X-Authentication-Warning: delorie.com: mail set sender to geda-user-bounces using -f X-Recipient: geda-user AT delorie DOT com Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2019 18:23:42 +0100 (CET) X-X-Sender: igor2 AT igor2priv To: geda-user AT delorie DOT com X-Debug: to=geda-user AT delorie DOT com from="gedau AT igor2 DOT repo DOT hu" From: gedau AT igor2 DOT repo DOT hu Subject: Re: [geda-user] Refdes bug or Master Attribute Document on the Wiki needs update. In-Reply-To: <5BC4365D-FBD0-4495-806B-C30BA710D31B@noqsi.com> Message-ID: References: <9ed059c0-f3c5-1482-169b-f8f1119f3208 AT fastmail DOT com> <5BC4365D-FBD0-4495-806B-C30BA710D31B AT noqsi DOT com> User-Agent: Alpine 2.00 (DEB 1167 2008-08-23) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Reply-To: geda-user AT delorie DOT com Errors-To: nobody AT delorie DOT com X-Mailing-List: geda-user AT delorie DOT com X-Unsubscribes-To: listserv AT delorie DOT com Precedence: bulk On Wed, 30 Jan 2019, John Doty wrote: >So, we have a three way fork, with pcb-rnd centered on repairing the >architecture of pcb, but with its own schematic capture, and gEDA becoming a >pcb-centric tool, no longer much of a kit. Neither of these forks seems >focused on maintaining the flexibility of gEDA as a primary goal: Lepton is >keeping that dream alive. Most of what you wrote about pcb-rnd is inaccurate. Disclaimer: the only reason I write this mail is to straight out some facts about pcb-rnd. Because of the context I have to refer to some other projects - but I am not making any requests or suggestions to those projects. "pcb-rnd centered on repairing the architecture of pcb" - this is only partly true: we did rewrite a lot of infrastructure. While having a strong infrastructure is an important goal, it is not the only goal and we are not centered around it. We did a lot of other things (it's are easy to figure with 2 minutes of research): we introduced a very long list of new features and bugfixes of existing/old code (that we didn't replace and are not infrastructural), we wrote a lot of docs too. If I had to name something pcb-rnd is centered around it would be: providing a real good, flexible pcb editor for users with the UNIX/hacker mentality, to be used as a tool in a toolkit. Rewriting infra is only one of the tools perfecting that. (It's funny because pcb-rnd does a lot of things that you are constantly talking about as most desired toolkit approach stuff.) Your sentence suggests pcb-rnd is not flexible, without backing up that with facts or references. Which is no surprise: pcb-rnd _is_ flexible and is not tied together with any schematics editor. In fact, pcb-rnd supports schematics import from 8 different (specific) schematics tools and supports 4 generic netlist/forward-annotation methods. See: http://www.repo.hu/projects/pcb-rnd/user/09_appendix/bridges.svg "but with its own schematic capture" is simply false. Please check your facts before posting: pcb-rnd does _not_ have its own schematics capture and there was and is no plan to have one. There are plans to have a _separate_ schematics editor (cschem), and lately my preferred one is xschem. But there were exactly zero plan ever to tie pcb-rnd together with _any_ specific schematics capture tool in any way. Both xschem and cschem are for supporting multiple flows and software, not narrowed down to pcb-rnd either. You often suggest the situation is "lepton-eda is toolkit and everything else is monolith integrated rigid tailored-for-one-workflow hack", but the fact is that pcb-rnd is really a good tool that combines very well with a large numer of other tools to form different tookits, supporting a real huge number of applications/workflows. The "Neither of these forks seems focused on maintaining the flexibility of gEDA as a primary goal" is not true at all. pcb-rnd does maintain at least the same flexibility, or even higher flexibility than lepton-eda or gEDA. Fact: besides interfacing up and down, we are also interfacing sideways. We can load and often save in the file format of "competing" layout tools. This way pcb-rnd can be used as a converter tool or preprocessor or postprocessor in a non-pcb-rnd workflow where the user doesn't GUI-edit anything in pcb-rnd (but in kicad, eagle, protel, etc.). Does lepton-eda do any sideway interfacing, e.g. loading eagle or kicad/eeschema or tinycad or ltspice schematics or symbols? Flexibility _is_ among the primary goals of pcb-rnd: we constatly hook up with new tools and build more bridges. We are interested in building up a good, flexible, toolkit-approach ecosystem - we have a dedicated subproject for that (coralEDA). The only (very much bent) interpretation of your sentence that is true is that we are not working on making gEDA more flexible: we don't think the goals (on toolkit aspects and flexibility) could be achieved within the gEDA framework. There are projects that are open for cooperation and see the big picture and agree on the benefit of combining tools - and we tend to team up with them. Anybody is welcome, we don't care where cooperating project are coming from, but we don't push it when we see some projects don't want to join. So please don't confuse the level of cooperation pcb-rnd gets from your favorite tool with pcb-rnd's flexibility. Please don't try to define what is not a goal of pcb-rnd: you have no role in pcb-rnd, you can't set or change our goals. Please don't make up non-existing parts ("own schematic capture [of pcb-rnd]") and don't spread that as if it was a fact. Regards, Igor2