• Re: Librecad on RasPiOS

    From The Natural Philosopher@3:633/10 to All on Wednesday, June 24, 2026 13:44:04
    On 24/06/2026 13:26, Theo wrote:
    Another one that's surprising from other packages is that dimensions include line thicknesses. eg if you draw a 10mm wide box with thin lines, it's exactly 10mm. If you change the line thickness to 1mm, the width of the object is now 11mm. That's not wrong per se but means you have to include the line thickness in your calculations, while on some packages the dimensions of the object are measured from the centre of the lines not the outside edges - that means you can place everything on a 1cm grid irrespective of how wide the lines are.

    Yes. I run into this when using corel draw to lay out PCBs. There is a
    tool online to convert corel draw to whatever is used by PCB people -
    Gerber?

    ( I use corel because the more modern packages require that you define
    every single component before you start which takes days).

    The converter ignores fonts and line thicknesses - it only understands
    filled outlines - so I have to convert everything to 'curves' ..

    But that's the joy of CADS isn't it? So many standards to choose from.

    --
    The higher up the mountainside
    The greener grows the grass.
    The higher up the monkey climbs
    The more he shows his arse.

    Traditional


    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Theo@3:633/10 to All on Wednesday, June 24, 2026 13:26:59
    Lawrence D?Oliveiro <[email protected]d> wrote:
    On Tue, 23 Jun 2026 08:19:56 -0000 (UTC), RJH wrote:

    On 23 Jun 2026 at 08:21:57 BST, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:

    On Tue, 23 Jun 2026 04:22:12 -0000 (UTC), RJH wrote:

    I find Inkscape more of an illustration and drawing app.

    Also has good design tools. And a Python API.

    TBH I haven't used it in a while - I'll take another look, thanks.

    Remember also that its native file format is SVG. There are lots of
    other tools that can process/generate/consume that.

    Although sometimes the webby nature of SVG shows through, eg the default dimension is pixels rather mm or inches. That's easy to change though.
    Also some packages mess up the scaling when importing SVGs - I think
    Inkscape stores everything in the file in pixels and then they get imported with a different pixels per inch (PPI) setting.

    Another one that's surprising from other packages is that dimensions include line thicknesses. eg if you draw a 10mm wide box with thin lines, it's
    exactly 10mm. If you change the line thickness to 1mm, the width of the
    object is now 11mm. That's not wrong per se but means you have to include
    the line thickness in your calculations, while on some packages the
    dimensions of the object are measured from the centre of the lines not the outside edges - that means you can place everything on a 1cm grid
    irrespective of how wide the lines are.

    Theo

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:633/10 to All on Wednesday, June 24, 2026 16:43:26
    On 24/06/2026 14:52, [email protected] wrote:
    If by tooltips you mean the little pop-up windows that appear
    when the mouse is dragged over an icon, they're on, and do help.

    If you meant something more, please elaborate.

    That is what I at least understand...
    Part of my confusion may be order of operation issues. I just realized
    that Librecad seems to reverse the order of selection and action that
    I'm accustomed to.

    Tell me about it. People who design CAD don't seem to understand the conceptual process of 'design something that fits here' only 'here are
    your dimensions, now draw the part

    Thanks for writing!

    --
    "When one man dies it's a tragedy. When thousands die it's statistics."

    Josef Stalin



    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Lawrence D?Oliveiro@3:633/10 to All on Thursday, June 25, 2026 10:00:01
    On 24 Jun 2026 13:26:59 +0100 (BST), Theo wrote:

    Although sometimes the webby nature of SVG shows through, eg the
    default dimension is pixels rather mm or inches.

    The name ?pixels? doesn?t actually mean ?pixels?. It seems to mean
    1/96 inch. I don?t know if that?s ?webby?, or just a common
    characteristic based on common PC monitors from the 1990s.

    I just started my copy of Inkscape, drew a box, and the default units
    showing is mm.

    Also some packages mess up the scaling when importing SVGs - I think
    Inkscape stores everything in the file in pixels and then they get imported with a different pixels per inch (PPI) setting.

    I don?t know why they should. If there?s any doubt, there should be an
    option to tell them what the scale factor should be.

    Another one that's surprising from other packages is that dimensions
    include line thicknesses. eg if you draw a 10mm wide box with thin
    lines, it's exactly 10mm. If you change the line thickness to 1mm,
    the width of the object is now 11mm.

    I just tried, and no they don?t. I drew a box 10mm on a side, changed
    the line thickness, and it was still shows 10mm on a side.

    The dimensions are measured from the middle of the line, not an edge.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From bp@3:633/10 to All on Thursday, June 25, 2026 10:00:01
    [email protected] wrote:
    The Nomad <[email protected]d> wrote:
    On Mon, 22 Jun 2026 23:55:41 -0000 (UTC), [email protected] wrote:

    ??Jacek Marcin Jaworski?? <[email protected]> wrote:
    W dniu 22.06.2026 o�18:36, [email protected] pisze:
    but I'm starting to wonder
    if something more (maybe an outdated APT repository) is part of my
    difficulties.

    How about updating to a recent AppImage?

    <https://github.com/LibreCAD/LibreCAD/releases>

    There is a LibreCAD-v2.2.1.5-aarch64.AppImage available. The online
    manual is probably more closely aligned with this version as well.

    It's downloading now, how do I unpack it?
    I'm totally clueless.

    Thanks for writing!

    bob prohaska

    Just make the file executable (chmod +x "File_Name")

    Then either click it (once or twice depending on how your desktop is
    setup) or just run that filename from the CLI

    bp@home$~/home/bp foobar.appimage

    HTH

    It does indeed help. Thank you very much!

    bob prohaska

    Alas, some but not enough. Librecad crashes on startup, ending with
    [Qt FATAL] Cannot mix incompatible Qt library (5.15.8) with this library (5.15.3)
    Cannot mix incompatible Qt library (5.15.8) with this library (5.15.3)

    Is it possible to update Qt? The OS was last updated yesterday,
    so it's up to date by Raspbian standards....

    Thanks for reading!

    bob prohaska






    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Scott Alfter@3:633/10 to All on Thursday, June 25, 2026 16:01:58
    In article <111gjek$30bc0$[email protected]>,
    The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> wrote:
    ( I use corel because the more modern packages require that you define
    every single component before you start which takes days).

    KiCad has fairly comprehensive symbol and footprint libraries. If you're redoing every component every time, you're doing it wrong.

    --
    _/_
    / v \ Scott Alfter (remove the obvious to send mail)
    (IIGS( https://alfter.us/ Top-posting!
    \_^_/ >What's the most annoying thing on Usenet?

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:633/10 to All on Thursday, June 25, 2026 17:05:28
    On 25/06/2026 17:01, Scott Alfter wrote:
    In article <111gjek$30bc0$[email protected]>,
    The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> wrote:
    ( I use corel because the more modern packages require that you define
    every single component before you start which takes days).

    KiCad has fairly comprehensive symbol and footprint libraries.
    That never ever contain the components I am using.

    It draws its own ugly cattywumpus version of the circuit diagram.

    It does not understand RF or audio ground planes etc.

    It creates a PCB that is to its own rules, Not the way I want it.
    For retards its probably fine.,


    If you're
    redoing every component every time, you're doing it wrong.

    No, KiCad is

    --
    Labour - a bunch of rich people convincing poor people to vote for rich
    people by telling poor people that "other" rich people are the reason
    they are poor.

    Peter Thompson


    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Theo@3:633/10 to All on Thursday, June 25, 2026 14:24:28
    Lawrence D?Oliveiro <[email protected]d> wrote:
    On 24 Jun 2026 13:26:59 +0100 (BST), Theo wrote:

    Although sometimes the webby nature of SVG shows through, eg the
    default dimension is pixels rather mm or inches.

    The name ?pixels? doesn?t actually mean ?pixels?. It seems to mean
    1/96 inch. I don?t know if that?s ?webby?, or just a common
    characteristic based on common PC monitors from the 1990s.

    I just started my copy of Inkscape, drew a box, and the default units
    showing is mm.

    I'm not sure if that has changed recently, or if I changed the default
    because setting mm was the first thing I set on a new install.

    Also some packages mess up the scaling when importing SVGs - I think Inkscape stores everything in the file in pixels and then they get imported with a different pixels per inch (PPI) setting.

    I don?t know why they should. If there?s any doubt, there should be an
    option to tell them what the scale factor should be.

    Many SVG inconsistencies on this thread:

    https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/176792-impossible-to-use-svg-export-for-accurate-mm-precision/

    My flow did include Adobe Illustrator which supposedly uses 72dpi not 96dpi, which I didn't know at the time. I just switched to exporting Postscript
    which avoided that problem.

    Another one that's surprising from other packages is that dimensions include line thicknesses. eg if you draw a 10mm wide box with thin
    lines, it's exactly 10mm. If you change the line thickness to 1mm,
    the width of the object is now 11mm.

    I just tried, and no they don?t. I drew a box 10mm on a side, changed
    the line thickness, and it was still shows 10mm on a side.

    The dimensions are measured from the middle of the line, not an edge.

    That's odd, because it still does it for me.
    On Inkscape 1.4.3 (0d15f75042, 2025-12-25):

    Draw rectangle, Fill and Stroke -> Stroke style -> Line width = 0.001mm
    Set W = 10mm, now it's 10mm wide.

    Select rectangle, Fill and Stroke -> Stroke style -> Line width = 1mm
    W is now 11mm.

    It also happens in the following sequence:

    Draw rectangle, Line width = 0.001m
    Set W = 10mm
    Without leaving rectangle mode, Line width = 1mm
    Select rectangle, W is now 11mm.

    When in rectangle mode, if you change the line width it doesn't update the W but it does when you exit and select the object.

    Theo

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Lawrence D?Oliveiro@3:633/10 to All on Friday, June 26, 2026 11:00:01
    On 25 Jun 2026 14:24:28 +0100 (BST), Theo wrote:

    Many SVG inconsistencies on this thread:

    https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/176792-impossible-to-use-svg-export-for-accurate-mm-precision/

    Bugs in that particular proprietary app ... so it?s not worth using *yawn*

    My flow did include Adobe Illustrator which supposedly uses 72dpi
    not 96dpi, which I didn't know at the time. I just switched to
    exporting Postscript which avoided that problem.

    I?m sure Adobe would not be so enthusiastic about SVG, which is why
    its support is only lukewarm. They would rather their own .AI format
    was universal, but the open standard got adopted instead.

    I don?t know why they bother with PostScript, though, given that
    nobody uses it any more. Shouldn?t they be doing PDF instead?

    Lawrence D?Oliveiro <[email protected]d> wrote:

    I just tried, and no they don?t. I drew a box 10mm on a side, changed
    the line thickness, and it was still shows 10mm on a side.

    The dimensions are measured from the middle of the line, not an edge.

    That's odd, because it still does it for me.
    On Inkscape 1.4.3 (0d15f75042, 2025-12-25):

    Draw rectangle, Fill and Stroke -> Stroke style -> Line width = 0.001mm
    Set W = 10mm, now it's 10mm wide.

    Select rectangle, Fill and Stroke -> Stroke style -> Line width = 1mm
    W is now 11mm.

    I used the same version. Lined up the sides of the 10mm square on the
    ?50? and ?60? points on the top ruler. The control points stay in
    exactly the same position as the line thickness changes.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:633/10 to All on Friday, June 26, 2026 10:05:14
    On 26/06/2026 03:01, rbowman wrote:
    On Thu, 25 Jun 2026 23:32:37 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:

    On Thu, 25 Jun 2026 16:01:58 GMT, Scott Alfter wrote:

    KiCad has fairly comprehensive symbol and footprint libraries.

    They are the ones still insisting they want application-level control
    over window layout, aren?t they. Which is why they hate Wayland, and are
    resisting the move to it kicking and screaming.

    https://x.com/LundukeJournal/status/2070211673177399545

    More about xfwl4:

    https://alexxcons.github.io/blogpost_15.html

    I worked with X11/Motif for years. Were I still doing so I would hate
    Wayland too. Sooner or later you would have to reach far down into the
    stack to do the sort of thing the Wayland developers consider bad, bad,
    bad.

    I wish Tarricone all the best for his Rust project.

    I think there is a lot of 'I want do it this way and Wayland cant'
    Without the concomitant 'why on earth are you doing it that way?' and
    'because that's the only way you can in X windows'.

    I have an oil fired range stove and oven.
    If I want to reduce the heat on a saucepan I prop it up on three pennies arranged in a triangle.

    Imagine doing that on an induction hob...

    --
    "The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow witted
    man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest
    thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him."

    - Leo Tolstoy



    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Scott Alfter@3:633/10 to All on Friday, June 26, 2026 20:22:32
    In article <111kdqk$4v7h$[email protected]>,
    Lawrence D'Oliveiro <[email protected]d> wrote:
    On Thu, 25 Jun 2026 16:01:58 GMT, Scott Alfter wrote:

    KiCad has fairly comprehensive symbol and footprint libraries.

    They are the ones still insisting they want application-level control
    over window layout, aren't they. Which is why they hate Wayland, and
    are resisting the move to it kicking and screaming.

    Figures our resident troll would be a Wayland fanboi. :-P That's far from
    the only problem with Wayland. Check out this compilation:

    https://gist.github.com/probonopd/9feb7c20257af5dd915e3a9f2d1f2277

    As for your point, what do you have against applications controlling things like window layout? It's been a standard feature of desktop interfaces of
    all sorts pretty much since the beginning. You'll find it in Windows, Mac
    OS, X11 and most of the window managers that run on it, etc. It's Wayland
    that is breaking a basic feature that's been around for decades.

    --
    _/_
    / v \ Scott Alfter (remove the obvious to send mail)
    (IIGS( https://alfter.us/ Top-posting!
    \_^_/ >What's the most annoying thing on Usenet?

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:633/10 to All on Friday, June 26, 2026 21:51:29
    On 26/06/2026 18:51, rbowman wrote:
    I can see why KiCad,
    Xfce, or other projects with a long history on X11 get upset by seemingly arbitrary Wayland decisions.

    Well yes, but in the end they can get users to install X

    The fortunate are those that used Gtk, Qt, or other tool kits that sat on
    X11 but provided a level of abstraction. The headaches get passed to the
    Qt and Gtk developers.

    Except the toolkit maintainers wont cover the very edge cases.

    --
    If I had all the money I've spent on drink...
    ..I'd spend it on drink.

    Sir Henry (at Rawlinson's End)


    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From bp@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, June 27, 2026 07:30:01
    The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> wrote:
    On 24/06/2026 14:52, [email protected] wrote:
    If by tooltips you mean the little pop-up windows that appear
    when the mouse is dragged over an icon, they're on, and do help.

    If you meant something more, please elaborate.

    That is what I at least understand...
    Part of my confusion may be order of operation issues. I just realized
    that Librecad seems to reverse the order of selection and action that
    I'm accustomed to.

    Tell me about it. People who design CAD don't seem to understand the conceptual process of 'design something that fits here' only 'here are
    your dimensions, now draw the part


    It turns out that FreeBSD's Ports collection includes librecad. It
    compiled from source using poudriere and seems to run correctly,
    if slowly, over the network using RasPiOS as an X terminal.

    I have essentially the same troubles on FreeBSD's version as I do
    on RasPiOS's version, so the trouble isn't the software, it's me.

    I'll continue fumbling about with the RasPiOS version in hope
    of a revelation 8-)

    Thanks to all for reading and replying!

    bob prohaska


    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)