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Date: Tue, 3 Feb 2015 03:51:30 GMT
From: falcon AT ivan DOT Harhan DOT ORG (Spacefalcon the Outlaw)
Message-Id: <1502030351.AA02946@ivan.Harhan.ORG>
To: geda-user AT delorie DOT com
Subject: [geda-user] gerbv-2.6.0 unable to read gerbers made from PADS
Reply-To: geda-user AT delorie DOT com

Hello fellow free EDA users,

I am having some trouble getting gerbv to view some gerbers which seem
to have been generated from PADS some time in 2009.  The gerbers in
question are contained in this little tarball:

http://downloads.openmoko.org/developer/schematics/GTA02/gta02_outline_footprints_netlist.tar.bz2

The only version of gerbv which I was able to install on my Slackware
system so far is gerbv-2.6.0.  I tried to install 2.6.1, but the tarball
came without the usual maintainer-generated files like configure, so I
had to run autogen.sh myself.  The build then failed because some
NLS/i18n-related tool was missing, and passing --disable-nls to
configure didn't help either.

So I got gerbv-2.6.0 installed, and it seems to work in general: I can
successfully view any of the gerbers for my own pcb-made boards, for
example.  But when I try to open any of Openmoko's *.pho gerbers from
the tarball cited above, gerbv doesn't seem to report any errors, but
the display window remains all black, as if each opened gerber were
empty.

I wonder, would someone with the latest current version of gerbv be
kind enough to try opening one of these gerbers?  I downloaded the
gerber (RS-274X) file format spec from Ucamco, studied it, then looked
at Openmoko's *.pho files in vi, and they looked like perfectly valid
RS-274X gerbers to me; it seems that they draw everything (at least
the stuff toward the beginning of each gerber) with polygon fills.

So if the gerbers are valid, then gerbv's inability to view them
should be considered a bug.  But I don't know if it's a 2.6.0 bug that
is fixed in the current code, or a still unfixed bug to the present
day.  Hence I'm wondering if someone with an easier access to current
gerbv would be kind enough to test it.

TIA,
SF