kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Dick Hollenbeck <dick@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 04/13/2012 02:32 AM, Solonen Vesa wrote:
>> Like so many suggestions, they are often good ideas that never get done, because they do
>> not rise to a sufficient level of need within an individual capable of doing the work.
>> This is especially true in free software, which in fact is never free.
> Feature bounties might be a workable solution for "boring" work. I'm quite confident I'm not he only one doing SMPS design on KiCad, and would be willing to invest about two hours worth at your rate for a few features (just guesstimating from senior sw developers contracting rates). I also feel that that two hours is quite small compensation for the actual effort going in, so I see there is a need for other investors.
>
>> Another thing you can do with this is add it to the bug list as a "wishlist" item.
> Will do that.
>
>> Otherwise it might get lost on the mailing list.  It is not something we can simply add to
>> the board  file, and then hope that PCBNEW magically understands as it reads it.
> My intention was not to demand any implementation, but just find ways to support the feature in the file format currently being defined. Reasoning is "commenting on the new file format" to avoid a second design round (which would probably get a lot of opposition) and save users from the hassle on multiple format versions. Error messages like "This feature is supported on file format version 1.0.2.003b+" might get annoying...

The s-expression format consists of both syntax and grammar.  The grammar portion will
evolve over time.  There is no way to anticipate all future needs.  s-expression is very
flexible, you can always change the grammar, and elements not understood within a new file
can in theory be ignored by an older parser, if it so choses.


Maybe if you write a specification you could get more investors to buy into your
proposal.  This might include proposed s-expression elements to hold the constructs that
you need.  However, I would not think there is any particular urgency in doing this before
we get rolling on this new file format.  We won't be doing the switch over for several
more weeks, and want to try and get the internal nano-meter support fully working before a
switch over.


Dick