyist 
use, but not so many when you really need the breadth of gEDA's capabilities.

This doesn't mean I am opposed to hobbyists: indeed, much 
prototype/experimental work I do is functionally indistinguishable from a hobby 
approach, so the effectiveness of gEDA for such an approach is important to me 
personally. I hope we can welcome hobbyists, but I also hope we can avoid 
channeling the toolkit into hobbyist-specific flows. There's a difference.

 
 So let me make this perfectly clear - if you're not willing to write
 code, your complaints about how others write code will fall on deaf
 ears.

How about complaints about how others *break* working flows? And could easily 
do so again in the future?

  As far as I know, those of us who DO write code, do it for purely
 selfish reasons - we benefit from our own work.  We've said this before,
 it should be no surprize to anyone.
 
 OTOH if you have suggestions on how to make gEDA/PCB better -

Divorce gEDA from pcb. Create a schematic plugin for pcb, since that seems to 
be what pcb users want. The flexibility of the gschem/gnetlist flow is 
unnecessary to hobbyists. The current developers are dangerously pcb-centric.

 easier to
 use, more functional, etc - feel free to voice them.  If you can back
 them up with a solid design and usability models, that's even better.
 Discussions about the details and caveats are to be expected!

Top-down thinking. Inappropriate for a toolkit with unlimited extensibility. 
The end point will be a tool, full of fat and sugar, useful only to hobbyists.

One of the greatest resources for gEDA is gedasymbols.org. Thank you very much 
for setting that up. We can't agree on how good symbols should be constructed, 
but we can nevertheless share them. And it has grown beyond symbols and 
footprints to other sorts of add-ons. That's the way to proceed, I think: keep 
gEDA clean, lean, and mean, and solicit contributions that optionally extend 
it. The core developers should not be gatekeepers for features.

This approach works very well for other free software: TeX, Perl, Python, ...

The barriers to further grassroots improvement of gEDA are failures of 
factored, orthogonal design. The kind of suggestions you want are superficial. 
We already know where the source of gEDA's limitations lies: no more 
suggestions are required. Implementing suggested features piecemeal will only 
make the tool less flexible, more arcane, and more difficult to repair when 
repairs are needed.

And if you're really serious about having more developers working on extending 
the toolkit, the benefits of bottom-up refactoring should be obvious.

 
 New users - ask your questions without regret.

Yes. Please.

John Doty  Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd.
http://www.noqsi.com/
j...@noqsi.com




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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-29 Thread John Doty

On Dec 28, 2010, at 7:32 PM, John Griessen wrote:

 On 12/28/2010 06:21 PM, John Doty wrote:
 Well, the plug-in wasn't that difficult.
 
 Thanks for contributing some code John.  I'm in the midst of a
 lot of obligations and low cash.  I'll try to give it a look before January 
 is gone.

Well, I think it belongs on my gedasymbols page. It isn't core functionality: 
it's a special-purpose add-on, so it doesn't belong in the basic release.

John Doty  Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd.
http://www.noqsi.com/
j...@noqsi.com




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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-29 Thread Levente Kovacs
On Wed, 29 Dec 2010 13:18:24 -0500
DJ Delorie d...@delorie.com wrote:

I regret that I made that comment.

 I wish it weren't so common.  Such wars are a pointless waste of time
 and serve only to drive valuable contributors away.  Soon, the only
 people working on gEDA/PCB will be those who enjoy complaining, as
 there will be nobody left willing to wade through the bitter arguments
 and actually write code.

I agree with you. But I think that it is a fact that there are lots of wars.
We should really concentrate on work.

 So let me make this perfectly clear - if you're not willing to write
 code, your complaints about how others write code will fall on deaf
 ears.  As far as I know, those of us who DO write code, do it for
 purely selfish reasons - we benefit from our own work.  We've said
 this before, it should be no surprize to anyone.

I think in an open source domain, users and code writers are pretty much the
same. I consider myself a user, but there is code in PCB of mine. I've written
a few scripts for gEDA/PCB as well. It is not much, I know. I am willing to
write code, but I'm not good at code writing (Never tried it seriously
though).

 OTOH if you have suggestions on how to make gEDA/PCB better - easier
 to use, more functional, etc - feel free to voice them.  If you can
 back them up with a solid design and usability models, that's even
 better. Discussions about the details and caveats are to be expected!

Yes! I meant war that I feel everyone dumps their experience, favourite
tool, etc. without working the problem.

 But as soon as the discussion degrades into yet another bikeshedding,
 the instigators of said bikeshedding have lost all credibility with
 me.
 
 New users - ask your questions without regret.  There are no bad
 questions.  Harvest the answers that are useful and ignore the crap.

Yes.

The let us start a Vi vs. Emacs comment was a joke.

-- 
Levente Kovacs
http://levente.logonex.eu




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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-29 Thread Steven Michalske

 Setting it to zero by default could even be used to signal Gschem to add an 
 extra highlight to those symbols bearing it.

 Yuck. Keep tools simple and clean.

Agreed, but if you wanted a DRC highlighter, a ? highlighted would be
a great thing to highlight.


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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-29 Thread Steven Michalske
On Mon, Dec 27, 2010 at 3:56 AM, Vanessa Ezekowitz
vanessaezekow...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Sun, 26 Dec 2010 23:55:04 -0500
 al davis ad...@freeelectron.net wrote:

 On Saturday 25 December 2010, Vanessa Ezekowitz wrote:
  * If the part in question can usually be described by a
  single value, for the purposes of the signal flow in the
  schematic that is, then give it a default of value=0.

 No.  Zero is almost always wrong.

 Exactly my point - it is *supposed* to be wrong.

 I chose zero here because anyone who sees it in their schematic file should 
 instantly think, Oops, I forgot to set the value of that part.  From my own 
 experience, it is easier to spot something that is visibly flat out wrong 
 than to look for something that is just not there.

 Setting it to zero by default could even be used to signal Gschem to add an 
 extra highlight to those symbols bearing it.  Perhaps the default, 
 highlight-sensitive string should be exactly 0.0 or some variation of that, 
 since no sane user would type anything but a single 0 when they mean zero.


No valid number should be used for a default in such a generic
symbol.  I use 0 ohm resistors often, they are stuffing shorts.  a
default of ? is obvious, it clearly shows a value that has not been
assigned.


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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-29 Thread Vanessa Ezekowitz
On Wed, 29 Dec 2010 13:24:18 +0100
Levente Kovacs leventel...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Sat, 25 Dec 2010 00:50:07 -0600
 Vanessa Ezekowitz vanessaezekow...@gmail.com wrote:
 
  * If the part in question can usually be described by a single value,
  for the purposes of the signal flow in the schematic that is, then
  give it a default of value=0.
 
 That is bad. You have to think twice that is it a 0 Ohm resistor, or do I
 missed to attach normal value of that device?

True, which is why I later suggested using a string like 0.0 - something that 
no one would deliberately type.  Then the computer could use that as a trigger 
to highlight the symbol or whatever.

  * If it is a discrete part that is specified entirely by its part
  number rather than a measurement, like a diode or a transistor, then
  pick a reasonable default; value=1N914 or value=2N.
 
 Again. Is it the default or real? Nobody knows.

The idea was to save some work for the majority of use cases (assume for the 
moment the most popular parts as defaults, rather than the ones I mentioned 
above).  Default or not, the string would still be valid - it remains the 
responsibility of the user to decide if his or her schematic specifies the 
right parts.

  * If none of these fits, then leave the value= attribute off
  entirely, since the user would have no choice but to get creative
  anyway.
 
 That will make gnetlist to crash! :-) Believe me I tried! I spent nights
 manually seeking for this. Don't do it.

In that case, gnetlist should be crashing all the time, since the current 
symbol library is pretty much devoid of this attribute now.  I'm suggesting, in 
this instance, that symbols that meet this condition simply remain as they are 
today (don't add or remove anything from the symbols).

-- 
There are some things in life worth obsessing over.  Most
things aren't, and when you learn that, life improves.
http://starbase.globalpc.net/~ezekowitz
Vanessa Ezekowitz vanessaezekow...@gmail.com


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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-28 Thread John Doty

On Dec 27, 2010, at 8:41 AM, John Griessen wrote:

 On 12/27/2010 08:43 AM, John Doty wrote:
 Perhaps we need a real gnucap back end with this property? Or a plug-in that 
 does this?
 
 Sure, send some rent money and I'll create and test it within two months.

Well, the plug-in wasn't that difficult.



refdes-for-undefined-value.scm
Description: Binary data


Usage:

gnetlist -m refdes-for-undefined-value.scm

A better netlister for simulation is difficult as long as the gnetlist front 
end has hard-coded semantics, especially for hierarchy and slotting.

John Doty  Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd.
http://www.noqsi.com/
j...@noqsi.com




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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-28 Thread John Griessen

On 12/28/2010 06:21 PM, John Doty wrote:

Well, the plug-in wasn't that difficult.


Thanks for contributing some code John.  I'm in the midst of a
lot of obligations and low cash.  I'll try to give it a look before January is 
gone.

JG


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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-27 Thread Vanessa Ezekowitz
On Sun, 26 Dec 2010 23:55:04 -0500
al davis ad...@freeelectron.net wrote:

 On Saturday 25 December 2010, Vanessa Ezekowitz wrote:
  * If the part in question can usually be described by a
  single value, for the purposes of the signal flow in the
  schematic that is, then give it a default of value=0.
 
 No.  Zero is almost always wrong.  

Exactly my point - it is *supposed* to be wrong.

I chose zero here because anyone who sees it in their schematic file should 
instantly think, Oops, I forgot to set the value of that part.  From my own 
experience, it is easier to spot something that is visibly flat out wrong than 
to look for something that is just not there.

Setting it to zero by default could even be used to signal Gschem to add an 
extra highlight to those symbols bearing it.  Perhaps the default, 
highlight-sensitive string should be exactly 0.0 or some variation of that, 
since no sane user would type anything but a single 0 when they mean zero.

 The only sensible default value in this case is a copy of the reference
 designator.

No, that's wrong too.  If I wanted to see the refdes's, I'd keep PCB in that 
view mode instead of putting it in value mode, and in the schematic, doing this 
would just lead to doubled refdes's everywhere initially, which could get 
confusing in densely packed schematics.

 Justification ...  For simulation, all modern simulators, and 
 some not-so-modern simulators have a means of assigning values 
 to parameters.
 
 In a spice format, you could say:
 .param R1=10k
 or something like that.
 Some let you use parameters in other ways, making it even more 
 useful.

Where does this tie in with what default the symbol might have in its value= 
attribute?  If you're directly assigning that 10K value to R1 within your spice 
code using its refdes as the basis for the assignment, then it seems to me 
you're already overriding whatever value was specified in the Gschem schematic 
and/or the symbol library.

  * If it is a discrete part that is specified entirely by its
  part number rather than a measurement, like a diode or a
  transistor, then pick a reasonable default; value=1N914 or
  value=2N.
 
 As I recall, those are specific devices that were popular 40 
 years ago.  Not sure how relevant they are today.  Unless you 
 link to something, they are just arbitrary strings, no better 
 than any other.

I mentioned the 2N and 1N914 because they are easy to use and easy to find. 
 Being general purpose components, they make excellent teaching aids, and I use 
them myself from time to time for the occasional LED driver or small signal amp 
(nothing big by anyone's standards here).  That said, the examples I gave could 
have applied to any of a hundred other part classes, though.  Would my argument 
been any different if I'd named some modern power MOSFET or the latest Atmel 
microcontroller instead?

Discrete transistors aren't as popular as they were a few decades ago in 
computer technology, but they are still in common use in the analog world 
(power supplies, amplifiers, radios, telephones, hobby electronics).

If my suggestions aren't to peoples' liking, then try something a little more 
logical: if you don't want to go with something well known for a given symbol's 
default because that something is too old or outdated, then at least go 
with whatever is the number one selling item in that class (as measured by 
end-user distributors like Radio Shack rather than wholesalers and 
manufacturers).  You're virtually guaranteed to get it right most of the time 
that way.

 The best default would be something that is more universally 
 meaningful, and not specificm like D or diode for a diode, 
 or NPN for an NPN transistor.

If that were the case then there's no point at all, because the symbol file 
itself, by definition, already tells you what it is.  You (and the simulator) 
already you're using a diode or an NPN transistor or whatever by virtue of the 
fact that you chose to instantiate the symbols for those parts.

The original poster was asking about adding values to resistor symbols so that 
they show R1 and 10k on the schematic diagram only.

I was expanding on that idea to handle named parts as well -  what *kind* of 
diode or transistor the PCB will end up having stuffed into it at build time.  
Since value= has no meaning at all with such things, I suggested it be 
re-purposed in those cases.

 For a simulator that reads spice format, you could then say:
 .model D D
 .model NPN NPN
 to make the names meaningful.  It might be useful to make an 
 include file to define these things.

I'd say that one would need to know precisely what kind of transistor one is 
using in a circuit before a simulation begins, or it may end up with invalid 
results.  I don't know whether the value= attribute is the right place to put 
that information, but I can't think of a better place.

  * If the part is something like a logic IC, use the standard
  name of the part in 

Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-27 Thread John Doty

On Dec 27, 2010, at 3:56 AM, Vanessa Ezekowitz wrote:

 On Sun, 26 Dec 2010 23:55:04 -0500
 al davis ad...@freeelectron.net wrote:
 
 On Saturday 25 December 2010, Vanessa Ezekowitz wrote:
 * If the part in question can usually be described by a
 single value, for the purposes of the signal flow in the
 schematic that is, then give it a default of value=0.
 
 No.  Zero is almost always wrong.  
 
 Exactly my point - it is *supposed* to be wrong.

But *I* use 0 as a value rather frequently. Depends on what you're doing with 
the toolkit.

 
 I chose zero here because anyone who sees it in their schematic file should 
 instantly think, Oops, I forgot to set the value of that part.  From my own 
 experience, it is easier to spot something that is visibly flat out wrong 
 than to look for something that is just not there.

Then make a library with symbols like that. Don't expect others to agree that 
it's the right way to go. Don't change the default library, because that will 
break many things.

 
 Setting it to zero by default could even be used to signal Gschem to add an 
 extra highlight to those symbols bearing it.

Yuck. Keep tools simple and clean.

  Perhaps the default, highlight-sensitive string should be exactly 0.0 or 
 some variation of that, since no sane user would type anything but a single 
 0 when they mean zero.

Your definition of sane appears to be very self-centered.

 
 The only sensible default value in this case is a copy of the reference
 designator.
 
 No, that's wrong too.  If I wanted to see the refdes's, I'd keep PCB in that 
 view mode instead of putting it in value mode,

Al's talking about simulation, not pcb.

 and in the schematic, doing this would just lead to doubled refdes's 
 everywhere initially, which could get confusing in densely packed schematics.

That's a reason why my Mathematica back end substitutes the refdes for the 
value in the model if the value is absent. Perhaps we need a real gnucap back 
end with this property? Or a plug-in that does this?

 
 Justification ...  For simulation, all modern simulators, and 
 some not-so-modern simulators have a means of assigning values 
 to parameters.
 
 In a spice format, you could say:
 .param R1=10k
 or something like that.
 Some let you use parameters in other ways, making it even more 
 useful.
 
 Where does this tie in with what default the symbol might have in its 
 value= attribute?  If you're directly assigning that 10K value to R1 within 
 your spice code using its refdes as the basis for the assignment, then it 
 seems to me you're already overriding whatever value was specified in the 
 Gschem schematic and/or the symbol library.

But you have to construct the netlist in a way that allows that. Is the value 
of R1 a constant or a parameter? Attributes in the schematic control this.

 
 * If it is a discrete part that is specified entirely by its
 part number rather than a measurement, like a diode or a
 transistor, then pick a reasonable default; value=1N914 or
 value=2N.
 
 As I recall, those are specific devices that were popular 40 
 years ago.  Not sure how relevant they are today.  Unless you 
 link to something, they are just arbitrary strings, no better 
 than any other.
 
 I mentioned the 2N and 1N914 because they are easy to use and easy to 
 find.  Being general purpose components, they make excellent teaching aids, 
 and I use them myself from time to time for the occasional LED driver or 
 small signal amp (nothing big by anyone's standards here).  That said, the 
 examples I gave could have applied to any of a hundred other part classes, 
 though.  Would my argument been any different if I'd named some modern power 
 MOSFET or the latest Atmel microcontroller instead?
 
 Discrete transistors aren't as popular as they were a few decades ago in 
 computer technology, but they are still in common use in the analog world 
 (power supplies, amplifiers, radios, telephones, hobby electronics).
 
 If my suggestions aren't to peoples' liking, then try something a little more 
 logical: if you don't want to go with something well known for a given 
 symbol's default because that something is too old or outdated, then at 
 least go with whatever is the number one selling item in that class (as 
 measured by end-user distributors like Radio Shack rather than wholesalers 
 and manufacturers).  You're virtually guaranteed to get it right most of the 
 time that way.

Why don't you just make a library that fits your prejudices rather than trying 
to force them on everybody else?

 
 The best default would be something that is more universally 
 meaningful, and not specificm like D or diode for a diode, 
 or NPN for an NPN transistor.
 
 If that were the case then there's no point at all, because the symbol file 
 itself, by definition, already tells you what it is.  You (and the simulator) 
 already you're using a diode or an NPN transistor or whatever by virtue of 
 the fact that you chose to 

Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-27 Thread John Griessen

On 12/27/2010 08:43 AM, John Doty wrote:

Perhaps we need a real gnucap back end with this property? Or a plug-in that 
does this?


Sure, send some rent money and I'll create and test it within two months.

John


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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-27 Thread Peter Clifton
On Mon, 2010-12-27 at 09:43 -0500, John Doty wrote:
 On Dec 27, 2010, at 3:56 AM, Vanessa Ezekowitz wrote:
 
  On Sun, 26 Dec 2010 23:55:04 -0500
  al davis ad...@freeelectron.net wrote:
  
  On Saturday 25 December 2010, Vanessa Ezekowitz wrote:
  * If the part in question can usually be described by a
  single value, for the purposes of the signal flow in the
  schematic that is, then give it a default of value=0.
  
  No.  Zero is almost always wrong.  
  
  Exactly my point - it is *supposed* to be wrong.
 
 But *I* use 0 as a value rather frequently. Depends on what you're doing with 
 the toolkit.

Likewise.. I often use zero ohms resistor links to act as placeholders
were resistor might be required for slowing down edges, or isolating a
signal for probing.

Any default should be blank, or an invalid value. ? would work, but
I'm not going to paint this particular shed any further.

-- 
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)



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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-27 Thread John Griessen

On 12/27/2010 02:56 AM, Vanessa Ezekowitz wrote:

No.  Zero is almost always wrong.

Exactly my point - it is*supposed*  to be wrong.


 The only sensible default value in this case is a copy of the reference
  designator.
No, that's wrong too.

This seems like one of those cases where more than one set of defaults is 
needed,
along with some documentation.  The first wave of documentation is always
a how-to-start, so the very first level default set has to support that, and if 
it is
good, it will have a simulation to run from it, and a pcb drawn from it,
even if that needs two slightly different schematics to accomplish that purpose.

John


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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values???

2010-12-26 Thread Bert Timmerman
Hi all, 

 -Original Message-
 From: geda-user-boun...@moria.seul.org 
 [mailto:geda-user-boun...@moria.seul.org] On Behalf Of 
 ge...@igor2.repo.hu
 Sent: Sunday, December 26, 2010 7:06 AM
 To: gEDA user mailing list
 Subject: Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values???
 
 On Sat, Dec 25, 2010 at 09:23:17PM -0500, Mark wrote:
 
 snip 
 
  So, because I use several methods, a single 
 one-size-fits-all library is just not going to work for me.  
  I *could* make use of a library of heavy symbols but I 
 still need the 
  lightweight symbols, too.  If I was forced to choose one 
 library then I would like to keep the lightweight stuff.
  
 
 Maybe we should extend existing library in a way that we 
 clone existing symbols, prefix the names by use case and 
 add/delete attributes. Since the currently available library 
 wouldn't change at all, no existing schematics would be broken.
 
 We now have resistor-1.sym and resistor-2.sym; we woulg then 
 have these cloned as _P_resistor-1.sym and _P_resistor-2.sym, 
 _P_ meaning they are intended for use on PCB.
 
 Of course, this would increase the confusion of new users, 
 but it should be no harder than getting the L/N/M suffix of 
 some SMD footpritns in PCB. 
 
 Regards,
 
 Tibor Palinkas
 
 

Or a symbol with a name which goes something like:

resistor-4pcb.sym

resistor-4pcb-1.sym drawn in Imperial style.

resistor-4pcb-2.sym drawn in European style.

resistor-4pcb-zerolengthpins-1.sym drawn in Imperial style, with zero
length pins.

resistor-4pcb-zerolengthpins-2.sym drawn in European style, with zero
length pins.

The possibilites are endless as gschem offers great flexibility ;-)

IMHO Users should take care of the needed content for thier own purposes,
the gEDA suite itself only has to offer a basic set of symbols/footprints to
get users started, and encourage  sharing content on gedasymbols.org.

Kind regards,

Bert Timmerman.



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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-26 Thread Vanessa Ezekowitz
On Sat, 25 Dec 2010 12:44:54 -0500
John Doty j...@noqsi.com wrote:

  Often, perhaps, but not usually.  No matter how you slice it, the most
  common way to use such a symbol and its corresponding physical
  representation is as a component on a circuit board or in an IC.
 
 Maybe for you. But gEDA isn't limited to that kind of flow. I pray that it
 will remain flexible, not specific to any particular kind of flow.

Flexibility and specific applicability are not mutually exclusive, and for the 
very reasons you are citing here.  Just as you can use gEDA and related tools 
to create VLSI designs, I can use it to create ordinary circuit boards - but 
the two capabilities only exist because someone had to add those specific, 
specialized features.

When I edit an HTML file, I use an editor with syntax highlighting for that 
language because I find it very handy (provided the colors are readable).  That 
doesn't mean the text editor is an HTML editor, per se.  If someone were to 
come along and add syntax highlighting for, say, Python, C, Ruby, or any of the 
dozens of other languages out there, it wouldn't change the fact that it still 
highlights HTML, would it?

Now suppose someone else comes along and adds a feature that can optionally 
turn those highlighting modes into actual edit-assist modes, making the text 
editor into an actual mini HTML/Python/C/... editor.  What has changed?

  Stop trying to change the subject - this is not about simulation or VLSI
  design,
 
 Yes it is. It is extremely important that gEDA remain the excellent tool
 for these jobs that it is.

Look at the Subject: field in the header of this thread as started by the 
original poster.  Does it not say resistor values ?

  If the presence of a value= attribute is of no use to you, then *ignore
  it*.  
 
 If the absence of a value= attribute is a problem for you, attach one. Even
 if it's present, it's likely to be wrong, so you have about the same amount
 of work to do in any case. But getting rid of it is somewhat more work,
 especially in existing schematics that assume its absence.

The point here isn't to get *rid* of useless attributes - the point is to 
outright ignore them.  

If your setup is such that these value= attributes cause problems, I submit 
that the problem is not in the presence of these attributes, but in your 
workflow.  You've become accustomed to a certain pattern and have not planned 
far enough ahead to account for relatively minor changes.

  The existence of something does not imply the requirement to use it.
  
  gschem/gnetlist are excellent tools for
  schematic capture for VLSI, symbolic analysis, and simulation.
  
  And they will continue to be.
 
 They won't if the attitude of I don't care to know about any flow except
 pcb, and all I want is my version of the pcb flow isn't vigorously opposed.

Nor will they be if you continue with your attitude of I don't care about any 
workflow other than VLSI simulation.

The project needs to be able to cater to both as well as it can, even if that 
means the users need to make minor changes to the way they use it.

  Maybe in your line of work that can be the case, but I submit that the
  vast majority of users of these types of tools do not make the same
  comparisons you do.
 
 Ah yes, the tyranny of the majority. But I'm here because gEDA is far more
 flexible and productive than the competition. I guess all the other
 gnetlist back end writers contributed for the same reason.

You confuse a request for a feature (or in this case, a request for a modified 
default) with the desire to eliminate some feature you find critical.  One does 
not have to imply the other, and a good programmer is more than capable of 
accomplishing this with most any two such features.

Tyranny of the majority is a concept for the politics and philosophy classes, 
not for software projects.

  You and I both know that R1 is not meant to have the same meaning as
  the 10k written below it in a schematic, and that's what each of our
  respective instructors taught.  
 
 Ah, but in pure symbolic analysis there is no 10k. There are only
 equations like r1*c1==4*r2*c2.

And your point is?  You're writing formulas with refdes's, not value= entries.

No matter how complicated your resistor formula are - sooner or later, those 
equations HAVE to boil down to some number of ohms or your circuit isn't going 
to do what it should.

 I started with vacuum tubes and point-to-point wiring. You can't go from
 there to VLSI without changing a lot of thinking.

Which means you should have the same understanding as I have of the 
fundamentals of circuit design (though I've gotten somewhat rusty at basic 
analog stuff).  I assume you do, otherwise this discussion would have no hope 
of a meaningful resolution.

  If you only use gschem/gnetlist to feed pcb, you will have a severely
  limited perception of their true capabilities, and the genius behind
  their design.
  
  Perhaps you mean you 

Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-26 Thread John Doty

On Dec 26, 2010, at 4:14 AM, Vanessa Ezekowitz wrote:

 On Sat, 25 Dec 2010 12:44:54 -0500
 John Doty j...@noqsi.com wrote:
 
 Often, perhaps, but not usually.  No matter how you slice it, the most
 common way to use such a symbol and its corresponding physical
 representation is as a component on a circuit board or in an IC.
 
 Maybe for you. But gEDA isn't limited to that kind of flow. I pray that it
 will remain flexible, not specific to any particular kind of flow.
 
 Flexibility and specific applicability are not mutually exclusive, and for 
 the very reasons you are citing here.

True, but what makes this possible? It's *avoiding* specificity in the 
foundations.

 
 If your setup is such that these value= attributes cause problems, I submit 
 that the problem is not in the presence of these attributes, but in your 
 workflow.  You've become accustomed to a certain pattern and have not planned 
 far enough ahead to account for relatively minor changes.

I used the existing library symbols as they were. The fundamental logic of the 
library design in gEDA is that semantics should not change, because that can 
break existing designs. But it's easy to make specialized libraries, so that's 
the solution.

I do not call putting in an attribute that triggers special processing in many 
back ends a relatively minor change.

 
 The existence of something does not imply the requirement to use it.
 
 gschem/gnetlist are excellent tools for
 schematic capture for VLSI, symbolic analysis, and simulation.
 
 And they will continue to be.
 
 They won't if the attitude of I don't care to know about any flow except
 pcb, and all I want is my version of the pcb flow isn't vigorously opposed.
 
 Nor will they be if you continue with your attitude of I don't care about 
 any workflow other than VLSI simulation.

What??? Of course I care about a wide variety of flows, including (several) 
printed circuit flows. I have contributed two printed circuit back ends for 
gnetlist to the gEDA project. 

 
 The project needs to be able to cater to both as well as it can, even if that 
 means the users need to make minor changes to the way they use it.

Fixing problems in a library of schematics going back eight years isn't 
minor. I frequently reuse schematics. When reusing a symbolic analysis 
schematic, an unnoticed value=0 attribute could cause serious problems.

 
 You confuse a request for a feature (or in this case, a request for a 
 modified default) with the desire to eliminate some feature you find critical.

Once the default is in use, it *is* a critical feature to those who have used 
it. Changing it breaks things.

 And your point is?  You're writing formulas with refdes's, not value= entries.

Depends. If I want to set a constant value in the schematic rather than leaving 
it variable, value= fixes it. Does that not make sense?

 
 No matter how complicated your resistor formula are - sooner or later, those 
 equations HAVE to boil down to some number of ohms or your circuit isn't 
 going to do what it should.

But that happens later. A schematic for symbolic analysis is like a textbook 
abstraction: idealized components of infinite dynamic range with power coming 
out of nowhere. The resulting equations drive component value selection in a 
more realistic schematic downstream.

 
 A nice simple text editor is a good thing. Versatile. A WYSIWYG word
 processor is much less versatile.
 
 How so?  Name me one thing a simple text editor can do that a 
 properly-written WYSIWYG word processor supposedly cannot.

Not waste your time with endless point and click. Clearly separate content from 
markup, thereby putting the user in control.

 
 Ah, the tyranny of the majority again.
 
 All we are proposing here is adding some reasonable, sane defaults for
 things like value - things you can ignore if they aren't useful to your
 particular work.
 
 If you add a value= attribute to resistor-1.sym it will break most of my
 symbolic analysis schematics because of the inheritance rules. The presence
 of specific values overrides the default of use the refdes symbolically.
 
 If you don't set up your work environment so that it can grow along with and 
 adapt to changes in the tools that it uses, you are just begging for trouble.

The way to grow gEDA is by adding optional modules: new libraries, back ends, 
scripts. Changes to the core should maintain compatibility with existing 
designs. Additions to the core API could facilitate new kinds of add-ons.

  If your rules get broken by simply adding an attribute that is normally 
 absent, then you need to fix your setup to not depend on it, rather than 
 trying to force the software to leave out the offending attribute.

Who said anything about forcing the software to leave it out? The software 
should put it in if it's in the symbol, leave it out if it's not. If the symbol 
is wrong (and most are no doubt wrong in the context of any specific flow), 
create a *new* symbol. Every 

Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-26 Thread Bob Paddock
 Flexibility and specific applicability are not mutually exclusive, and for 
 the very reasons you are citing here.

 True, but what makes this possible? It's *avoiding* specificity in the 
 foundations.

I find that statement odd.  If the foundation is not well specified
then it is not a foundation at all, it is jello.

I'm curious about how exacting the specifications are for your space projects?

Here is an interesting document on specifying software from NASA:

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/codeq/doctree/871913.pdf‎

The focus of this document is on analysis, development, and assurance
of safety-critical software, including firmware (e.g. software
residing in non-volatile memory, such as ROM, EPROM, EEPROM, or flash
memory) and programmable logic. This document also discusses issues
with contractor-developed software. It provides guidance on how to
address creation and assurance of safety-critical software within the
overall software development, management, risk management, and
assurance activities.

While gEDA and friends might not be considered 'safety-critical' by
many, there is no reason good software disciplines should not be used,
including good detailed specifications at all levels.


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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-26 Thread John Doty

On Dec 26, 2010, at 3:12 PM, Bob Paddock wrote:

 Flexibility and specific applicability are not mutually exclusive, and for 
 the very reasons you are citing here.
 
 True, but what makes this possible? It's *avoiding* specificity in the 
 foundations.
 
 I find that statement odd.  If the foundation is not well specified
 then it is not a foundation at all, it is jello.

Foundations must be well defined, yes. Sin[x] is an extremely well defined 
function, but it is not *specific* to any application.

 
 I'm curious about how exacting the specifications are for your space projects?

They tend to start sloppy, because these are research projects, and if we knew 
what we would find, it wouldn't be research ;-) Part of the trick to a good 
project here is to be as agnostic as possible about what you might see. Avoid 
the tunnel vision of specific expectations, but at the same time create a 
solid, extremely well defined foundation.

One of my proudest career achievements is the flexible data acquisition system 
(EDS) for the RXTE mission 
(http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/xte/abc/pca_issues.html#struc). In the early 
planning, the data acquisition system architecture was a fine example of 
top-down design from notions of what the observing program might be. In other 
words, it reflected our ignorance of what was actually going on in the x-ray 
sky. It had a complex collection of specialized modes crafted to answering 
specific scientific questions.

But a couple of us were disturbed by this. We came up with a parameterized 
architecture that could cover all of the kinds of observations that were 
contemplated, as well as crazy configurations that were generally considered 
useless.

One crazy configuration was to reduce the number of bits/photon to one, and 
thereby achieve two orders of magnitude better time resolution than most people 
thought necessary while staying within data transmission restrictions. I'm told 
that this has been the most common configuration. Give people capability, they 
figure out how to use it! But give them what they say they want, they'll use it 
once, discover that they really wanted more than they said.

RXTE's greatest discovery has been the extremely rapid rotation (~600 Hz!) of 
neutron stars in accreting binary systems. As originally conceived, with modes 
specifically targeted to what people wanted, RXTE could not have discovered 
this. But it not only made the discovery but spent much time (partially) 
unravelling what's going on here.

The lesson is: don't be too specific about your desires when designing a tool. 
Instead, design the tool to cover the widest possible space with the smallest 
number of features. Then you can really go places.

 
 Here is an interesting document on specifying software from NASA:
 
 http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/codeq/doctree/871913.pdf‎
 
 The focus of this document is on analysis, development, and assurance
 of safety-critical software, including firmware (e.g. software
 residing in non-volatile memory, such as ROM, EPROM, EEPROM, or flash
 memory) and programmable logic. This document also discusses issues
 with contractor-developed software. It provides guidance on how to
 address creation and assurance of safety-critical software within the
 overall software development, management, risk management, and
 assurance activities.

But the real truth is that RQA in NASA focuses on deflecting blame from 
management. We have rigorous bureaucratic procedures hiding endemic sloppy 
thinking. This costs massive amounts of money, and sometimes kills people.

 
 While gEDA and friends might not be considered 'safety-critical' by
 many, there is no reason good software disciplines should not be used,
 including good detailed specifications at all levels.

But a toolkit should avoid overly specific targets within the application 
space. Cover the space with simple tools rather than implementing ad hoc 
complexity for specific purposes. That makes for a *more* solid foundation.

John Doty  Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd.
http://www.noqsi.com/
j...@noqsi.com




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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-26 Thread Stephan Boettcher
John Doty j...@noqsi.com writes:

 One crazy configuration was to reduce the number of bits/photon to
 one, and thereby achieve two orders of magnitude better time
 resolution than most people thought necessary while staying within
 data transmission restrictions. I'm told that this has been the most
 common configuration. Give people capability, they figure out how to
 use it! But give them what they say they want, they'll use it once,
 discover that they really wanted more than they said.

There has never been a physics experiment where any excess time
resolution did not lead to usefull discoveries.

 But the real truth is that RQA in NASA focuses on deflecting blame
 from management. We have rigorous bureaucratic procedures hiding
 endemic sloppy thinking. This costs massive amounts of money,

thus feeding the economy, and people, 

 and sometimes kills people.

well, nothing is for free.

You are lucky to work for NASA projects.  With ESA this overhead is
trippled, and European multinational politics mixed in.

All the NASA QA, reviews, and stuff were annoying at first, but in the
end there always were smart people asking the right questions at the
right time to the right people.  With ESA, its bureaucrats running
though questionnaires they do not understand, that cannot be answered
because they do not apply to the phase the project is in.  Most
important is to make sure each nation gets its fair share of the pie.

Here in town, at the Baltic Sea, we have a board house that makes
military grade PCBs.  Their boards were passing NASA inspection with
flying colors, and are about to be launched to Mars.  When we asked this
board house about prototypes for an ESA mission, they told us they will
not do any business with us for ESA projects. Period.  Impossible.  The
overhead kills it.

-- 
Stephan


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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-26 Thread John Doty

On Dec 26, 2010, at 5:25 PM, Stephan Boettcher wrote:

 All the NASA QA, reviews, and stuff were annoying at first, but in the
 end there always were smart people asking the right questions at the
 right time to the right people.

Well, you've had better luck than I have. In three decades of doing this stuff, 
I have never seen a NASA design reviewer correctly identify a real problem. The 
set of real problems has always been disjoint from the supposed problems the 
reviewers worried about.

But when I was at MIT, our internal reviews were much better. Not management 
theater like the NASA reviews. It's a bit frightening to be a freelancer 
without that resource to call on.

John Doty  Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd.
http://www.noqsi.com/
j...@noqsi.com




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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-26 Thread al davis
On Saturday 25 December 2010, Vanessa Ezekowitz wrote:
 * If the part in question can usually be described by a
 single value, for the purposes of the signal flow in the
 schematic that is, then give it a default of value=0.

No.  Zero is almost always wrong.  The only sensible default 
value in this case is a copy of the reference designator.  If 
the reference designator is R1, the default value should be 
R1.

Justification ...  For simulation, all modern simulators, and 
some not-so-modern simulators have a means of assigning values 
to parameters.

In a spice format, you could say:
.param R1=10k
or something like that.
Some let you use parameters in other ways, making it even more 
useful.

 * If it is a discrete part that is specified entirely by its
 part number rather than a measurement, like a diode or a
 transistor, then pick a reasonable default; value=1N914 or
 value=2N.

As I recall, those are specific devices that were popular 40 
years ago.  Not sure how relevant they are today.  Unless you 
link to something, they are just arbitrary strings, no better 
than any other.

The best default would be something that is more universally 
meaningful, and not specificm like D or diode for a diode, 
or NPN for an NPN transistor.

For a simulator that reads spice format, you could then say:
.model D D
.model NPN NPN
to make the names meaningful.  It might be useful to make an 
include file to define these things.

 * If the part is something like a logic IC, use the standard
 name of the part in the fastest commonly available series
 for that particular gate; value=74F74 or value=74HCT245.

Same as diodes.  Names like 74F74 have no meaning, unless you 
look it up, and are completely wrong most of the time.

 * If none of these fits, then leave the value= attribute
 off entirely, since the user would have no choice but to get
 creative anyway.
 
 The point here is that every one of the component types in
 question has a value, therefore the value= field will end
 up being utilized by nearly everyone who instantiates the
 symbol for that component.  Otherwise, schematics with a lot
 of such symbols become nearly impossible to read, let alone
 debug.



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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-25 Thread kai-martin knaak
Johnny Rosenberg wrote:

 Now I'd like to save my ”new” symbol somewhere.

If you added the attribute in the schematics (the document 
with the title block), you did not create a new symbol. You
just attached an attribute to an instance of the symbol.

To really change and save a symbol, you'd:

1) open the symbol with gschem (rather than open a schematic
and place a symbol)

2) make your changes

3) save to some path

4) Make sure, that this path is read by gschem on start-up.
For example by putting lines like these into your local 
$HOME/.gEDA/gafrc  

/---
; Allow to source symbols from the local copy of geda-symbols
(define gedasymbols 
/home/kmk/geda/gedasymbols/www/user/kai_martin_knaak/symbols)
(component-library (build-path gedasymbols titleblock))
\--

or more simple like:
/
(component-library PATH_TO_THE_DIR_WITH_YOUR_SYMBOLS)
\

---)kaimartin(---
-- 
Kai-Martin Knaak
Öffentlicher PGP-Schlüssel:
http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=getsearch=0x6C0B9F53



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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-25 Thread John Doty

On Dec 25, 2010, at 1:50 AM, Vanessa Ezekowitz wrote:
 
 Resistors are just one of many component types out there have a value, no 
 matter what type of package they come in

Resistors often don't come in packages. I use resistors in VLSI design, and 
textbook symbolic abstractions of resistors also have no packages. Then there's 
simulation, where it is usually unnecessary to simulate the package even if it 
will exist someday. gschem/gnetlist are excellent tools for schematic capture 
for VLSI, symbolic analysis, and simulation.

 - with rare exceptions, every single one of them you pick up will have 
 numbers or color bands indicating that value, we all know that.  That value 
 might be zero ohms, but it is still a *value*.

By convention, in symbolic analysis of circuits, the value is the same as the 
refdes. So no value attribute is needed.

 
 The same goes for every last capacitor, inductor, etc., though I think you'd 
 be hard-pressed to find any that have a value of zero.  

Maybe you're hard-pressed here, but I am not. I often set values to zero when 
analyzing or simulating circuits. Limiting cases, y'know. Sometimes I even use 
negative numbers.

If you only use gschem/gnetlist to feed pcb, you will have a severely limited 
perception of their true capabilities, and the genius behind their design.

It would be great if pcb users would pool their resources and create a library 
specifically for a common pcb flow. But it will never happen. Even in that 
small corner of the vast gEDA universe there are still widely divergent notions 
of flow and style. So almost everybody will continue to fight the toolkit and 
complain.

John Doty  Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd.
http://www.noqsi.com/
j...@noqsi.com




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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-25 Thread DJ Delorie

John Doty j...@noqsi.com writes:
 Often, perhaps, but not usually.  No matter how you slice it, the
 most common way to use such a symbol and its corresponding physical
 representation is as a component on a circuit board or in an IC.

 Maybe for you.

Your opinion doesn't change the statistics.  gEDA is most often used to
design circuit boards.

 Yes it is. It is extremely important that gEDA remain the excellent
 tool for these jobs that it is.

Extremely?  Not at all.  It's only as as important as the people willing
to work on it make it.

 If the absence of a value= attribute is a problem for you, attach
 one. Even if it's present, it's likely to be wrong, so you have about
 the same amount of work to do in any case. But getting rid of it is
 somewhat more work, especially in existing schematics that assume its
 absence.

The presence of an empty value= label still serves a purpose - it stores
the position information so that the designer doesn't have to manually
move N copies of value= for every resistor.

 They won't if the attitude of I don't care to know about any flow
 except pcb, and all I want is my version of the pcb flow isn't
 vigorously opposed.

You've yet to prove that that attitude actually exists.

 Ah, the tyranny of the majority again.

Yup, we're tyrants because we want to make it easier for 99% of our
users to get their jobs done.


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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-25 Thread John Doty

On Dec 25, 2010, at 12:49 PM, DJ Delorie wrote:

 
 John Doty j...@noqsi.com writes:
 Often, perhaps, but not usually.  No matter how you slice it, the
 most common way to use such a symbol and its corresponding physical
 representation is as a component on a circuit board or in an IC.
 
 Maybe for you.
 
 Your opinion doesn't change the statistics.  gEDA is most often used to
 design circuit boards.

The tyranny of the majority, again.

 
 Yes it is. It is extremely important that gEDA remain the excellent
 tool for these jobs that it is.
 
 Extremely?  Not at all.  It's only as as important as the people willing
 to work on it make it.

Maybe to you gEDA is just one of the crowd of hobbyist EDA tools. It is much 
more to me.

 
 They won't if the attitude of I don't care to know about any flow
 except pcb, and all I want is my version of the pcb flow isn't
 vigorously opposed.
 
 You've yet to prove that that attitude actually exists.

I'm still cleaning up from the mess created when the default attribute 
promotion policy was changed a couple of years ago, apparently to better serve 
the perceived needs of small scale pcb projects. It's easy to fix in gafrc, but 
you had to know to do it before populating your schems with unwanted promoted 
footprints. Some developer just wasn't thinking about the breadth of the 
application space.

 Yup, we're tyrants because we want to make it easier for 99% of our
 users to get their jobs done.

But you aren't. A special purpose pcb-centric symbol/footprint library would be 
a fine substitute for the eclectic default library. For those users who would 
do better with it, it would be here, install this. But nobody's done that. 
Changing the default library piecemeal won't solve the problem, and will break 
things.

John Doty  Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd.
http://www.noqsi.com/
j...@noqsi.com




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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-25 Thread Johnny Rosenberg

Den 2010-12-25 20:59:14 skrev John Doty j...@noqsi.com:



On Dec 25, 2010, at 12:49 PM, DJ Delorie wrote:



John Doty j...@noqsi.com writes:

Often, perhaps, but not usually.  No matter how you slice it, the
most common way to use such a symbol and its corresponding physical
representation is as a component on a circuit board or in an IC.


Maybe for you.


Your opinion doesn't change the statistics.  gEDA is most often used to
design circuit boards.


The tyranny of the majority, again.




Yes it is. It is extremely important that gEDA remain the excellent
tool for these jobs that it is.


Extremely?  Not at all.  It's only as as important as the people willing
to work on it make it.


Maybe to you gEDA is just one of the crowd of hobbyist EDA tools. It is  
much more to me.





They won't if the attitude of I don't care to know about any flow
except pcb, and all I want is my version of the pcb flow isn't
vigorously opposed.


You've yet to prove that that attitude actually exists.


I'm still cleaning up from the mess created when the default attribute  
promotion policy was changed a couple of years ago, apparently to better  
serve the perceived needs of small scale pcb projects. It's easy to fix  
in gafrc, but you had to know to do it before populating your schems  
with unwanted promoted footprints. Some developer just wasn't thinking  
about the breadth of the application space.



Yup, we're tyrants because we want to make it easier for 99% of our
users to get their jobs done.


But you aren't. A special purpose pcb-centric symbol/footprint library  
would be a fine substitute for the eclectic default library. For those  
users who would do better with it, it would be here, install this. But  
nobody's done that. Changing the default library piecemeal won't solve  
the problem, and will break things.


John Doty  Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd.
http://www.noqsi.com/
j...@noqsi.com



Hm… I start to regret that I asked the question in the first place…

--
Kind regards

Johnny Rosenberg


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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-25 Thread Stephan Boettcher
Johnny Rosenberg gurus.knu...@gmail.com writes:

 Hm… I start to regret that I asked the question in the first place…

Please don't. 

-- 
Stephan


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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-25 Thread Johnny Rosenberg
Den 2010-12-25 22:12:40 skrev Stephan Boettcher  
boettc...@physik.uni-kiel.de:



Johnny Rosenberg gurus.knu...@gmail.com writes:


Hm… I start to regret that I asked the question in the first place…


Please don't.



Well, I guess it's not regrettable anyway; the question is already asked  
and I think I also got a couple of great answers, thank you all for that.  
After being a member of this list for only a couple of days it already  
feels like this is a good place to ask questions. Quick and helpful  
answers are always appreciated. I am a member of quite a few lists by now,  
like Ubuntu, a couple of OpenOffice.org lists, GIMP, EasyTAG and more.  
Some of them are very dead, but this one seems to be alive, which is nice.


I know I am probably the ”newest” guy here so I don't think that anyone  
will listen to me that much, but can we at least keep the ”wars” in  
separate threads?


And thanks again, all of you, for many great answers.

--
Kind regards

Johnny Rosenberg


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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-25 Thread John Doty

On Dec 25, 2010, at 4:01 PM, Johnny Rosenberg wrote:

 Hm… I start to regret that I asked the question in the first place…

No need to regret it. It was a good question.

John Doty  Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd.
http://www.noqsi.com/
j...@noqsi.com




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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-25 Thread Steven Michalske
I see the need for something akin to a preferred default positioning,  where 
when a symbol is rotated there is a place where your prefer your attributes to 
be placed.

Have geschem do the auto place template not part of the symbols at all

Steve




On Dec 25, 2010, at 4:48 PM, John Doty j...@noqsi.com wrote:

 
 On Dec 25, 2010, at 4:01 PM, Johnny Rosenberg wrote:
 
 Hm… I start to regret that I asked the question in the first place…
 
 No need to regret it. It was a good question.
 
 John Doty  Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd.
 http://www.noqsi.com/
 j...@noqsi.com
 
 
 
 
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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-25 Thread Mark
On Saturday 25 December 2010 14:59:14 John Doty wrote:
 On Dec 25, 2010, at 12:49 PM, DJ Delorie wrote:

  Yup, we're tyrants because we want to make it easier for 99% of our
  users to get their jobs done.

 But you aren't. A special purpose pcb-centric symbol/footprint library
 would be a fine substitute for the eclectic default library. For those
 users who would do better with it, it would be here, install this. But
 nobody's done that. Changing the default library piecemeal won't solve the
 problem, and will break things.

I absolutely agree.  At home I've had to create different libraries to support 
various methods of 
assembly.

I have one library for surface mounting through-hole components.  It lets me 
hand assemble crude 
prototypes.  The next library was created piece by piece.  Whenever I use a new 
part I create a new 
footprint.  It's designed for hand assembly of manufactured boards.  Last is a 
*professional* library 
that is intended for board houses using automated assembly techniques.  This 
last technique was taught 
to me by our layout engineer at work.  His primary goal is design for 
manufacturing.  

The complaints I keep hearing about gschem/pcb libraries remind me of his 
complaints about Orcad.  
However, he disdains the use of *any* symbol or footprint that he did not 
create himself.  In fact,  
even when I was using Eagle I had to modify their libraries to support my 
methods of hand assembly.

So, because I use several methods, a single one-size-fits-all library is just 
not going to work for me.  
I *could* make use of a library of heavy symbols but I still need the 
lightweight symbols, too.  If I 
was forced to choose one library then I would like to keep the lightweight 
stuff.

Best regards,

Mark Stanley
www.WideBandSystems.com



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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values???

2010-12-25 Thread gedau
On Sat, Dec 25, 2010 at 09:23:17PM -0500, Mark wrote:

snip 

 So, because I use several methods, a single one-size-fits-all library is just 
 not going to work for me.  
 I *could* make use of a library of heavy symbols but I still need the 
 lightweight symbols, too.  If I 
 was forced to choose one library then I would like to keep the lightweight 
 stuff.
 

Maybe we should extend existing library in a way that we clone existing 
symbols, prefix the names by use case and add/delete attributes. Since 
the currently available library wouldn't change at all, no existing 
schematics would be broken.

We now have resistor-1.sym and resistor-2.sym; we woulg then have these 
cloned as _P_resistor-1.sym and _P_resistor-2.sym, _P_ meaning they are 
intended for use on PCB.

Of course, this would increase the confusion of new users, but it should 
be no harder than getting the L/N/M suffix of some SMD footpritns in 
PCB. 

Regards,

Tibor Palinkas


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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-24 Thread Johnny Rosenberg

Den 2010-12-24 00:38:35 skrev Stefan Salewski m...@ssalewski.de:


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.

This was only an example and the Ω has nothing to do with it. Of course I  
have tried different text, like 390, 390k, 390 k and so on.


Do you mean that this works perfectly for you, that the text appears  
inside the symbol?


If I turn the symbol 90°, the value appears to the right of the symbol.  
Maybe the value shouldn't appear inside, but rather above it or something?


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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-24 Thread Johnny Rosenberg

Den 2010-12-24 00:53:38 skrev Stefan Salewski m...@ssalewski.de:


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.


Is it German? I didn't know that. That's the symbol I've used all my life  
(I'm Swedish). Thought it was at least European standard (IEC) or  
something.




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.


Thanks, I didn't realize that I could select the text only, but you are  
right, it's possible.


:)

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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-24 Thread Peter TB Brett
On Friday 24 December 2010 10:27:20 Johnny Rosenberg wrote:
 Den 2010-12-24 00:53:38 skrev Stefan Salewski m...@ssalewski.de:
  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.
 
 Is it German? I didn't know that. That's the symbol I've used all my life
 (I'm Swedish). Thought it was at least European standard (IEC) or
 something.
 

You're correct, it's an international standard, not restricted to Germany; box 
resistors are the standard symbol in the UK too.

  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.


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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-24 Thread Johnny Rosenberg

Den 2010-12-24 11:30:52 skrev Peter TB Brett pe...@peter-b.co.uk:


On Friday 24 December 2010 10:27:20 Johnny Rosenberg wrote:

Den 2010-12-24 00:53:38 skrev Stefan Salewski m...@ssalewski.de:
 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.

Is it German? I didn't know that. That's the symbol I've used all my  
life

(I'm Swedish). Thought it was at least European standard (IEC) or
something.



You're correct, it's an international standard, not restricted to  
Germany; box

resistors are the standard symbol in the UK too.

  Peter

Actually we used both the symbols at school (many years ago…), but for  
different purposes. We used the –––/\/\/\/––– symbol when drawing a  
”beräkningsschema”… sorry, I don't have a clue what that is in English,  
but perhaps something like ”schematics for calculations” or something like  
that? I don't know why we use different symbols in different situations  
though.


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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-24 Thread Johnny Rosenberg
Den 2010-12-24 01:10:55 skrev Stephan Boettcher  
boettc...@physik.uni-kiel.de:



Johnny Rosenberg gurus.knu...@gmail.com writes:


Yet another newbie question then:

I tried to enter a value of a resistor
(/usr/share/gEDA/sym/analog/resistor-2.sym, my operating system is
Ubuntu  10.10) but the position of the value needs to be adjusted a
bit. How can I  do that?

It should look like this:

–––[390kΩ]–––

But it rather looks like this:

–39[0kΩ  ]–––

The value needs to be centred, rather than aligned to the left.


Did you try to just move the text?

  Select the text (not the component, just the text of the value  
attibute),

  type e x, or (Edit-Edit Text) select Middle-Middle alignment
  move the alignment mark to the center of the resistor.


I tried that now,since you suggested it. Unfortunately it doesn't work  
like I expected: Left seems to mean right, right seems to mean left, upper  
seems to mean lower and lower seems to mean upper. Upper left seems to be  
default and everything else takes the text further away from where I want  
it.



For further resistors, copy this resistor, so you do not need to allign
every instance again.  Attach a footprint attribute first, so that is
copied as well, with your favorite resistor footprint.


I also looked a bit into the /usr/share/gEDA/sym/analog/resistor-2.sym
file, but I'm too much of a newbie to make any relevant changes to
such  files that actually work…


You can open a symbol file in gschem to make changes, and save the
changed version for your project.



Oh… didn't think of that… yes, that should work, of course.

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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-24 Thread kai-martin knaak
Johnny Rosenberg wrote:

   type e x, or (Edit-Edit Text) select Middle-Middle alignment
   move the alignment mark to the center of the resistor.
 
 I tried that now,since you suggested it. Unfortunately it doesn't work  
 like I expected: Left seems to mean right, right seems to mean left, upper  
 seems to mean lower and lower seems to mean upper. Upper left seems to be  
 default and everything else takes the text further away from where I want  
 it.

The description refer to the position of the alignment mark
relative to the text itself. They are not meant as alignment
relative to the box or other objects. You have to move the 
Text after you have changed the alignment to middle-middle.
See the step-by step recipe I gave yesterday.

Here it is again, for your convenience:
1) select the text: 
 click on the symbol -- The whole symbol gets highlighted
 then click on the text -- only the text is highlighted

2) type [ex] -- edit-text-properties dialog appears
   click on the chooser right of Alignment
   choose Middle Left
   click ok

3) type [m] -- the text is attached to the mouse cursor 
   move the mouse so that the text is at the desired position
   left mouse click -- the text detaches from the mouse cursor


---)kaimartin(---
-- 
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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-24 Thread timecop
footprint = what the pads/holes/silk/wahtever on pcb for this
component look like.

On Fri, Dec 24, 2010 at 8:28 PM, Johnny Rosenberg
gurus.knu...@gmail.com wrote:
 Den 2010-12-24 02:27:33 skrev kai-martin knaak k...@familieknaak.de:

 You may take a look at the symbols in http://gedasymbols.org
 Many of them are heavy, meaning, they come with value and
 footprint attribute included.

 Sorry for my ignorance (English is not my main language), but what does
 ”footprint” mean in this situation? I know the word, just not what it means
 in this case…



 --
 Kind regards

 Johnny Rosenberg


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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-24 Thread kai-martin knaak
Johnny Rosenberg wrote:

 You may take a look at the symbols in http://gedasymbols.org
 Many of them are heavy, meaning, they come with value and
 footprint attribute included.
 
 Sorry for my ignorance (English is not my main language), but
 what does  ”footprint” mean in this situation?

It is the name of the pattern of copper and holes to be manufactured
on the actual printed circuit board for the component the symbol refers 
to.

There is a glossary of terms at the projects website:
http://geda.seul.org/wiki/geda:glossary

---)kaimartin(---

-- 
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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-24 Thread Johnny Rosenberg

Den 2010-12-24 12:32:36 skrev kai-martin knaak k...@familieknaak.de:


Johnny Rosenberg wrote:


  type e x, or (Edit-Edit Text) select Middle-Middle alignment
  move the alignment mark to the center of the resistor.


I tried that now,since you suggested it. Unfortunately it doesn't work
like I expected: Left seems to mean right, right seems to mean left,  
upper
seems to mean lower and lower seems to mean upper. Upper left seems to  
be
default and everything else takes the text further away from where I  
want

it.


The description refer to the position of the alignment mark
relative to the text itself. They are not meant as alignment
relative to the box or other objects. You have to move the
Text after you have changed the alignment to middle-middle.
See the step-by step recipe I gave yesterday.

Here it is again, for your convenience:
1) select the text:
 click on the symbol -- The whole symbol gets highlighted
 then click on the text -- only the text is highlighted

2) type [ex] -- edit-text-properties dialog appears
   click on the chooser right of Alignment
   choose Middle Left
   click ok

3) type [m] -- the text is attached to the mouse cursor
   move the mouse so that the text is at the desired position
   left mouse click -- the text detaches from the mouse cursor


---)kaimartin(---


I actually figured it out eventually. Thanks for all the help! The ”m”  
thing was what I was looking for and I also needed to change the grid  
spacing (pressing ”[” once).
Now I'd like to save my ”new” symbol somewhere. I'm not sure how to do  
that yet, but I think I saw some information about it the other day, so  
I'm sure to find it again. Should I save it locally (somewhere under ~/)  
or system wide?


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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-24 Thread Johnny Rosenberg

Den 2010-12-24 12:34:27 skrev timecop time...@gmail.com:


footprint = what the pads/holes/silk/wahtever on pcb for this
component look like.


Aah… that makes sense. Thanks.


On Fri, Dec 24, 2010 at 8:28 PM, Johnny Rosenberg
gurus.knu...@gmail.com wrote:

Den 2010-12-24 02:27:33 skrev kai-martin knaak k...@familieknaak.de:


You may take a look at the symbols in http://gedasymbols.org
Many of them are heavy, meaning, they come with value and
footprint attribute included.


Sorry for my ignorance (English is not my main language), but what does
”footprint” mean in this situation? I know the word, just not what it  
means

in this case…



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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-24 Thread Peter Clifton
On Fri, 2010-12-24 at 12:22 +0100, Johnny Rosenberg wrote:

 I tried that now,since you suggested it. Unfortunately it doesn't work  
 like I expected: Left seems to mean right, right seems to mean left, upper  
 seems to mean lower and lower seems to mean upper. Upper left seems to be  
 default and everything else takes the text further away from where I want  
 it.

When you click on the text, and are zoomed in, you will see a little x
mark. That is the text origin.

It could be that the text was initially rotated. Select the text, and
rotate it - either with the edit menu, or er short-cut.

Mirrored is also a possibility. ei.

You should be able to get it back to a sane state where the text anchor
placement matches the description in the edit box.

-- 
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!)
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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-24 Thread Stefan Salewski
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.




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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-24 Thread Stefan Salewski
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.



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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-24 Thread Johnny Rosenberg

Den 2010-12-24 13:20:39 skrev Peter Clifton pc...@cam.ac.uk:


On Fri, 2010-12-24 at 12:22 +0100, Johnny Rosenberg wrote:


I tried that now,since you suggested it. Unfortunately it doesn't work
like I expected: Left seems to mean right, right seems to mean left,  
upper
seems to mean lower and lower seems to mean upper. Upper left seems to  
be
default and everything else takes the text further away from where I  
want

it.


When you click on the text, and are zoomed in, you will see a little x
mark. That is the text origin.

It could be that the text was initially rotated. Select the text, and
rotate it - either with the edit menu, or er short-cut.

Mirrored is also a possibility. ei.

You should be able to get it back to a sane state where the text anchor
placement matches the description in the edit box.



Actually I just misunderstood the functionality. I though that ”upper  
left” means that the text appears above the little ”x” and to the left of  
it, but it seems like ”upper left” is the location of the little ”x”  
rather than the text itself, so ”upper left” seems to mean that the little  
”x” is above the text and to the left of it. Now that I know that, I  
managed to solve my problem. Thanks all!


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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-24 Thread Johnny Rosenberg

Den 2010-12-24 13:37:34 skrev Stefan Salewski m...@ssalewski.de:


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.


For me, as a beginner, I think there are reasons. One of them is to learn  
more about how things work. But your reply is also valuable information  
for me, and I appreciate that too.


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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-24 Thread kai-martin knaak
Stefan Salewski wrote:

 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.

When I was new to gschem, this confused me a lot. It got really
funny when rotating pins some of its attributes behaved differently
than others.

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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-24 Thread John Doty

On Dec 23, 2010, at 8:27 PM, kai-martin knaak wrote:

 Oh my, a symbol without a value attribute!
 I forgot, just how light the default library symbols are.
 Can anyone point me to a reason? Why do we distribute the
 default library in such a crippled state?

Because the default library is a mixed bag of symbols created by various people 
at various times in support of various design flows?

 Yes, a default 
 library can only be a starting point and cannot fit 
 everybody's needs. But does the starting point really
 have to be so poor that it fits virtually nobody's needs

Well, I was using the valueless passive symbols quite a bit yesterday. But I 
guess I'm virtually nobody.

John Doty  Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd.
http://www.noqsi.com/
j...@noqsi.com




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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-24 Thread DJ Delorie

Johnny Rosenberg gurus.knu...@gmail.com writes:
 Sorry for my ignorance (English is not my main language), but what does  
 ”footprint” mean in this situation? I know the word, just not what it  
 means in this case…

Getting Started with PCB has a list of terms.  I have a copy online
here:

http://www.delorie.com/pcb/docs/gs/gs.html#Terminology

footprint

A footprint is the pattern on a circuit board to which your parts
are attached. This includes all copper, silk, solder mask, and paste
information. In other EDA programs, this may be referred to as a
“land pattern”. “Footprint” sometimes is used to refer to a
footprint file. “Footprint” refers to the pattern; “element” refers
to the instance. For example, your layout might have four elements
that use one footprint.


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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-24 Thread Vanessa Ezekowitz
On Fri, 24 Dec 2010 12:15:17 -0500
John Doty j...@noqsi.com wrote:

  Yes, a default 
  library can only be a starting point and cannot fit 
  everybody's needs. But does the starting point really
  have to be so poor that it fits virtually nobody's needs
 
 Well, I was using the valueless passive symbols quite a bit yesterday. But
 I guess I'm virtually nobody.

By virtually nobody I am sure he means an extremely small number, and if 
you are referring to just yourself (rather than a team, perhaps), then his 
statement is still accurate.There are more of us that would appreciate such 
defaults than those who would not.

Resistors are just one of many component types out there have a value, no 
matter what type of package they come in - with rare exceptions, every single 
one of them you pick up will have numbers or color bands indicating that value, 
we all know that.  That value might be zero ohms, but it is still a *value*.

The same goes for every last capacitor, inductor, etc., though I think you'd be 
hard-pressed to find any that have a value of zero.  

Anyway, I suggest the following:

* If the part in question can usually be described by a single value, for the 
purposes of the signal flow in the schematic that is, then give it a default of 
value=0.

* If it is a discrete part that is specified entirely by its part number rather 
than a measurement, like a diode or a transistor, then pick a reasonable 
default; value=1N914 or value=2N.

* If the part is something like a logic IC, use the standard name of the part 
in the fastest commonly available series for that particular gate; 
value=74F74 or value=74HCT245.

* If none of these fits, then leave the value= attribute off entirely, since 
the user would have no choice but to get creative anyway.

The point here is that every one of the component types in question has a 
value, therefore the value= field will end up being utilized by nearly 
everyone who instantiates the symbol for that component.  Otherwise, schematics 
with a lot of such symbols become nearly impossible to read, let alone debug.

-- 
There are some things in life worth obsessing over.  Most
things aren't, and when you learn that, life improves.
http://starbase.globalpc.net/~ezekowitz
Vanessa Ezekowitz vanessaezekow...@gmail.com


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gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-23 Thread Johnny Rosenberg

Yet another newbie question then:

I tried to enter a value of a resistor  
(/usr/share/gEDA/sym/analog/resistor-2.sym, my operating system is Ubuntu  
10.10) but the position of the value needs to be adjusted a bit. How can I  
do that?


It should look like this:

–––[390kΩ]–––

But it rather looks like this:

–39[0kΩ  ]–––

The value needs to be centred, rather than aligned to the left.

I also looked a bit into the /usr/share/gEDA/sym/analog/resistor-2.sym  
file, but I'm too much of a newbie to make any relevant changes to such  
files that actually work…


--
Kind regards

Johnny Rosenberg


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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-23 Thread Stefan Salewski
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.




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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-23 Thread Johnny Rosenberg

Den 2010-12-24 00:08:41 skrev Stefan Salewski m...@ssalewski.de:


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.



Well, I'm a beginner so maybe I'm just doing it the wrong way or using the  
wrong tools.


Here's what I do:
Draw a resistor somewhere (Add component → Basic devices → resistor-2.sym).
Right click the resistor and select ”Edit…”.
Add attribute → Name: → Select ”value”.
Value: → Enter ”390kΩ”.
Click ”Add”.
☑ Visible ⇨ Select ”Show value only”.
Click ”Close”.

Does it look nice? It certainly does not on my system.

Am I doing this right at all?

--
Kind regards

Johnny Rosenberg


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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-23 Thread Stefan Salewski
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.




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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-23 Thread Stefan Salewski
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.




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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-23 Thread Stephan Boettcher
Johnny Rosenberg gurus.knu...@gmail.com writes:

 Yet another newbie question then:

 I tried to enter a value of a resistor
 (/usr/share/gEDA/sym/analog/resistor-2.sym, my operating system is
 Ubuntu  10.10) but the position of the value needs to be adjusted a
 bit. How can I  do that?

 It should look like this:

 –––[390kΩ]–––

 But it rather looks like this:

 –39[0kΩ  ]–––

 The value needs to be centred, rather than aligned to the left.

Did you try to just move the text?  

  Select the text (not the component, just the text of the value attibute), 
  type e x, or (Edit-Edit Text) select Middle-Middle alignment
  move the alignment mark to the center of the resistor.
  
For further resistors, copy this resistor, so you do not need to allign
every instance again.  Attach a footprint attribute first, so that is
copied as well, with your favorite resistor footprint.

 I also looked a bit into the /usr/share/gEDA/sym/analog/resistor-2.sym
 file, but I'm too much of a newbie to make any relevant changes to
 such  files that actually work…

You can open a symbol file in gschem to make changes, and save the
changed version for your project.

-- 
Stephan



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Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

2010-12-23 Thread kai-martin knaak
Johnny Rosenberg wrote:

 Here's what I do:
 Draw a resistor somewhere (Add component → Basic devices → 
resistor-2.sym).

Oh my, a symbol without a value attribute!
I forgot, just how light the default library symbols are.
Can anyone point me to a reason? Why do we distribute the
default library in such a crippled state? Yes, a default 
library can only be a starting point and cannot fit 
everybody's needs. But does the starting point really
have to be so poor that it fits virtually nobody's needs?


 Right click the resistor and select ”Edit…”.
 Add attribute → Name: → Select ”value”.
 Value: → Enter ”390kΩ”.
 Click ”Add”.
 ☑ Visible ⇨ Select ”Show value only”.
 Click ”Close”.

If you want to fit the value inside the box of the 
resistor, the best way would be to change the alignment
of the text from bottom-left to middle-left:

1) select the text: 
 click on the symbol -- The whole symbol gets highlighted
 then click on the text -- only the text is highlighted

2) type [ex] -- edit-text-properties dialog appears
   click on the chooser right of Alignment
   choose Middle Left
   click ok

3) type [m] -- the text is attached to the mouse cursor 
   move the mouse so that the text is at the desired position
   left mouse click -- the text detaches from the mouse cursor

You may take a look at the symbols in http://gedasymbols.org
Many of them are heavy, meaning, they come with value and 
footprint attribute included. 

shameless-plug
My collection is here:
   http://www.gedasymbols.org/user/kai_martin_knaak/
The symbols are consistent with my footprints. 
/shameless-plug

gedasymbols.org allows anonymous CVS access. You can download
all symbols of the site to your hard disk if you wish.

---)kaimartin(---
-- 
Kai-Martin Knaak
Öffentlicher PGP-Schlüssel:
http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=getsearch=0x6C0B9F53



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