Brad Velander wrote:
> 
... snip ...
> 
> Obnoxious is the minority that pretends there are these rules and
> codes of conduct restricting the free flow of information without
> culturally and educationally restrictive artificial boundaries. As
> for Usenet, it is those that keep posting these artficial silly
> rules and conduct and bullying others (sometimes culturally
> unfamiliar or just plain not well educated ro familiar with Usenet)
> that don't understand Usenet. Usenet is for the free and open
> exchange of ideas and discussion, not for a bunch of silly self-
> appointed dweebs to inflict their artificial rules and conduct upon
> other by bullying people into conforming to their artificial
> standards.

Obviously you consider a polite request to observe the behaviour
standards specified for Usenet as 'obnoxious', even when the
request is accompanied with references and justification.  It is
hard to understand such people.

-- 
 [mail]: Chuck F (cbfalconer at maineline dot net) 
 [page]: <http://cbfalconer.home.att.net>;
            Try the download section.

On Oct 4, 12:53=A0am, "Brad Velander" <bvel...@SpamThis.com> wrote:
> Rick,
> =A0 =A0 I hear your points but how many successful companies or products =
are
> created by committees? Let alone committees that meet only several times =
per
> year. There is a reason for saying s like a camel is a horse designed by
> committee. Yes committees can write the standards but what the IPC is try=
ing
> here goes beyond the standard just as GenCAM did.

IPC is not trying to create a "product" or a company.  They are
creating a standard for the exchange of manufacturing information.  It
is that simple.  You have also ignored my statement that the standard
committee is staffed by representatives from the various CAD
companies.  Why would the CAD companies create a standard that they
themselves don't want?  I don't see where the standard effort is
inherently a bad thing just because it is done by a committee.


> =A0 =A0 It really doesn't matter what the customer wants, we (a majority =
of CAD
> designers) have wanted portability for decades now, nobody has written it
> into their code yet. I have seen it presented to the tool vendors so many
> times. And the tool vendors simply ignore it, they write a new import wiz=
ard
> to assist in converting your files to their software but these days I eve=
n
> see less and less export netlist formats from the schematic tools. Reduci=
ng
> or eliminating even working with a best of Schematic tool and a best PCB
> tool. The CAD tool vendors just won't implement it because they see it as=
 a
> quick escape route for customers they otherwise view as having a signific=
ant
> impediment to changing tools when they might desire.

Of course no one has written portability into their tools.  That would
allow customers to change to the tools of their competitors and done
nothing to allow them to change to *their* tools.  But if the playing
field is level by most vendors working with this standard, then there
will be a significant advantage to adding it, customer satisfaction.
If most vendors support it, then the ones who don't will not win as
many new customers.  Yes, that will take a bootstrap of some sort.
But the real advantage for users and fabricators is the utility of the
standard.  If used correctly, it will allow your entire design to be
represented in one file instead of the many files required now.  That
can be enough of an advantage for customers to demand the interface.


> =A0 =A0 Maybe I have just become too much of a pessimist as the years go =
by but
> I prefer to look at it as realism since my experience shows me this is th=
e
> way it is. I am also an IPC member, just so that you know I am not just
> ditzing them for some unfounded reason. They are a good organization but
> sometimes they reach too far and are looking through rose colored glasses=
.
> Maybe the members of this standard committee just refuse to acknowledge t=
he
> vendors hardened stance against portability and keep hoping. I feel they
> would be best served to concentrate their efforts on working with Valor o=
n
> ODB++ to improve it's facilities and commonality across the industry. And
> with the other vendors to have them more fully and correctly implement OD=
B++
> within their tools, then you could work on an ODB++ import tool with thos=
e
> vendors as though it was a path for them to obtain new customers through
> providing that import capability to prospective customers. Same horse jus=
t
> dyed a different color.

I think it is a very long row to hoe because of the resistance of CAD
tool vendors and the reluctance of the contract manufacturing houses
to learn a new standard.  I also think it will be a painful transition
as the standard will be interpreted/implemented differently by the
different vendors.  But given the current state of communication of
manufacturing data (e.g. using a "readme" file) I expect this change
is long overdue.

The transition will not be done by the small vendors like us (or
should I say me?).  It will only take a few of the large customers
saying that want the new standard and it will be accepted by the
vendors.

Rick

PS, I don't agree with the idea that posting style should be
mandated.  But it is certainly not worth arguing about.  Just ignore
things like that.  Like they said in "Chinatown", "Forget about it
Jack, it's just the Internet".

Gosh, this top posting is much easier to read, don't have to keep using the 
blasted scroll bar to see the response.




"Brad Velander" <b...@SpamThis.com> wrote in message 
news:xFCFk.4808$c...@newsfe07.iad...
> Rick,
>    I hear your points but how many successful companies or products are 
> created by committees? Let alone committees that meet only several times 
> per year. There is a reason for saying s like a camel is a horse designed 
> by committee. Yes committees can write the standards but what the IPC is 
> trying here goes beyond the standard just as GenCAM did.
>
>    It really doesn't matter what the customer wants, we (a majority of CAD 
> designers) have wanted portability for decades now, nobody has written it 
> into their code yet. I have seen it presented to the tool vendors so many 
> times. And the tool vendors simply ignore it, they write a new import 
> wizard to assist in converting your files to their software but these days 
> I even see less and less export netlist formats from the schematic tools. 
> Reducing or eliminating even working with a best of Schematic tool and a 
> best PCB tool. The CAD tool vendors just won't implement it because they 
> see it as a quick escape route for customers they otherwise view as having 
> a significant impediment to changing tools when they might desire.
>
>    Maybe I have just become too much of a pessimist as the years go by but 
> I prefer to look at it as realism since my experience shows me this is the 
> way it is. I am also an IPC member, just so that you know I am not just 
> ditzing them for some unfounded reason. They are a good organization but 
> sometimes they reach too far and are looking through rose colored glasses. 
> Maybe the members of this standard committee just refuse to acknowledge 
> the vendors hardened stance against portability and keep hoping. I feel 
> they would be best served to concentrate their efforts on working with 
> Valor on ODB++ to improve it's facilities and commonality across the 
> industry. And with the other vendors to have them more fully and correctly 
> implement ODB++ within their tools, then you could work on an ODB++ import 
> tool with those vendors as though it was a path for them to obtain new 
> customers through providing that import capability to prospective 
> customers. Same horse just dyed a different color.
>
> -- 
> Sincerely,
> Brad Velander.
>
> "rickman" <g...@gmail.com> wrote in message 
> news:b...@z72g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...
> I am aware that an earlier attempt was no successful.  But why does
> that mean this attempt will automatically fail?  Your statement that
> "design by committee just doesn't work" does not seem accurate.
> Aren't most standards done by committees?  It is the rare standard
> that a single person (or a small design group) produces and then
> becomes a standard.  Most are deliberate, thought out, significant
> efforts by representatives from the major stakeholders.  The IPC
> standards are no exception in that area.  The "committee" is made up
> of representatives from many of the largest companies in the field.
>
> If this standard included nothing that the industry wants, then why
> are they developing it?
>
> Yes, one of the reasons that the initial attempt failed is that the
> spec is inclusive enough that a design can be fully represented and
> therefor imported into any layout package as well as other tools.
> That is the power of it to the user and of course that is a concern by
> the tool vendors.  But it is the users who buy the tools the the
> vendors create.  I wonder how long the tool vendors can hold out if
> open source tools pick up the idea and carry it forward.
>
> Rick
>
>
> 

On Oct 6, 4:21=A0pm, "IB" <i...@ib.com> wrote:
> Gosh, this top posting is much easier to read, don't have to keep using t=
he
> blasted scroll bar to see the response.

The response the bottom posting advocates will give you is that a
reply should be properly trimmed to only include the relevant portions
of a quote.  Notice that the quoted text in your reply was not even
relevant to your reply and could have been snipped entirely except for
the fact that you would quoting it as an example of top posting.  But
either way we had to scroll down to read it.

Bottom posting is not bad, but failure to properly trim the quotes is
a real PITA.  There are a couple of mailing lists where the primary
participants do little or no trimming and a very, very long message
results with quotes six deep and single sentence replies.

Rick

rickman wrote:
> 
... snip ...
> 
> Bottom posting is not bad, but failure to properly trim the
> quotes is a real PITA.  There are a couple of mailing lists
> where the primary participants do little or no trimming and
> a very, very long message results with quotes six deep and
> single sentence replies.

A horrible example is (maybe was) the Netscape help groups.

-- 
 [mail]: Chuck F (cbfalconer at maineline dot net) 
 [page]: <http://cbfalconer.home.att.net>;
            Try the download section.

Rick,
    It is to create a common standard and thus a common product standard. 
The standard itself is not bad in my eyes, just that its' likelihood of 
success seems very low to me given past history. With all of it's outputs 
one could write a generic importer for any system generating the common 
output format and then there would be portability.

    One CAD tool vendor doesn't make for "various CAD companies". The 
committee contains only Mentor and RSI, which is now owned by Mentor.

    I don't know the intimate details of the prior GenCAM but it is 
disheartening to any future derivations that I don't believe a single 
company ever adopted the standard. The only reason that ODB++ exists is that 
it was a private venture independent of mutual industry acceptance. And 
don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with this standard, I just don't 
expect to ever see it fly because the CAD industry has shown many times that 
it is not really interested. But it will begrudgingly play along (maybe only 
partially) if the technology is driven from the down stream processes and 
the cries and screams of customers.

    Possibly that is the reason for Valor's success with ODB++ over GenCAM. 
Their whole focus from the start seemed to me to be on the downstream stake 
holders. I don't know the details but thinking about the history I can 
recall that as my limited recollection. I still recall the introduction of 
RS-274X Gerber, many fab shops jumped on it but others were not so forward 
thinking and it took the actual CAD designers pushing them because we were 
tired of dealing with aperture lists and simple aperture errors screwing up 
a board here or there. Same with the CAD tool vendors, some jumped, some 
needing pushing.

-- 
Sincerely,
Brad Velander.

"rickman" <g...@gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:2...@b1g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...

IPC is not trying to create a "product" or a company.  They are
creating a standard for the exchange of manufacturing information.  It
is that simple.  You have also ignored my statement that the standard
committee is staffed by representatives from the various CAD
companies.  Why would the CAD companies create a standard that they
themselves don't want?  I don't see where the standard effort is
inherently a bad thing just because it is done by a committee.

Chuck,
    Where is the relevance of your references? Who created and voted on 
those references? They are a fools attempt to control and restrict something 
that in it's inception was intended to be open and unrestricted by people 
exactly like yourself. It is hard to understand who exactly you think you 
are and your role to police top/bottom posting on Usenet groups.

    Your very words imply that those rules/suggestions are somehow 
sanctioned and official. "...to observe the behaviour standards 
specified..." Specified by whom, who are you or who wrote those references? 
You do not list one Usent reference. Show me one official Usenet document 
reference the use of either top or bottom posting! You're a control freak, 
something isn't right unless it meets your limited restrictive view of what 
is right or correct.

    Heaven forbid you would ever subscribe to some of the groups I monitor, 
horrors..., they post using unicode in foreign languages. And bottom 
posting, sometimes you have to scroll through 3 or 4 pages of replies and 
counter replies just to find an original thought or addition that you 
haven't already read 3 or 4 times.

    Let me ask, do you bottom post your emails? Now I don't know how you 
will answer but I have never seen anybody bottom post an email. Why not if 
you think it is so important to forum posts, what's the difference?

-- 
Sincerely,
Brad Velander.

"CBFalconer" <c...@yahoo.com> wrote in message 
news:4...@yahoo.com...
>
> Obviously you consider a polite request to observe the behaviour
> standards specified for Usenet as 'obnoxious', even when the
> request is accompanied with references and justification.  It is
> hard to understand such people.
>
> -- 
> [mail]: Chuck F (cbfalconer at maineline dot net)
> [page]: <http://cbfalconer.home.att.net>;
>            Try the download section. 

"Brad Velander" wrote:

>    Where is the relevance of your references? Who created and voted on 
>those references?

unimportant. These references IMNSHO don't need to be "external"
justifications. It's up to you to understand the idea and decide
whether to follow.

> They are a fools attempt to control and restrict something 

nack. They thought about politeness and efficiency.

>that in it's inception was intended to be open and unrestricted by people 

it's less a question of "restrict" but more of being polite.

I agree that top posting, maybe even with a full quote is _impolite_
to the recipient of a message (because those postings are inefficient
to read).

Since there are many recipients, the sender should spend some work on
the message.

BTW: This includes also proper formatting. I don't like to be pressed
to trim lines when I reply. I ask a new poster _once_ to set his news
client correctly. Next time I simply don't reply even if I could
commit something useful.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was aware of the necessity being polite, he
wrote: "Entschuldigen sie, dass der Brief so lang geworden ist, ich
hatte keine Zeit für einen kürzeren." - please excuse that the letter
became so long, I hadn't time for a shorter one. Today it seems to be
less important.

And yes, the same applies to e-mails. Certainly I take the time to
create properly written and formatted mails. What else?

Oliver
-- 
Oliver Betz, Munich
despammed.com might be broken, use Reply-To:

On Oct 8, 5:34=A0am, Oliver Betz <ob...@despammed.com> wrote:
> "Brad Velander" wrote:
> > =A0 =A0Where is the relevance of your references? Who created and voted=
 on
> >those references?
>
> unimportant. These references IMNSHO don't need to be "external"
> justifications. It's up to you to understand the idea and decide
> whether to follow.
>
> > They are a fools attempt to control and restrict something
>
> nack. They thought about politeness and efficiency.
>
> >that in it's inception was intended to be open and unrestricted by peopl=
e
>
> it's less a question of "restrict" but more of being polite.
>
> I agree that top posting, maybe even with a full quote is _impolite_
> to the recipient of a message (because those postings are inefficient
> to read).
>
> Since there are many recipients, the sender should spend some work on
> the message.
>
> BTW: This includes also proper formatting. I don't like to be pressed
> to trim lines when I reply. I ask a new poster _once_ to set his news
> client correctly. Next time I simply don't reply even if I could
> commit something useful.

This is exactly why I stopped worrying about whether everyone top
posts and trims or not.  The incessant reminders have the potential of
turning every thread into an argument over religious beliefs on top/
bottom posting.

CBF, I have to ask, is it really helping?

rickman wrote:

[...]

>> BTW: This includes also proper formatting. I don't like to be pressed
>> to trim lines when I reply. I ask a new poster _once_ to set his news
>> client correctly. Next time I simply don't reply even if I could
>> commit something useful.
>
>This is exactly why I stopped worrying about whether everyone top
>posts and trims or not.  The incessant reminders have the potential of
>turning every thread into an argument over religious beliefs on top/
>bottom posting.

sorry, that's likely a misunderstanding, my wording ("trim") was not
clear:

I meant that I don't like to _reformat long lines_ as Rob Gaddi
produced (although I bet Sylpheed is able to produce correct postings)
to enable me putting quote marks in front of.

I did _not_ mean that I'm too lazy to delete irrelevant lines of text.

After all, I wouldn't ask someone to stop top-posting or sending long
lines unless I have to tell also something on-topic. But if I reply
anyway, I dare to point out that I disagree with his posting style.

Oliver
-- 
Oliver Betz, Munich
despammed.com might be broken, use Reply-To: