kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Dick Hollenbeck <dick@...>]

Werner Almesberger wrote:
> Dick Hollenbeck wrote:
>
> > With the footprint library 
> > plug-in for such library, which physically exists on his website, you 
> > never make a copy of the library, you grab the part from his website.
>
> Yup. If the part changes at the source, will there be a mechanism for
> the user to learn about this, and to (optionally of course) pull the
> update ? I suppose cache maintenance in general would be the plugin's
> duty ?
>
>
> > C++
> >
> > plugin->DoSomething()
>
> Sure, but that could be anything :) Would the API have sort of a
> directory structure (at least conceptually), with listing and
> traversal functions ? Or some other iterative means to narrow down
> the selection to a single footprint ?


Sometime near April or when I get to it, I would start by posting a *.h 
file to this list, which would document my intentions and the proposed 
"footprint retrieval API" for PCBNEW. The C++ comments would be in a 
format that could be run through Doxygen and create a nice API document 
in HTML.

There will be some time to offer feedback and enhancements. Actually 
enhancements can be added for years to come, even after the initial code 
is written.

Werner, until then I have to confess to that I do not have the brain 
cycles available to do this work now. I am contributing a "layer 
selection widget" to Kicad at this time and want to get it out before 
the pending release.

Sorry. We will be working on getting this release out, and the plug-in 
architecture will have to wait.

And as I said before, I have done plug-ins architectures before (several).

So if I go quite for awhile, please do not be offended. (I am trying to 
do more work and less talking this year, but I am not optimistic about 
accomplishing this, since it is easier to yammer and gab than to work.)


Dick


> > Or that they can at least make suggestions to my basic
> > (footprint .....) file format proposed 3 weeks ago, and have those 
> > available by April.
>
> Hmm, so you would be willing to add constructs that help automate
> the generation of footprints ? E.g., named values ("variables"),
> expressions and repetitions ?
>
> - Werner