kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Chris Morgan <chmorgan@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Aug 9, 2013 at 5:02 AM, Andrew Seddon <andrew@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> I can tell you a few key design decisions we made which might help.
>
> - Lib must be cached user side, lack of internet shouldn't stop you
> designing. Files work fine, you dont need to invent a new protocol.
>
> - Footprints are defined as code(JavaScript for us). We use a tree based
> template system, so you can refactor common elements such as IPC
> specifications into base footprints and then derive specific footprints
> from the base. This will be exposed to users in a few days so you'll see
> exactly how it works and be able to inspect code for templates.
>
> I consider this pretty revolutionary, it's definitely worth stealing ;-)
>
> - When CircuitHub shows you a footprint it tells you why you are seeing
> it, i.e "Approved by Chris for this part". In future we are going to
> implement trust networks where you can explicitly trust individual
> users/organisations and thus see content from those users more prominently.
>
> - The primary GUI should be browser based, resist the urge to bundle
> everything into one big monolithic EDA tool. We embrace the Unix philosophy
> of small sharp tools that talk to each other.
>
> - A Symbol/Footprint/Part(MPN) must be explicitly tied together. We call
> this a Component. Do not allow multiple entities of each type in this
> relationship.
>
> That's a few things that come to mind anyway.
>
>
>
>

I've completed a draft of a writeup on the idea,
http://chmorgan.blogspot.com/2013/08/an-idea-for-kicad-library-crowdsourcing.html

I did talk a little bit about the file based approach. There are some
things that weren't clear, such as how to push changes from client to
server with that approach, how filenames are managed etc.

Chris