kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Carl Poirier <carl.poirier.2@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Dick,

I neither read the whole thread nor played with pretty yet, but if the
steps to convert the libraries are fairly straightforward, I can volunteer
to do it. I did however create many libraries in the old format so if
needed, I will be able to validate the conversion.

If you agree, please write down the steps required for the conversion and I
will do it.

Carl Poirier


On Thu, Sep 26, 2013 at 10:39 AM, Dick Hollenbeck <dick@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> I checked the size of our largest footprint library and when zipped it
> scrunches to
> 70kbytes.
>
> This was not pretty, but legacy.  But I don't anticipate a noteworthy
> difference in size.
>
> Therefore the concept of getting 70kbytes in one https://github.com hit
> seems reasonable
> even with country folks like me with slow internet access.  My internet
> speed is only
> 160bytes / second.  So the download time of this 70kbytes file, after it
> is zipped and the
> https session is established, will be less than a second.  Maybe 1-3
> seconds total with
> SSL session establishment overhead, depending on github load and internet
> whims.
>
>
> I am encouraged, and I think I will end up using this plugin as my main
> means of getting
> footprints, period.
>
>
> If no one volunteers, I have it on my to do list to convert what we have
> to pretty, then
> push it to github.  I would use lib_convert.py to do this, for each
> library.
>
> If someone else wants to do it, that would be helpful.  I certainly
> understand the "show
> me" mentality.  If you've yet to see the GITHUB_PLUGIN work, then why
> would you invest
> time in this?  I understand that.  But I've also seen it work, so I am
> confident that
> somebody will probably step up in the near future.
>
> Just yesterday I made a tweak to the pretty output which tries to put pads
> on one line if
> they are not tricked out with optional attributes.  That would be the
> format to use, from
> a build at least that new I suppose.
>
> Also, note that a library repo can be pushed with a README.md file, and in
> that file you
> could elaborate on and include an index of all footprints in the library
> in freeform text.
>  This way a person could web-browse there and read about footprint choices
> first, in
> potentially great detail.
>
> Note that although subdirectories can be used in the repo, this view is
> flattened as the
> plugin unzips the footprints into its cache.  So if you use
> subdirectories, make sure you
> have unique footprint names.  With the upcoming options support, it will
> be possible to
> build in directory filters or other tricks into the plugin.  But that will
> be for some
> other developer to do.  I will provide the options support to all plugins.
>
> Beyond that, there is also the ability to comment each footprint in the
> *.kicad_mod file,
> manually using a text editor for now.  The *first* lines of
>
> # ... anything
>
> are ignored by pcbnew.  This may not be as helpful as the table of
> contents in the
> README.md file.
>
> You can sort of tell that this infrastructure is screaming for leadership.
>  I don't see
> where that leadership needs to come from a programmer/developer.  It is
> simple
> administration and guideline establishment.
>
> But yes, it is still a little early, we've got to get it running on all
> the platforms
> first.  Our thanks go to Brian, Miguel and anyone else helping with that.
>
>
> Dick
>
>
>
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