Hi Milan,

I am q= uite excited by the prospect of this patch simpler import/export function, = and see particular merit in enabling import/export of existing formats, suc= h as Kicad PCB + footprint files.

Gerber import is also something I&= #39;ve always found to be an interesting idea, even if we acknowledge that = things like pads, etc.. may need to be converted to polygons or other non-g= rouped objects.

DJ and I have been discussing the existing fil= e-format, and I currently have a plan regarding that. In the short term, I&= #39;d like to keep our existing model, adding some additional entities for = modelling the actual board stack-up. (A rehash of the recent layer type tag= ging, but into a more physically based model).

By adding frame= work for supporting multiple formats, it may help in allowing us to re-fact= or the old importer / exporter, to drop support for PCB's older formats= (moving them to separate modules), thus reducing maintenance burden on the= current parser.

Perhaps we can go over this p= atch in detail at the scheduled code-sprint at the beginning of February?

Kind regards,

Peter

On 10 January 2016 at 21:58, Peter Clifton <= petercjc= lifton AT googlemail DOT com> wrote:

Hi Milan,

That is a surpris= ingly small patch!

Did you have some of your example format re= aders / writers to share too?

Peter
<= div class=3D"gmail_extra">
On 10 January 2016= at 21:23, Milan Prochac (milan AT prochac DOT sk) [via geda-user AT delorie DOT com] <geda-user AT delorie DOT com&= gt; wrote:
After reading long disc= ussions about the new PCB file format I tried to implement support for mult= iple file=C2=A0 formats.

You can download it here: http://static.bastl.sk/p= cb/Modular-file-formats.gz It is also available on launchpad: https://bugs.launchpad.net/pcb/+bug/1532611

The patch implements modular system to support multiple PCB file formats. A= ttached is also the template of the file-format plugin with instructions.
The patch is not too big, but it touches various parts of PCB, so it is pos= sible that some corner cases are not handled properly. Comments and bug rep= orts are welcome.

The modular system utilizes existing plugin system; new type of plugin is a= dded to support various file formats. This approach allows implementation o= f additional file formats as independent shared library with minimal effort= . The whole implementation of new file format is reduced to serialization a= nd de-serialization of PCBType data structure, no PCB tweaking is necessary= . The template with instructions is provided, as mentioned above.

- modular system is available for all layout operations (Load, Save, Save A= s, Load to buffer, Revert, auto-backup); the element operations will be add= ed later.
- action "SaveTo(LayoutAs..." was extended by 3rd argument, speci= fying file format; if omitted, current (or default) format is used
- GUI (GTK only at the moment) was adjusted to allow select file format; fo= r "save" operations it specifies desired format, for "open&q= uot; operations it is used as filter
- file format is detected automatically by modular framework
- the versioning system (based on PCB file version #defines) is available -= each plugin should confirm it's capability to save data of required ve= rsion (like 20110603); if not, the file format cannot be used
- load-only and save-only formats are supported. If save-only format is use= d, the layout is not marked as "saved".
- the current PCB format is converted to built-in plugin.

With this enhancement it should be very easy to implement new file formats.= If more of them will be available, the most successful can become new stan= dard PCB format and - hopefully -=C2=A0 the data model modifications will b= e not blocked by hard-to-extend file format anymore...

Regards
Milan