kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Tomasz Wlostowski <tomasz.wlostowski@xxxxxxx>]

On 17/12/2018 18:40, cedric.dewijs@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> I would like to import Altium files into Kicad. I've tried Altium2Kicad.
> This kinda works, but it's written in a language i don't understand.
> Therefore I told the bugtracker and the forum I would like to build it
> again in C++, using fuctions of Kicad to do the actual writing of the
> board file:
> https://forum.kicad.info/t/altium-2-kicad-converter-using-parts-of-the-kicad-source-code/14169/5
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/kicad/+bug/1755952
> 
> I was told somebody had already worked on it, but there were some
> concerns about the legal ramifications of reverse engineering the
> Compound File Binary File Format. however, it's not needed anymore to
> reverse engineer it, as both openoffice and Microsoft have published the
> specs:
> https://winprotocoldoc.blob.core.windows.net/productionwindowsarchives/MS-CFB/[MS-CFB].pdf
> https://www.openoffice.org/sc/compdocfileformat.pdf

Hi Cedric,

I don't know much about the internals of Altium files, but I know
there's a library called libgsf which reads/writes MS OLE containers.
the 'gsf' utility under Linux lets you unpack these files as if they
were zipfiles.

Tom