gEDA-dev: Question about Gerber output of PCB

[Stuart Brorson]

>> I wonder if the INCH thing is a proprietary extension of Excellon's?
>> Or maybe not....
>
> proprietary extension?  As far as I can tell, the whole file format is
> theirs and it became a de-facto standard but I don't believe there is
> any sort of standards body like there is for RS274-X.

I see ANSI/IPC-NC-349 referred to as the drill file spec in several
places.  It is also referred to in the same breath as "Excellon drill
file" on some web pages.  For example this one:

http://www.forelec.ch/www/norme_excellon.htm

> I think that webpage should be treated about like a postscript
> documentation web page from adobe.

Fair enough.  This means that gerbv needs to recognize and correctly
parse "INCH" as a line in a drill file.

Hmmmm, what does the corresponding line look like for a metric file?

Mebbe I'll print out and read the Excellon doc DJ pointed me to.  But
feel free to answer my above question since I won't be able to print
it until tomorrow.  Today we have a blizzard in Boston, and I'm not
going out!

Cheers,

Stuart