Release notes for the gEDA/gaf 20040111 snapshot

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).

• 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.

Suite Setup

• Piotr removed setup's dependence on gaf's version number.
• Piotr added support for downloading source tarballs using wget.
• Piotr fixed a bunch of bugs in setup.
• I (Ales) changed some tests in setup.sh to be -r instead of -x since shared libraries are typically not executable. This reduce the need to rebuild glib/gtk if they already exist on the system.
• I upgraded setup's desire to use glib/gtk+ 1.2.4 to 1.2.10, since gschem was unhappy with 1.2.4.
• I have tested setup (make xinstall with net installs) with 20040111 and so far it has worked flawlessly on my current Debian box and a RedHat 8.0 machine. :-)
• I updated setup's configure mechanism to be current.

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.

Bugs/Errata/Known Issues/Last Minute Issues

• gtk+ 2.2.x i18n support is still not 100% working. If you use i18n, then it is recommend to stick with gtk+ 1.2.x. Fixing this is currently ongoing (and somewhat complicated).
• Discovered that really old schematics with embedded components might not get the pin whichone field set correctly. This means that you will not be able to connect to pins on embedded components that are really really old. This needs to be fixed in a subsequent version.
• gsymupdate and gschupdate do not handle multi-line text items. This should not be a problem for now, but in the future it might be. This needs to be fixed.
• I still have several (at least three) patches which did not make it into this release. I'll work on getting them into a subsequent release. Thanks for your patience.
• Many thanks to everybody who contributed to this release. Especially to Carlos, Antonio, Dan, Stuart, Bill, Werner, and anybody else who sent me patches. Thanks.
• As usual, send all bug reports and suggestions to the geda-dev / geda-user lists or directly to me. Thanks.

Download

• http://www.geda.seul.org/source.html (USA)
• http://ftp.sunet.se/geda/source.html (Europe)

Source Tarballs

md5sum	Name	Size
f057ee687f3da618eaff9988959a0b9c	*Makefile	26 KB
200b4977d0925ffc9d34e8032191cc57	*geda-20040111.tar.gz	322 KB
9365e50da62d2f1458c26a4d3e8034cc	*geda-docs-20040111.tar.gz	2760 KB
a6b26dd9c0a372625db63d06e1d60ac3	*geda-examples-20040111.tar.gz	239 KB
9bbeb64aea9455468d5aef16685a03de	*geda-gnetlist-20040111.tar.gz	297 KB
1826f8615615129883ab01d766877323	*geda-gschem-20040111.tar.gz	1400 KB
869fee36c0edcd9beb904e208d9a782a	*geda-gsymcheck-20040111.tar.gz	128 KB
e43b43997d7f428017a28ad5aa9fa931	*geda-setup-20040111.tar.gz	326 KB
97ff0fa7bfabf150dc047c733d7b8c34	*geda-symbols-20040111.tar.gz	564 KB
3fac8212be7f362db2dd4d6a8806d58f	*geda-utils-20040111.tar.gz	238 KB
e0f644647e16786de1af907cd847d492	*libgeda-20040111.tar.gz	945 KB

Total Size: ~7 MB

Required Libraries/Programs

Most can be found at: http://www.geda.seul.org/dist

Required libraries:

• guile 1.4.1 or 1.6.3
• Either gtk+ 1.2.x or 2.2.x
  setup and geda (gManager) both require gtk+ 1.2.x.

  For gtk+ 1.2.x:
  

  • glib ≥ 1.2.10
  • gtk+ ≥ 1.2.10

  -OR-

  For gtk+ 2.2.x:
  

  • glib ≥ 2.2.2
  • atk ≥ 1.2.4
  • pango ≥ 1.2.4
  • gtk+ ≥ 2.2.2

Required programs:

• pkg-config ≥ 0.15.0
  NOTE: You MUST install pkg-config regardless of gtk+ version.

Optional libraries:

• LibStroke ≥ 0.5.1
• libgdgeda > 2.0.15
  NOTE: You MUST install 2.0.15, 2.0.9 or earlier versions will not work.
• zlib ≥ 1.1.x
• libpng ≥ 1.2.x

Binaries

None at this time.

Building, Installing, Running

There are several ways of building gEDA/gaf:

1. Download *all* the above files and the required libraries.
2. Build and install the required and optional libraries.
3. Untar all of the geda tar files in the same directory.
4. Set the prefix= variable in the Makefile
5. Run: make and set the specified variables (PATH, LD_LIBRARY_PATH, and PKG_CONFIG_PATH)
6. Run: make install
   This should complete with NO errors.
7. Run: gschem and select Help/Manual... for all available documentation.

   Before you run gschem, gnetlist, or gsymcheck, you will need to set those three environment variables, or add them to a shell startup file (.bashrc, or .bash_profile or .profile)

-OR-

1. Download all the above files and the required libraries.
2. Build and install the required and optional libraries.
3. Untar all of the geda tar files in the same directory.
4. Go into each directory and run:
   ./configure [ with --prefix=$HOME/geda if you wish ]
   make install

   You must build and install the packages in the following order:

   1. libgeda
   2. symbols
   3. gschem
   4. gnetlist
   5. gsymcheck
   6. geda
   7. utils
   8. docs
   9. examples

-OR-

1. Download the toplevel Makefile into a empty directory.
2. Type: make xinstall
   This will build and run the gEDA Suite Setup program, which will download all of the necessary tarballs from the Internet and build gEDA/gaf. You need a fairly fast connection or lots of patience. In 20040111, make xinstall will only install gtk+ 1.2.x and not gtk+ 2.2.x.
3. Follow the GUI. When you get to the tree list of things to install, click in the check box for gManager and Schematic Capture and click "Always Yes". If you are given the choice, always click "Always Yes".

Using make xinstall is the newest way to install gEDA/gaf, so it is currently under development. Please report all problems to the mailing lists. Thanks.