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Subject: Re: [geda-user] pcb fundamentals
From: John Doty <jpd AT noqsi DOT com>
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Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2012 14:10:22 -0700
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On Dec 18, 2012, at 12:54 PM, Peter Clifton wrote:

> On Sun, 2012-12-16 at 16:06 -0700, John Doty wrote:
> 
>> Again, it reminds me of the difference between the road net in
>> downtown Boston versus Manhattan. The Boston road net started as
>> pcb-like special cases (need a road from the warf to the tavern,
>> etc.). It has been repeatedly "patched" to accommodate new "use
>> cases".
> 
> Sounds like various areas of both the gEDA and PCB code-bases to me ;)

But the huge difference is that gEDA has foundations in objects that can reasonably be considered elementary parts of a schematic: simple drawing primitives and text. Atop this, there are containers for higher level objects, specialized text (attributes), etc. Gschem is a reasonably transparent editor for this, and I hope it doesn't keep accreting "features" that obscure this simplicity. This is the "Manhattan" level.

Then, there's gnetlist, which implements a set of shortcuts well-chosen for creating flat netlists, and is also flexible enough to do some other things. But it can only travel the shortcuts, so it's not good for every purpose.

But pcb lacks the "Manhattan" level. It's all shortcuts. For me, that makes it much harder to understand.

John Doty              Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd.
http://www.noqsi.com/
jpd AT noqsi DOT com