gEDA-dev: [PATCH] GAF: Solve the "transistor problem"

[Peter Clifton]

On Tue, 2007-08-07 at 11:12 -0600, John Doty wrote:

> Attributes are not graphical, and an interface designed for drawing  
> is a hard way to deal with them. Teasing them out of an "en" pileup  
> is often a pain. I'd much rather deal with them as structured text.

I agree.. certainly when you have to manipulate them, and add them from
non-schematic-gui programs like gattrib.

The data-structures Peter B and I drew out have attributes as entities
in their own right, attached to sub-circuit, net or bus instances (e.g.
a symbol representing a component, hierarchical circuit etc..).

The idea was that an "attrib" as we know it could simply refer to the
underlying structure with the name=value, and would display it at some
position on the schematic. Not having an "attrib" visible / linked on
the schematic doesn't mean it isn't present in the design / sub-circuit
data-structure.

This becomes more necessary when you start to think about over-riding
attributes hierarchically.

Peter C