pkgsrc/cad/geda-docs
dmcmahill c050018ba7 update to 20040111.
Release notes for the gEDA/gaf 20040111 snapshot

   Changes
     _________________________________________________________________________________________________________

   General / Summary

     * Lots  of  changes  in  most  areas.  This release contains the largest amount of changes in quite a while.
       Expect bugs, crashes, and general instability. If you tell me about them, I might be able to fix them.
     * Probably the biggest set of changes were the addition of multi-line text support. The bulk of the work was
       done  by  Carlos.  The  text add dialog box and the multi attribute add/change dialog box both support the
       adding  and  editing  of  multi  line  text  items,  however, I am going to change these dialog boxes in a
       subsequent  release  to be a little like the old behavior, but still support multi-line text support. Full
       multi-line text support requires that you use gtk+ 2.2.x.
     * Also  part  of  the  above  changes  was to get rid of some fixed sized buffers within libgeda and gschem.
       Hopefully  I  have  hashed  out  all  the  bugs  in these changes, but I wouldn't be surprised if I missed
       something. Please report all crashes. Thanks.
     * Changed  the  file  format  a little. Changed the way sch/sym files are versioned and added a field to the
       text  item  to  support  the  multi-line  text  feature addition. I recommend everybody run gsymupdate and
       gschupdate  (and  verify the resulting files!) to get rid of the log warning message. gEDA/gaf will always
       write the new file format for all saved schematic/symbols.
     * The  v  flag  (the  version  of  the  sym/sch file), in the past, was keyed off of a version date, such as
       20030901.  Starting  with 20040111, I am no longer using this date as the version of the sch/sym file, but
       rather I added a new field (number) which is the file format version. The new version line looks like:
        v 20040111 1
       This  is  nice that I don't have to update all the symbols, schematics, etc... to get rid of a log warning
       message. The current version of the file format is 1. All past files are versioned as 0. As an experiment,
       I  left  all the symbol files at v 20031231 1 and nobody should care/notice. I am planning more changes to
       the file format in subsequent releases and this version field will make changing it easier.
     * The  text object has an additional field which is the number of lines (N) the text item contains. The text
       item is then followed by N number of lines of text. Example:
        T 48400 59900 9 10 1 0 0 0 3
            Line1
            Line2
            Line3
     * The component libraries:
        vhdl, verilog, new asic, and the new gnetman
       are  commented  OUT  in  the  system-commonrc  file.  I did this because there are significant symbol name
       clashes  between  these libraries. If you want to use one of these libraries, please place the appropriate
       (component-library  "...")  string  in  some  rc  file.  This  commenting out is temporary, till I fix the
       component name clashing bug (jitterbug#9).
     * The  component-library-search  keyword  in  the  system-commonrc file was commented out. If a directory is
       specified  for  the component-library-search keyword, then libgeda/gschem/gnetlist will automatically find
       any  directories  in  the  specified  directory  and add them to the component search path. By having this
       keyword in place, this would have undone the above commenting out.
       If  gschem/gnetlist  cannot  find your custom component libraries after upgrading to 20040111, then either
       comment  in  the component-library-search keyword back into the system-commonrc file or explicitly add the
       custom component libraries to an rc file. The latter action is prefered.
       This info was added on 02/08/2004.
     * Upgraded  all  packages  to use gettext (GNU gettext) 0.12.1. I don't think that anybody who downloads the
       source  tarballs  will  need  this particular version, but you will certainly need it if you build the CVS
       version.
     * Partially  applied  Carlos' UTF-8 patch for gtk+ 2.2.x. I couldn't test the complete patch, so I will keep
       working  on  this.  Moving libgeda to use UTF-8 internally is going to be a bit of work, but the sooner it
       happens, the better.
     * The  gEDA Suite setup program has been improved considerably. It now supports the download of the tarballs
       automatically  using  wget.  All  you need to get from the gEDA website is the toplevel Makefile and type:
       make  xinstall and the setup program will do the rest. See below in the build section for more information
       on using xinstall. Please report any problems with gEDA Suite setup so it can be further improved.
     * Much  more  documentation  that  gets  installed now (almost all of it). I included Bill Wilson's gsch2pcb
       tutorial  and  Russ  Dill's  tragesym  tutorial.  I  also  am  installing  all  READMEs, so please see the
       gedadocs.html  file  for  almost  all  available  documentation  on gEDA/gaf. You can access this file via
       Help/Manual... in gschem (make sure you have a web browser installed).

   libgeda

     * Shared library version number now at 20.
     * In 20030901, libgeda was accidentally being built without optimization. Fixed in this version.
     * Applied  Carlos  Nieves  Onega's  multi-line text patch. See below in the gschem for more info. This patch
       changed and fixed a lot of things in libgeda, so expect some instability.
     * Applied  a  few  more  patches by Carlos to perfect the multi-line text support in libgeda (mainly dealing
       with support for tabs in multi-line text items).
     * Added postscript output for mutli-line text items. This support is really new and not 100% perfect. Expect
       some  problems  here,  mainly  when you start rotating and changing the alignment of many line text items.
       Putting tabs into the text strings is not yet supported.
     * Fixed  a  really  nasty bug in o_attrib_get_name_value() which was caused by g_strsplit() not behaving the
       same  between  glib  1.2.x  and  glib  2.2.x. Be careful when using g_strsplit, especially if you use both
       versions of glib. Bug caught by Stuart.

   gschem

     * Added the --with-stroke command line to specify where ./configure can find the libstroke files.
     * Changed the behavior of the print dialog box to close when the user presses the Print button.
     * Added  the ability to generate PNGs from the command line. Look at gschem/scripts/image.scm for the scheme
       script. Command line looks like: gschem -o test.png -s image.scm filename.sch
     * Added  a  schem  rc  keyword:  image-size which lets you set the size of the PNG image generated using the
       above guile script.
     * Applied  Carlos  Nieves  Onega's  multi-line  text  patch.  This  patch  adds  multi-line  text support to
       gschem/libgeda.  This  patch  made  some very deep changes to internals which haven't changed in years, so
       expect  some  instability.  Multi-line  text is properly supported only when using gtk+ 2.2.x. You will be
       able to load schematics and edit multi-line text (in a limited fashion) if you use gtk+ 1.2.x
     * Part  of  the  above  patch was the removal of a bunch of fixed sized buffers. Hopefully Carlos and I have
       fixed  all  issues  surrounding these changes, but expect some instability here as well as we work out the
       kinks.
     * Applied  a  patch  by  Carlos  to  highlight  the proper alignment value in the pull down menu in the Edit
       Text... dialog box.
     * Fixed the visual alignment of the menu items and hotkeys when using gtk+ 2.2.x.
     * Improved  the  appearance  of a few of the dialog box, by mainly adding whitespace. A few dialog box got a
       few more touch ups, but nothing too drastic.
     * Applied  a  patch  by  Carlos  to  add multi-line attribute editing to the multi attribute dialog box. The
       changes for this are not complete and will change in the next release.
     * Updated the pt_BR.po with Antonio's UTF-8 version.
     * Applied  Stuart's  multi-select  open  patch.  Now  you  can  select multiple schematics to open using the
       File/Open... dialog box. Hold down the shift or control key as you click on filenames.
     * Part  of  Carlos'  multi-line  text  patch  was  to  change  the  quick rendering of text from a line to a
       rectangle. Refined and refactored this code a little to properly display attributes.
     * Fixed  a  long  standing  bug  in the File/Open... and File/Close... mechanisms when dealing with multiple
       windows. Bug identified by Karel Kulhav.
     * Fixed  a  long  standing  bug  in  the preview window (for schematics and components) where there would be
       garbage  data  in  the bottom of the window. The bug only manifested itself under very specific conditions
       and only when using gtk+ 1.2.x. I'm quite surprised nobody else complained about it (or rather recently).
     * Applied a patch by Carlos to support the new Spanish characters.
     * Fixed the invalid scrollbars on startup bug.
     * Updated  the  man  page a little bit. Added code to the build mechanism to generate an html version of the
       man page, which is installed into the documentation directory.
     * Bunch of other improvements and bug fixes.

   gnetlist

     * Upgraded Bill Wilson's gsch2pcb gnetlist backend to the latest (1.4)
     * Applied all of Carlos' DRC2 patches.
     * Applied  all  of  Stuart's  spice-sdb  patches. The included spice-sdb backend should be Stuart's absolute
       latest version. A bunch of improvements to various parts of gnetlist were included in these patches.
     * Applied of Stuart's patch to the partlist backends.
     * Updated  the  man  page a little bit. Added code to the build mechanism to generate an html version of the
       man page, which is installed into the documentation directory.
     * Added  the  scheme  rc  keyword:  unnamed-netname  which  lets you control what the unnamed nets should be
       called.
     * Add  the  necessary  rules  to  the  Makefiles  to  install all the backend READMEs into the documentation
       directory.
     * Applied  a patch by Christopher K Eveland to fix a condition where gschem2pcb was picking up a pin when it
       should  not.  If  somebody  could  test  gschem2pcb on an existing project and make sure it still works as
       expect, it would be greatly appreciated.
     * Added the Racal Redac format backend by W. Kazubski.
     * Added the new RF Cascade and futurenet2 backends by Dan McMahill.
     * Applied  a  bunch  of patches by Dan for doing net aliasing/renaming. These patches touched the C files as
       well as various backends.
     * Applied a few more patches by Dan to fix some m4 quoting issues with the PCB backends.
     * Bunch of other minor bug fixes.

   gsymcheck

     * No significant changes (lots of pending work though).
     * Updated  the  man  page a little bit. Added code to the build mechanism to generate an html version of the
       man page, which is installed into the documentation directory.

   symbols

     * Werner Hoch has fixed a whole slew of symbols in various component libraries. Thanks Werner!
     * Added a whole bunch of contributed symbols from various people. Thanks.
     * Added a bunch of new Spanish characters by Carlos.
     * Removed vhdl, verilog, asic, and gnetman from the system-commonrc file.

   geda (gManager)

     * Piotr  Miarecki  added a bunch of features and fixed a few bugs in gManager. Give it a try and let him how
       gManager works for you. gManager is looking really nice.
     * Integrated Antonio's pt_BR translation. This should work now.
     * Added a strategic sleep to the mainloop of gManager to reduce the CPU load.

   utils

     * Updated Bill Wilson's gsch2pcb to version 1.4
     * Add  the  necessary  rules  to  the  Makefiles  to  install all the backend READMEs into the documentation
       directory.
     * Integrated Stuart's garchive script.

   docs

     * Applied a whole bunch of patches from Dan McMahill to the symbol creation guide. These patches added/fixed
       information related to the footprint= attribute.
     * Started using hyperref.sty for all LaTeX generated documentation, which adds hyperlinks to the pdf files.
     * Added a bunch of converted txt -> tex documents. The conversions were done by Dan McMahill.
     * Added the Dan McMahill's documentation for the RF Cascade gnetlist backend.
     * Rewrote  the  toplevel gedadocs.html index file to link all the new documentation, readmes, man pages, and
       tutorials.  The  gedadocs.html  now  file  contains almost all existing documentation on gEDA/gaf that I'm
       aware of.
     * Added  a  couple  of  tutorials  that  people  have written. Namely Bill Wilson's gsch2pcb and Russ Dill's
       tragesym tutorials. Both of these tutorials are accessible from the gedadocs.html file.
     * Explicitly  stated  in  the  file  formats document that all the file formats associated with gEDA/gaf are
       covered by the GPL version 2.0.
     * Lots of improvements and fixes to various docs.

   examples

     * No significant changes.

   For more a detailed changes, please look in the appropriate ChangeLogs in the source tarballs.
2004-03-05 13:03:47 +00:00
..
DESCR Move pkg/ files into package's toplevel directory 2001-11-01 00:47:39 +00:00
distinfo update to 20040111. 2004-03-05 13:03:47 +00:00
Makefile use the geda/Makefile.common for some common variables 2004-02-23 04:01:58 +00:00
PLIST update to 20040111. 2004-03-05 13:03:47 +00:00