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Date: Wed, 9 Sep 2015 13:45:47 -0400
Message-Id: <201509091745.t89Hjlab021347@envy.delorie.com>
From: DJ Delorie <dj AT delorie DOT com>
To: geda-user AT delorie DOT com
In-reply-to: <D6E97A10-EDD0-4077-A4A8-61A5D4825E1D@noqsi.com> (message from
	John Doty on Wed, 9 Sep 2015 07:49:09 -0600)
Subject: Re: [geda-user] Desired changes (was:"New experimental netlist features")
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> > This is not an argument for integrated tools, just an argument that
> > using a toolkit so you don't have to anticipate user's needs means you
> > might end up not building a robust enough toolkit.  We took a shortcut
> > in gschem because it met one person's needs, and it's causing problems
> > now.
> 
> What do you mean?

I mean hardcoding "our library is a directory" in gschem was
shortsighted.  We need to take that out and replace it with something
more flexible.

> >  We need to be willing to tweak the toolkit model if needed, if
> > we see that it's not as usable as it could be.
> 
> The high road to tweaking a toolkit is often to add new tools.

The first step in this case is changing the exsting tools so that a
new tool can be added.  We need to replace the "library is a
directory" code in the existing tools with something that lets us add
a "this tool provides our library".

> Perhaps, although the advantage of using directories as packages is
> that they are transparent and accessible to other tools and even
> simple shell commands.

I'm not saying that libraries can't be local directories.  I'm saying
that we need a way to enable more than just local directories.
Consider a library plugin that says "pull symbols from gedasymbols" -
obviously, gedasymbols is not a local directory, it's a web site.  The
user gets to choose between the convenience of local text files and
the convenience of pulling from elsewhere as needed.  Similarly for a
corporate SQL database, or a remote connection to Digikey's API.

At the moment, we don't give them that choice.

> > (in my blue-sky, the interface between apps and the CDM was a remote
> > query, where you send "what you have" and it sends back what
> > alternatives remain, or sends you the component info you selected)
> 
> Are you proposing putting this knowledge in the tool?

No, the knowledge would be in the data.  The tool merely passes the
request to a source-specific handler that interprets the request in
terms of the data available.  I didn't put a lot of thought into that
part, because I wanted to leave it up to the backend developers of the
tool to decide how to represent their data to the user.