[PATCH] Missing manual page flatcam-beta.1

[Agathe]

There is no manual page in the project that describes what is flatcam and which options can be passed. Please find attached a manpage proposal that can be completed (I cannot create a pull request because of “forbidden rights” on Bitbucket).

Best regards,

Romain.

[Marius Stanciu]

Hi,

Afaik everyone can create a PR to a public Bitbucket repository. In any case what exactly are you proposing? What kind of file is this flatcam-beta.1 file?

[Agathe]

Hi Marius,

flatcam-beta.1 file is a manual page that can be consulted on GNU/Linux systems to learn about what the program is and how it can be called (which arguments, what they do, etc.). See below a screenshot of how this man page can be used:

The idea would be to describe the options in this manual page and to provide it inside of the repository for distribution packagers to install in on the system. I am currently packaging Flatcam for Debian.

Unfortunately I am not able to propose a PR to this public repository while being logged in. See below screenshot.

Best regards,

[Marius Stanciu]

Hi Romain,

I know what a man page is in Linux but no more than using it when needed . Therefore my ignorance regarding the file with .1 extension. Thank you for the explanation.

I’ve read your intention (and the replies) on the link provided and the guy replying kind of got it right at all points. I will attempt to spread some light on this.

FlatCAM beta has a kind of weird status. It is based on my vision on how FlatCAM should be and that vision somehow differ from the one of the FlatCAM author, JP Caram.
I started working on my own branch of FlatCAM because I was missing some features and development was moving really really slow and eventually stopped.

Once I started to have some measure of success in getting what I wanted I started to post some releases as ‘nightly’s' on the FlatCAM discussion group thinking that other peoples will appreciate those mods.
Then at some point I wanted to end the confusion and tried to create a kind of different breed of FlatCAM naming it as FlatCAM 3000 … But FlatCAM author asked me kindly to rename it as FlatCAM Beta which I agreed, receiving write access to the repo and the ability to create branches.
At a later time, after some discussions with JP Caram (original author of FlatCAM), I came to the conclusion that what is now FlatCAM beta will never become the main branch, replacing the current version 8.5. And that is because the application is now something different, based on FlatCAM but no longer FlatCAM.

My view is that what is now FlatCAM beta should become a Manufacturing files (Gerber/ Gerber x2/ Excellon/NC Drills) viewer/editor over which to build a system of plugins (what is called now Tools): Isolation Plugin, Milling Plugin, Drilling Plugin, Panelize Plagin and so on. This way, a developer who may want to create something new will focus on working on a single file (he/she can duplicate a kind of similar plugin and then start modifying it).
I believe also in giving credits to all the people/parties involved since now, what is FlatCAM beta, is no longer the work of one author but the result of the work of many, I see it now as community effort where Marius Stanciu is only the current maintainer (since 4 years ago) and JP Caram the developer who started everything. We give credits where they belong but in the end the result is what matter!
Also I believe in intelligent people and adding as many settings as required to make the program flexible and usable by anyone. Original FlatCAM was designed to be used as easily as possible, that is not my goal although wherever I can I do try to make it easy.

In the end my personal focus is: make FlatCAM beta as flexible as possible, with many settings to allow that, make it a platform where a developer can easily create new features, make it a Viewer/Editor as a base, GUI based program (the Tcl Shell will be kept but is not a focus for me), and to make it work the best in Windows (OS that I use and work in) while having it work in Linux is a bonus.

I intend that in the next version to create a difference naming it FlatCAM Evo beta 8.995. If that will create a conflict then we will see. Eventually we will have a FlatCAM Evo 1.0 which will be a different breed of FlatCAM.

That’s about it, I hope it clear things a bit. 8.995 will have also big changes internally just like 8.994 had. Sorry for the long post but that may help you on how to plan things.

Best regards,
Marius

[Agathe]

Hello Marius,

Thanks for your detailed reply. From this answer I can extract two different software projects hosted in this repository:

• Flatcam, which is the original, now unmaitained project, developed by JP Caram in the “main” branch
• Flatcam Evo, whith is the project you are maintaining with other people in the “Beta” branch

We currently have some naming problems to resolve before making Flatcam Evo available for Debian users:

• The package name I have choosen is “flatcam”, but I only intent to package your project “flatcam-evo”. Can we agree that this will be the name of the software? Maybe rename some files like “flatcam-beta.desktop” to “flatcam-evo.desktop”, etc..
• The “beta” name in the software is not very welcome because it makes people think Flatcam Evo is not finalized software, while me and other people have been using Flatcam Evo without any issues for quite some time now.

What I propose is that I rename the Debian package to “flatcam-evo” to not be confused with “flatcam” that I do not want to package. After this renaming, I will move some of the files from “flatcam-beta” to “flatcam-evo” to better reflect that this is a different project, but also that the project is working well by removing the “beta” in the file names.

Please let me know if this makes sense for you and how we can cooperate! Ideally the renaming of the files in the Debian package should be upstreamed in this repository so that there is as little patches as possible between the Debian package and this repository. Same story for the man page that I will rename to “flatcam-evo.1”. This would be easier for me to propose back the changes if I can create PRs, but I still cannot with my account (greyed out button, see second screenshot in original post).

Thanks again for the great work and for your cooperation.

Best regards,
Romain.

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[Marius Stanciu]

Hi Romain,
I’m a bit busy those days, travelling abroad so I may not answer quickly.
For the access problem you need to contact JP Caram, the repo owner: jpcaram ( at ) gmail.com. I think Bitbucket made some changes and added some new settings. I have only write access for this repo.

As for any other other change, we will have to wait until I make the release for 8.995 which will have also the name changes. Let’s see how things settle and then we can think to the best approach.

Best regards,
Marius

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