kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[jp charras <jp.charras@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Le 03/03/2016 17:30, Simon Wells a écrit :
> Yeah, not loading the whole file. It would be a static function in
> each plugin that just sort of tests a wee bit,
> binary != xml != sexpr != (whatever the old kicad format is) and each
> of those could be differentiated easily with 200 bytes. Most binary
> ones will also have magic in them for identification anyway.
> 
> as far as i can tell it could be done 3 ways
> 
> - by passing the file (which would most likely be slowest due to
> open/closing of the file for each plugin
> - an arbitary arbitary amount of data read into an array/string and
> then passed to each saying do you understand this much.... (this would
> work 99% of the time) unless it came down to very small changes and a
> very crappy file format that didn't have versioning early/at all.
> - memory map and pass the file that way to each importer plugin, this
> would most likely be the most complicated solution, but would most
> likely be one of the more accurate, and one of the most efficient,
> however depending on file size this could cause problems (although
> just like the former it could be limited to something reasonable).
> This also wouldn't require reloading the file for the real board load
> so shouldn't add any additional time to file load.
> 
> If we still use extensions i still think we need something like this
> due to things like the eagle/old-kicad format's in which case the same
> thing could be used but an additional field could be parsed to
> CanYouHandleThis(FILE, HINT) with the hint being the extension, or
> even overloaded to give multiple choices


What is the interest to spend time to try to automatically guess the plugin?

Pcbnew is not a board viewer.
Importing a board is a bit more tricky than opening images in a image
viewer like Irfanview.

Currently there are 2 plugins importers, and it is unlikely we have more
importers soon.
(In other words, we have a bit of time to find the best solution before
10 or 15 plugins are available.)

Currently the plugin selection is made from the file extension.
This is for me enough for now.

Be sure other imports are not necessary made by just a new plugin.
For instance Altium board files (which are basic ascii files) are not
directly readable.
The bundle which contains them must be expanded (similar to a zip file
which must be dezipped)

Currently, when using the file extension one can argue the old kicad
board files and the Eagle files having the same extension, the extension
does not works as criteria, and reading the beginning of the file is needed.

This is absolutely false.

The issue is just created by the fact importing a file and opening a
kicad board file is made using the *same* menu item, and therefore a
.brd file can be a kicad file or a Eagle file.

I am thinking 2 separate menu items:
one for opening a kicad board file
and
one *other* to import files
will fix this issue and moreover will be more easy to use (no need to
select a file filter, the file filter being a filter to open kicad
files, and an other filter to import non Kicad files).

And the cost to add an import menu item is zilch.



-- 
Jean-Pierre CHARRAS