Mail Archives: geda-user/2015/09/09/13:45:57
> > This is not an argument for integrated tools, just an argument that
> > using a toolkit so you don't have to anticipate user's needs means you
> > might end up not building a robust enough toolkit. We took a shortcut
> > in gschem because it met one person's needs, and it's causing problems
> > now.
>
> What do you mean?
I mean hardcoding "our library is a directory" in gschem was
shortsighted. We need to take that out and replace it with something
more flexible.
> > We need to be willing to tweak the toolkit model if needed, if
> > we see that it's not as usable as it could be.
>
> The high road to tweaking a toolkit is often to add new tools.
The first step in this case is changing the exsting tools so that a
new tool can be added. We need to replace the "library is a
directory" code in the existing tools with something that lets us add
a "this tool provides our library".
> Perhaps, although the advantage of using directories as packages is
> that they are transparent and accessible to other tools and even
> simple shell commands.
I'm not saying that libraries can't be local directories. I'm saying
that we need a way to enable more than just local directories.
Consider a library plugin that says "pull symbols from gedasymbols" -
obviously, gedasymbols is not a local directory, it's a web site. The
user gets to choose between the convenience of local text files and
the convenience of pulling from elsewhere as needed. Similarly for a
corporate SQL database, or a remote connection to Digikey's API.
At the moment, we don't give them that choice.
> > (in my blue-sky, the interface between apps and the CDM was a remote
> > query, where you send "what you have" and it sends back what
> > alternatives remain, or sends you the component info you selected)
>
> Are you proposing putting this knowledge in the tool?
No, the knowledge would be in the data. The tool merely passes the
request to a source-specific handler that interprets the request in
terms of the data available. I didn't put a lot of thought into that
part, because I wanted to leave it up to the backend developers of the
tool to decide how to represent their data to the user.
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