kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Vesa Solonen <vsolonen@...>]

On Wed, 17 Jun 2009, Dick Hollenbeck wrote:

> Vesa,
>
> This is a good idea. SVG is simply XML, so a person can use libxml2,
> which is standard on most linux systems. A person can read the whole
> file into a DOM tree in about 5 lines of code. Then you simply have to
> walk the tree, and generate PCBNEW graphic constructs from them.
> However, I do not believe that PCBNEW's graphic constructs, nor graphics
> environment, are currently general or rich enough to support anywhere
> near 30% of what you might find in the SVG spec.

Nice to see that you agree on the idea. I think I ended up to libxml2 too, 
but just had to push more through learning aside. It seems there is just 
too much to learn sometimes. I'd like to add some recursion from few 
months ago here, which deals with SVG somewhat:

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/kicad-devel/message/2215

As stated before I think that 30% of svg spec would be just fine for 
start. It would allow quite usable, but nowhere official SVG support.

> However, were we to switch over to wxGraphicsContext first, then I think
> adding SVG support could actually lead to something worthwhile. In
> fact, one might argue that if we were to switch to wxGraphicsContext,
> that as we do so, we re-invent our graphic primitives to match those
> found typically in an SVG file, FIRST. Then add the domain specific
> attributes to those graphic primitives, such as netcode, etc. This is
> near full rewrite of PCBNEW now. But it would be like building a car
> standing next to a junk yard. It can go pretty quick when you have all
> the parts. The trick I think is build it from the ground up. (Don't
> try and *swap* out a fender or bumper at a time.)

Now that's what I'd like to see too! Ultimately. But I'm comfortable with 
something less than perfect too. Heck, your junk yard example is almost 
too close explanation about my work... One ends stocking quite a load of 
this and that before everything is ready, and sometimes I choose to cheat 
on few items and just order the stuff ;)

Btw, should Kicad apply for linuxfung.org to buy more hacking manpower?

-Vesa