kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Maciej Suminski <maciej.suminski@xxxxxxx>]

Hi Jean-Pierre,

On 08/13/2017 02:01 PM, jp charras wrote:
[snip]
> 
> This was made to speed up netlist and connection calculations in the early time of Pcbnew.
> (There was no support of wxString and std::string, therefore comparing 2 strings was not as easy and
> not as fast as comparing 2 numbers).
> 
> I am thinking the long pin number support can be now safely removed without any problem and the code
> will be clearer.
> 
> I don't think the file format changes, if the pad name is restricted to 4 ASCII7 chars, like now.

It is true, but I opt for removing the name length constraint, therefore
I suggested to increment the file format version. I realize there are
not many cases when it is useful, but I am converting a library that
uses e.g. SHIELD, MECH1, MECH2 for pad names. Truncating pad names may
easily result in a disaster, so for now I am just skipping such parts,
but ideally we could support them too.

> The file format changes only if the pad name is free (any UTF8 char, any length).
> However a full free name/pin number can be not compatible with netlists:
> see Spice and other formats for instance.

I think this should be handled by exporters by displaying a message. We
do not need to restrict ourselves only due to other software limitations.

> Moreover any non ASCII7 char will create problems in X2 Gerber files (only ASCII7 chars are allowed
> in Gerber files).
> 
> But this is an other problem (and besides, I am not sure a free pad name is very useful: all
> footprints use only digits and A...Z chars in Pad names).

Then it sounds like ASCII7 is a reasonable choice. In such case we
either should use std::string or wxString::{From,To}Ascii().

Regards,
Orson