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Re: New part file format document.

 

Hello,

Firstly thank you all for the amount of work and effort you have put into this. I have recently started to use Kicad and found it a very good tool.

I had a look through the spec last night and followed the thread below with interest. I'm looking forward to the new lib system as I've found the current one limiting.

A couple of ideas for the melting pot:

1. Reading the thread below it occurred to me that an alias tag might be useful - something like

(pin (number "4") (name "D"))
becomes
(pin_rename "4" "D")
or
(pin_alias "4" "D")

The idea is that the user could toggle alias's on or off to see both pin names should they want to.

2. The other idea is an ignored section i.e.
(ignore text_to_be_ignored)

The idea is that you could then put some info meaningful only to you into this section and the lexer would happily ignore it - maybe use $Id:$ for svn version-ing.

3. For the visibile field if instead of "yes" and "no" it was "100" and "0" to represent transparency it might enable a nice feature later.
ie.
instead of
(visible yes) or (visible no)
we would be able to have
(visible 100)  or (visible 0) or (visible 25)

Will read through again tonight.

Regards,
Simon

On 15/12/2010 16:13, Brian Sidebotham wrote:
On 15 December 2010 14:41, Wayne Stambaugh<stambaughw@xxxxxxxxxxx>  wrote:
On 12/15/2010 7:19 AM, Brian Sidebotham wrote:
On 14 December 2010 22:49, Wayne Stambaugh<stambaughw@xxxxxxxxxxx>  wrote:
I made some ,inor changes to clarify inherited vs base part and changed
LPID names reflect local naming convention as suggested by Dick.

Wayne

On 12/14/2010 9:39 AM, Wayne Stambaugh wrote:
I know all of you've been on the edge of your seats waiting for the the new
part file format since Dick announced his plans to start working on the
distributed library.  So without further ado, attached is the preliminary copy
of the library part file specification.  Please take a look at it and make sure
I didn't forget anything.  I have tried to accommodate all of the previous
library discussions as best I could.  If I missed something, it wasn't
intentional so please let me know so I can revise the specification.

Initially, I would like keep the discussion focused on what is missing and how
it should be implemented.  Please keep the discussion on semantics like "I
would rather use thickness instead of line_width" until after we've hammered
out all of the technical issues.

Once we have a consensus, I will convert the document into a more formal format
similar to the current file specification documents and commit it to the
documentation repo since that is were the rest of Kicad's documentation resides.

I know it's been a long time coming so thank you for your patience.

Wayne
Hi Wayne,

I just got a look through the doc. I have a few questions/observations for you:

(1) If I browsed a library for a part which contains all of the parts
information below the line:
# This is an example of a dual input NAND gate A of a 7400.
in the document, does this mean that I would see all of the parts for
selection? i.e. dual_input_nand_a, dual_input_nand_b,
dual_input_nand_c, dual_input_nand_d, dual_input_nand_demorgan_a,
dual_input_nand_demorgan_b, dual_input_nand_demorgan_c,
dual_input_nand_demorgan_d, 7400, 74LS00, and SN74HCT00NSR

I would have thought there would need to be a way in the syntax of
showing what was a selectable/finished part and what was merely a
"symbol" or partial part which should not be allowed to be entered
into the schematic directly.

Ah, actually, I see you might be using the value field for this
purpose. Only values are selectable parts perhaps?

(2) I could see a pin rename function being handy. At the moment it is
possible to delete a pin and then add a new pin in, but this would
mean re-defining all of the other pin properties.

(pin_rename NUMBER NAME)

Another method might be to have overriding of pin attributes. For example:

(part “dual_input_nand_a”
   (reference “U”)
   (pin input line (at -600 100 180)
     (name “” (font (size 60 60)) (visible yes))
     (number “1” (font (size 60 60)) (visible yes))
     (visible yes))
)

(part “dual_input_nand_b” inherits “dual_in_nand_a/rev1”
   (pin_del 7)
   (pin_del 14)
   (pin_renum 1 4)
   (pin_renum 2 5)
   (pin_renum 3 6)
   (pin (number "4") (name "D"))
   (pin (number "5") (name "E"))
   (pin (number "6") (name "F"))
)
Brian,

Pin renaming makes sense to me.  I would like to keep the item_action concept
for consistency.  In other words:

(pin (number "4") (name "D"))

becomes

(pin_rename "4" "D")

If you don't have any objections, I'll update the specification.

Wayne
Hi Wayne,

Yes I think that is the best and neatest method, I'm sure it'll be useful.

Many Thanks,

Brian.

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