gEDA-dev: Some gschem misfeatures noted this morning (10.5.2006)

[Stuart Brorson <sdb-at-NOSPAMcloud9_dot_net>]

Carlos, Patrick, guys,

I opened some of my normal test schematics with gschem this morning to
give the gschem changes a test drive.  I opened the schematics using
the wonderful new Cambridge Univ project manager xgsch2pcb -- I can
talk about that elesehwere.  Here are some misfeatures in gschem I
noted:

1.  I got this error reported in a pop-up status window:

  "Found an improper attribute: _VendorPN_"
  "Found an improper attribute: _Price_"
  "Found an improper attribute: _VendorPN_"
  "Found an improper attribute: _Price_"
  "Found an improper attribute: _VendorPN_"
  "Found an improper attribute: _Price_"
  "Found an improper attribute: _VendorPN_"
  "Found an improper attribute: _Price_"
  [... etc...]

I have "Price" and "VendorPN" attibutes on all of my symbols (that is,
attribues attached in the schematic layer using gattrib) in this
design.  I wonder if gschem (or libgeda) is now enforcing the
attributes you are allowed to have attached to your symbols?  Or is
this some I18N thing (becuase of the underscores around the text)?

Personally, I don't think gschem (or libgeda) should enforce any
attribute names.  It can suggest names for the newbie in the
pull-down, but if a user like me has defined additional attribute
names, that shouldn't cause a warning or an error.

In any event, I don't think I deserve this error, whatever its cause.

2.  As I said, I opened my schematic using xgsch2pcb (the Cambridge
Univ utility).  It now allows one to open multiple schematic pages at 
once -- a nice feature.  My schematic has 8 pages.  When I opened it,
I got 8 different status windows warning me about my attributes.
Ideally, gschem should only present one status window instead of 8,
since it's a PITA to close 8 different windows saying the same
thing. Is there any way for gschem to check for an existing status
window before it opens a new one, and then write to the existing one
if it exists?


Thanks for the many patches to date!  I'll keep playing with gschem,
and if I get some time maybe I'll try to figure out how to fix some of
the above issues -- if you don't get there first!  ;-)  If you want me
to put these into bugzilla, just say so.  I thought I would bring them
up here for discussion first.

Stuart


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