Mail Archives: geda-user/2015/07/09/23:54:24
On Fri, 10 Jul 2015, Evan Foss (evanfoss AT gmail DOT com) [via geda-user AT delorie DOT com] wrote:
>> yet-another-bunch-of-code-I-didn't-want, I just decided to fork an older
>> version of PCB. I implemented the features I wanted, and I don't have to
>> worry how a new release would be stuffed with features I'd never need.
>
> The footprint of PCB grew a lot as I recall. I thought we could still
> turn off opengl? Personally I love it. I did a board last month with
> more than 2 layers and it was fantastic to have transparency.
It still can be turned off. It's more about "for how long" amnd "what
other features I don't need needs to be turned on in a new release" and
"why the features I need don't get in". After a critical mass of these,
one just forks so bad things are kept outside, good things are getting in
much faster. And not to worry what breaks with the next upgrade. Terms
"bad" and "good" and "break" are obviously subjective.
I find transparency annoying. I think it's a question of personality. I
prefer to have full screen, one-thing-at-a-time stuff. I use screen(1) a
lot, on text terminal. When I use X (small amount of my computer time), my
window manager is pidwm (a fork of dwm), and I do the same there: full
screen apps, each on its own desktop and fast keyboard shortcuts to
switch between them. It's probably just the same with layers: I want to
see one layer at a time and want to be able to switch between them,
that's more efficient for me.
>
>> - Now that I have my fork, it's unlikely that I'd contribute to the official
>> stuff for simple, small, local, selfish reasons: I obviously do all the
>> little things the way I enjoy the most which makes working on my fork much
>> more attractice any time I feel like coding something for PCB. It's a
>> one-way mechanism.
>
> Well I am sorry you are effectively cutting yourself off. I would like
Well, I don't. After the fork I implemented most of what I wanted to have
in a surprisingly short time, and I am a happy user of my fork ever since.
In the meantime the official PCB community didn't lose anything as these
changes would be impossible in the mainline.
> to try your version if you don't mind. I am curious to see what you
> would like the HID to look like.
The HID looks the same as any PCB of that age. I mean I forked an old
version. I did not modify the GUI at all. I use the pre-opengl GTK hid.
My version is availble from svn:
svn://repo.hu/pcb-rnd/trunk
A short summary (with examples) of my modifications can be found here:
http://repo.hu/projects/pcb-rnd/
The project is in a "works-for-me" state, I'm the only one user, so please
expect that it won't compile or work out-of-the-box (I'm open to
bugreports).
>> - scheme: I needed some netlist backends, but scheme fully blocked me.
>> Actually it was cheaper to code up an sch parser in another language back
>> then, reproducing a lot of gnetlist code. Later on I figured a viable
>> "cheat" was to write gnetlist backends to export raw data in generic formats
>> (text, xml, json, lihata). As it's basically just "copy an existing backend
>> and modify the prints" kind of job I though it'd be quick. Unfortunately
>> scheme made it very hard and painful. For me, scheme is clearly a
>> showstopper.
>
> I hear you on scheme. Did you add that scheme code to the main project?
Nope. I have it at
svn://repo.hu/openhw/projects/util/trunk/gnetlist-extras
I think it's more readily usable by anyone (it can be installed and should
plug in to the gnetlist infra). The project is in a stable phase (at least
for me, and I'm the only user of this one too).
<snip>
> My only addition to gschem proper would be a spell check for the
> comment field. I know a lot of people won't like it so that patch will
> probably never get pushed out but for a dyslexic like me it is
> critical.
>
I'd have such a feature as a plugin. Of course this assumes a plugin
system that has access to the in-memory design and the GUI. (PCB has such
a thing).
Regards,
Igor2
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