On Sat, 2007-12-08 at 07:37 +0000, Peter TB Brett wrote: > > > I'd be happy to see an obvious extension of this concept: An attribute > > > that lists a number of preselected footprints for this symbol. E.g. the > > > list for a resistor could be "0805, 0402, RES_RM10, VISHAY_S101. The > > > attribute editor would convert this list into a chooser widget. > > > > I like that idea. gschem's attribute dialog could use that to be > > smarter -- it could give you a drop-down combo box for pre-defined > > choices, and of course let you type in something different as well. > > That would probably be useful for many attributes with a few sensible > > defaults. > > I believe that Peter C was working on this but there were implementation > difficulties.
I did some work on UI stuff, but the main blocker was not being able to think of a good way to get the "knowledge" into the system. I don't much like defining file-formats / API, and I couldn't see a neat way to associate possible choices with different attributes. Peter B did help me write some scheme functions which identified a "preferred" resistor value, and this was going to be a test example for suggestion / validation. It wasn't obvious to me how / where you should configure gschem / libgeda to know that you want attributes attached to something with "device=resistor" to be validated against the E24 set, or the E12 set etc.. Another (hack) I tried, was footprint selection. I patched PCB to allow running PCB without bringing up its main GUI, but just the library window (via a command line option). The idea was that "pcb --choose-component" (or whatever) would open up a library chooser, and print names of footprints on stdout / stderr, until the user clicks "close". The last printed footprint would be fed into gschem. This helps _list_ footprints available to PCB.. what it doesn't do so well was help you choose them. (PCB needs a graphical footprint preview as part of the library window before that will work well). > There appears to be a tracker item for it: > > [ 1723653 ] Intelligent helper interface for attributes I can't recall why it has priority 9.. but never mind. Best wishes, -- 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!) _______________________________________________ geda-user mailing list [email protected] http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
