kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Dick Hollenbeck <dick@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 04/30/2012 05:39 AM, Lorenzo Marcantonio wrote:
> I looked in depth in the affected code. Some refactoring, too.
>
> What's changed:
>
> - Public functions with CamelCase names (I liked more the standard_library
>   ones, but we just need to decide once);
>
> - The dummy PlotImage (drawing only a rectangle) was moved to the base since
>   everyone except the Postscript engine uses the same implementation;
>
> - The userToDevice stuff uses return by value;
>
> - Comment formatting changed, most duplicate comment removed and put in the
>   header;
>
> - Used the DEG2RAD / RAD2DEG macros instead of explicitly computing 180.0/M_PI
>   and so on
>
> - Completely reworked the marker code (I hit the 13 symbol limit more than one
>   time...); Now it's bitmask based and there are 58 symbols defined (and a
>   class constant to define this limit);
>
> - To discuss: something a construction like this was used in the routines:
>
>     static std::vector< wxPoint > corner_list;                                             
>     corner_list.clear();
>
>   I suppose that would be to avoid reconstructing a vector at each call?
>   However, the clear() simply junk the memory and forces reallocation so I
>   don't see a gain in doing this... if it was a fixed vector and the elements
>   were simply reassigned it could be an idea; for now I simply removed the
>   static and the clear call (i.e. a fresh vector for each call);
>
> - Tried to give a better name to some scaling factor (for example in the
>   worksheet plotting code I renamed conv_unit to iusPerMil);
>
> There still the plot width adjustment which I don't like... OTOH I've seen the
> polyline code used for the 'filled circle' in the DXF engine: I think its a
> clever solution. Wide tracks could be generated with the sketched oval code...
>
> The issue is that DXF has no under/over relationship between primitives (and
> neither between layers; a DXF layer doesn't work like a layer in gimp or
> photoshop). In the newer acad this was fixed with scripts and/or commands which
> change the internal display list (handle renumbering maybe? the newer DXF have
> a DRAWORDER command and the SORTENTSTABLE and it's specified that the entities
> are drawn in handle order otherwise) but AFAIK there is no way in a 'classic'
> DXF (i.e. R13 or R14) to say 'this entity has to go over that one'.
>
> Another thing is that seems that nothing else but acad handles polyline width :(
>
> I also toyed with text export as DXF entities with mixed results: importing
> into acad gives good results (probably because I'm using a very similar ISO
> font), qcad/librecad instead get the alignment wrong (maybe is a qcad issue,
> and it uses another font, anyway). If someone is interested I can finish this
> (it would be an option for the DXF plotter, like "export text as text
> entities"). Putting references/fields on other layers would be probably a lot
> more useful. Just tell me what you think about it.


The PS plots could benefit from an option to export text also, which I would be inclined
to use probably on on schematics, and love to use it there.  I use a script to convert a
bunch of *.ps files all into one big PDF file.

makepdf.sh ----------------------------------------------------------

ps2pdf -sPAPERSIZE=11x17 @ps2pdf.cmd project.pdf


ps2pdf.cmd ----------------------------------------------------------

-f ks8695px.ps ks8695px-blockdiagram.sch.ps ks8695px-cpu.sch.ps \
ks8695px-fpga.sch.ps ks8695px-ethernet.sch.ps ks8695px-ethernet.sch-poe.sch.ps \
ks8695px-fiber.sch.ps ks8695px-flash.sch.ps ks8695px-jtag_reset.sch.ps \
ks8695px-pci.sch.ps ks8695px-power.sch.ps ks8695px-cpu_power.sch.ps \
ks8695px-rtc.sch.ps ks8695px-sdram.sch.ps ks8695px-serial.sch.ps \
ks8695px-straps.sch.ps ks8695px-cfcard.sch.ps ks8695px-serial.sch-Port4.ps


I am not mistaken, this would make it possible to search within the PDF file for strings then.

============================

Thank you very much for this very large, high quality body of work Lorenzo.

Dick