gEDA: Misc changes in CVS

[Michael McLay <mclay-at-NOSPAMnist_dot_gov>]

Ales Hvezda writes:
 > 
 > Hi All,
 > 
 > Here's a list of various changes I made over the past few weeks
 > which are now in the CVS repository:
 > 
 > 	- Renamed the "physical" attribute to "footprint".  Fixed all
 > 	  affected files (gnetlist/backends/symbols/docs).  Also renamed
 > 	  pinlabel and pintype to label and type.

Hmm, what is the source of the terminology that is being used by gEDA?
According to IPC a "footprint" is not the correct terminology in PCB
design.  Do you have access to the IPC T-50F - Terms & Definitions for
Interconnecting & Packaging Electronic Circuits?  It's available at:

http://crystal.ipc.org/scripts/mgrqispi.dll?APPNAME=WEBTEST&PRGNAME=ABSTRACT&ARGUMENTS=-N0,-N9090909,-A,-APRODLIST,-N50,-A,-AT-50F,-AChoose%20a%20Category,-A,-A50,-A

The IPC prefers the term Land Pattern for the pattern of copper on the board
where the pins will be attached to the board.  

Another reference that might be of use for gpcb is the IPC-SM-782
document.  It is the Surface Mound Design and Land Pattern Standard
and it provides rules and dimensions for laying out land patterns for
most of the surface mount type devices.

Dieter Bergman at IPC has created a number of example land patterns
using the GenCAM file format.  The Data Transfer Solutions committee
has discussed the possible creation of a standard land pattern library 
that would be located at the gencam.org web site.  Ideally the
dimensions of the patterns would be supplied by the manufacturers of
the packages.

 > 	- Added some more error checking in the read in of objects, this
 > 	  should prevent a coredump if you give gschem/gnetlist an invalid
 > 	  color
 > 
 > 	- Changed the default text case to allow for both upper and lower 
 > 	  case (instead of the previous default of only upper)

Are you using UTF-8 as the standard character set?