> Hi Peter, > > Some questions: > > 1) Are you reverse engineering the Protel format, or is it well documented? > > 2) Why did you write it? Who is moving away from Protel and why? > > 3) Is it C or C++? > > 4) Will you want someone else to [help] maintain it eventually? Or will you > prefer to maintain it yourself forever? > > > 5) Have you thought about how you would want to license your work? > > > Initially you could tar it up and attach it to a posting to this list for > folks to look at. Then based on quality, and answers to 3), 4), and 5), best > path will become clearer. > > > Dick >
Hello, 1) There is a good amount of documentation on there file format in the help files. I have filled in some of the gaps my self. I actualy found there was more I needed to test and work out on the KiCad side. I will probably have some updates that could go into the KiCad File Formats section. 2) I am writing the converter so I can use KiCad for small Jobs at work. Most of our projects go out to PCB design houses who read the Protel format, but smaller ones I sometimes do. This will give a common source for the designs and at some later date may serve as a way of providing other staff with more detailed acess to all the existing designs on file. 3) I beleave the code is C but I may have put a couple of C++ code features in without realising. 4) I have not realy concidered this, eventualy I think some one else may look after it if its usefull. For the first draft I will do it my self. There are a lot of tokens that are not in standard single sheet drawings. I dont need these to accumplish my first target. My second target will need some basic support for Multi-Sheet Schematic. I have not used this feature in KiCad as yet so need to understand the options there before I attempt anything in a converter. 5) No I have not concidered licence issues. I will check with our programmer, probably someting like GPL. Regards Peter
