gEDA-dev: footprint cleanup

[Peter TB Brett]

On Monday 28 August 2006 22:28, Dan McMahill wrote:
> Peter TB Brett wrote:
> >
> > Is it possible to just put arbitrary numbers into these? For instance, if
> > I try and instantiate a ACY1050 will it complain?
>
> yes and no.  Given what I'm hoping to do soon (move the m4 invocation to
> compile time instead of run time), "no" is the one you should probably
> work with.
>

Shame, since I'd just thought of several uses for that.  In particular, in a 
current design I've got some really big axial caps that the selection of ACY* 
footprints don't go large enough for.

I anticipate being able to instantiate arbitrary length/drill hole/pad size 
ACY* footprints as very useful.

> The thing I don't particularly care for is that there is no real reason
> that we can't run m4 over all the footprints at compile time or maybe
> even at 'make dist' time.  The results could be put into a newlib
> library and then you don't need m4 at runtime anymore.

No, I don't think that's a good idea at all, with no offence meant.  What I 
*do* think is that a clearer delineation between, and explanation of, the two 
different libraries would be very useful.  For instance, rather than 
pregenerating the list of available M4 footprints for display in the pcblib, 
why not have some sort of automatically generated documentation of the syntax 
for a particular footprint type.

Rather than "newlib" and "pcblib", what about "Footprints" and "Footprint 
Generators"?  Then in "Footprint Generators", you could have a number of 
generators ("DIL Packages", "Axial Through-Hole Components", "Radial 
Through-Hole Components") each of which exposes a bunch of controls and 
a "Generate" button.  There'd also be a field that shows the footprint 
attribute string that you could copy and paste into your schematic.

You could even provide a command field ('!' key binding?) that would 
allow "power users" to enter a generator string directly.

Now that would be user-friendly *and* flexible.  Although perhaps it would be 
necessary to migrate away from M4.  What about Perl, based around John 
Luciani's excellent library?  I also notice that Python is waxing in 
popularity amongst gEDA hackers.

Peter

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