gEDA-user: conversion tools for geda

[Peter Clifton]

On Sat, 2006-09-30 at 20:42 -0400, Dan McMahill wrote:
> > 
> > On 30/09/06, Ales Hvezda <ahvezda at seul.org> wrote:
> > 
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> >Are there any tools available for converting schematics etc. from the
> >> >geda format into other formats, such as PCAD, Orcad etc?
> >> >
> >>
> >>         Isn't this going in the wrong direction?  We want to encourage
> >> users to come to gEDA, not move away. :->
> >>
> >>         Unfortunately, I am unaware of any conversion tools from gEDA
> >> to other tools.  However, the gEDA file format is well documented, so
> >> if you know the file formats for the other tools, it shouldn't be too
> >> hard to develop the necessary converter.
> >
> 
> If someone were going to write a conversion utility wouldn't it make 
> sense to do it as a export option to gschem?  It seems like that frees 
> you from having to write YAGP (Yet Another Gschem Parser).

Are there more than one out there? I thought libgeda was supposed to be
the definitive gschem parser. I did think about putting together a
flex/bison parser (assuming that isn't what libgeda already uses). I
guess to have one definitive parser, we'd need to know what interface
would be useful for tools, 3rd parties etc.. PCB's HID system solves the
exporter problem nicely it seems.

> I'm also wondering if this could be a good project if someone wanted to 
> extend the guile interface to the point where users could write their 
> own exporters in guile, but thats probably a much larger scale project.

I wondered if we could get the guile bindings to a point where I could
essentially use guile to auto-generate schematics etc.. (Not that I
especially want to do that, just have the ability to script useful
things in Guile).

Peter C.