kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Dick Hollenbeck <dick@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> 
> (The sooner we can stop talking about library search paths the less confused I will be.
> This whole effort is an attempt to kill off that concept.)
> 
> 
> KISYSMOD is merely a path fragment, i.e. an abbreviation, not a search path.  It is no
> different than any other environment variable which you might use in an fp lib table,
> except that Wayne makes a big effort to set KISYSMOD for you if you forget.
> 


KISYSMOD contains the platform specific portion of the path your "KiCad system" footprint
libraries.  It can be used to achieve cross platform neutrality within a potentially
platforn neutral, i.e. 'common' fp library table on *your* systems.  (No effort is made to
have a common table for all KiCad installations, since you will go off and customize the
table for your needs.

Here is perhaps your first look at one, both in s-expr data file format and in CSV format:


A) s-expression:

http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~kicad-testing-committers/kicad/testing/view/head:/template/fp_global_table


B) CSV format, which you can use to copy from a spreadsheet into the fp library table
dialog or vice versa:

http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~kicad-testing-committers/kicad/testing/view/head:/template/fp_global_table.csv


The logical fp library table is a conceptual concatenation of a global table fragment and
a "project specific" table fragment, with priority given to "project specific" portion.
Loading the referenced CSV file into your favorite spreadsheet will give you a view of the
fp library table columns.  The link points to a sensible global table fragment.

NICKNAME is a short name for the library pointed to in the URI.  TYPE is the PLUGIN type.
 If you want to write a plugin that uses http to grab footprints, you can put the http URI
in the correct column, and you can put web-library password or other options in the
OPTIONS column.

The OPTIONS column is or will be passed to the PLUGIN API functions through the PROPERTY
table that is the last argument to most all PLUGIN API functions, although I think this
still needs to be done.

tada.