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Date:	Tue, 15 Jan 2013 09:28:50 -0800
From:	Larry Doolittle <ldoolitt AT recycle DOT lbl DOT gov>
To:	geda-user AT delorie DOT com
Subject:	[geda-user] Data Sheets (was: Lowering the cost of a starting a gEDA project)
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On Tue, Jan 15, 2013 at 10:57:45AM -0600, John Griessen wrote:
> What is a good place to keep datasheets handy for redesign/reuse, and is there any optimum
> compression method for them?  Are there tools that will disassemble pdfs, apply
> best compression, and reassemble them so they are equivalent?  Some are compressed more than others.
> Should we just leave them as their creators published them to be a legal document specification?
> They're almost always public.

I recommend only storing meta-information about the datasheets:
  upstream URL, and date fetched
  possibly private backup URL
  sha1sum
plus whatever index information is appropriate, like manufacturer
and part numbers described.

Thus someone copying the design, who wants to look at a datasheet,
can invoke a scripted (or GUI push-button) procedure: download from
the upstream URL, check the sha1sum, and 99% of the time, just show
the datasheet exactly as the original designer saw it.  If the
download fails or the sha1sum changed, try the backup and/or show
a warning that something changed.

PDF is a nice standard in some ways, but uniformity of structure
is not there.  If you do want to monkey around with the insides,
which I don't recommend, you should look at PoDoFo and pdftk.
I don't think compression is the issue.

  - Larry

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