Hi All,
I am wonder what people think of the current file format?
I am thinking about the rewrite and I'm wondering if I should change
the native format (a little or a lot).
What I like about it the most is it's simplicity. A single
line describes (with the exception of text and attributes) an individual
element. _Very_ easy to parse. However, if you look at a box def:
B 300 0 1400 3200 3 0 0 0 -1 -1 0 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1
you have no idea what the individual numbers really mean (unless
you look at the file format specs). If you were to tag each element
with a keyword that would allow you 1) identify what data means what and
2) compact most lines as the defaults will fill in any missing info.
What brought all this up: well, I want to give individual coords etc... a
unit tag (mil, mm, nm etc...), something that gaf currently lacks.
Also, I don't necessarily like the way attributes are specified ({}'s),
but don't have any good ideas on how to make it better.
By mentioning "tag" that brings to mind XML etc... I don't think I want
to go to that extreme; that would make things a lot more complicated.
I will redesign the whole mechanism of reading/writting sch/sym files
to allow different formats, but what I'm talking about here is the
native format. I don't want it to be overkill.
Anybody have any comments on this? Please don't turn this into a flame
fest by saying "XML is the only way to go". I won't change the format
just "because". There has to be a clear gain to any changes.
-Ales
