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Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2015 17:47:18 -0500
Message-ID: <CAOFvGD4M48Ap=UQzL_T3yzas2rJrNFfxXRUOkOe8gA8J3bQCHg@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [geda-user] FOSDEM
From: Jason White <whitewaterssoftwareinfo AT gmail DOT com>
To: geda-user AT delorie DOT com
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I really like Lua (for ease of use) and Python (for the language and
libraries). I suspect Lua is lighter-weight and more straight-forward
to technically implement.

Because of that, I recommend Lua (lua.org). A lightweight, embeddable
scripting language which is very popular in the video game industry.
Lua is written as a plain C library and is licensed under the MIT
license. I myself have used Lua on multiple occasions (for scripting
and configuration files) and found it very straightforward to use.

Honestly, I wonder why we don't use something like Lua (or Python) for
our PCB and schematic file formats. Instead of having to write custom
text interpreters with yaml (or by even hand!) would could simply read
elements from an array defined in a Lua file. With Lua doing all of
the heavy lifting, instead of a bunch of hand crafted code, it would
be much simpler for us to extend the format to represent complex
things (buried vias and asymmetrical pins come to mind).

Also, when your file format is a scripting language, it becomes *very*
easy to write scripts to modify PCB/schematic files!

See the power point on embedding Lua, it contains some example C and
Lua programs: http://www.dcc.ufrj.br/~fabiom/lua/13Embedding.pdf

-- 
Jason White