kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Dick Hollenbeck <dick@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 08/04/2010 08:30 PM, Frank bennett wrote:
> Dick:
>    Good to see this effort.
>
> Back in  2008-03-26 I left a xml4pcb project @ sourceforge to do an
> import xml
> from PCB123 to KiCad-pcbnew. I had used PCB123 for some prototype dev
> board
> expansions (before I used KiCad) and wanted to learn xml a bit. 
> PCB123 does not
> support Gerber out but  I noticed a XML template output function.
> Anyway I was
> pretty happy with the results using expat as the parser and
> pcb123kicad does a
> pretty good conversion. Also a pretty print XML can be found  there. I
> was
> thinking about checking out where you guys are this weekend and
> starting an
> xml2ver, a verilog netlister, for those that want to do FPGA design
> captured via
> EEschema and I'm always looking for a better BOM creation.
>
> I suggest it's a good time to start a KiCad/contrib directory as a
> home for converters.
> -Frank Bennett <http://mathegraphics.com/>

IMO don't think we have enough infrastructure nor active volunteers to
manage any more code than we have.  But I do think it would be a good
idea to create some kind of readme.html file that hyperlinks to these
various conversion tools (where they can continue to be managed by their
own policies and maintainers).   That html file could be added to the
source tree somewhere obvious.

I suggest html because you can click on links and get there.

At some point soon we will begin adding in python scripts.  Python is
less of a burden because the style issues are pretty well settled by the
language itself through the rigid indenting requirements and in general
the language can do more in less lines of code.

I wish wxPython would offer a python3x version so we could begin to use
a UI for some tools and scripts and not have to eventually convert the
code from 2.x to 3.x.  It's stupid to build your house on sand.  I have
no respect for the python community's unwilling-ness to get across that
bridge.  If enough people stand around and blame others, yet do nothing
themselves, then you end up with ....

Well we've seen this problem before.  It can sometimes be solved with
leadership.  Guido is working for Google now, writing in python 2.x.
Google has their own language brewing called "GO".  Go figure.

Python needs a different leader.

Dick