README file for FidoReadPHP
Copyright 2010-2012
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1 - Introduction
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FidoCadJ is a very easy to use editor, with a vast library of electrical
symbols and footprints (through hole and SMD). FidoCadJ is inspired from
FidoCad (without "J"), which was a vector graphic editor useful for
electrical schematics and printed circuit boards. FidoCadJ uses a file format
containing only UTF-8 text, very compact and suited for copy and pasting
from/into newsgroups and forum messages.
This determined its success among the italian Usenet community, from late
'90s, as it is quite versatile for simple mechanical drawings as well.
First, a few useful sites about FidoCadJ:
http://tinyurl.com/yavewp2
http://sourceforge.net/projects/fidocadj/
FidoReadPHP is meant to be a FidoCad/FidoCadJ file reader written in PHP easy
to be integrated in forum engines in order to process on the fly FidoCadJ
drawings. User can thus see the images generated by the server, but they
can download the code describing it, modify it again with FidoCadJ and
post it again.
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2 - Files contained in this source distribution
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In the following table you can find a description of the trunk directory of
the FidoReadPHP project.
File Comments
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
README This file
NEWS New stuff in the last versions
icons/ Contains all icons (made with Gimp)
src/ Contains all the PHP source files
src/lib/ The FidoCadJ standard libraries
src/fonts/liberation The open source Liberation fonts collection
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3 - How to install and use FidoReadPHP
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3.1 Install FidoReadPHP
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At first, we remind you that FidoReadPHP is a collection of PHP classes which
should be used in a web page. They can parse a FidoCadJ drawing to obtain
a standard PNG image which can be shown.
To install FidoReadPHP in your system, you will need to place the
FidoParser.php file somewhere where the PHP can reach it. You may find it in
the src/ directory of this repository. All is somewhat self-contained, so all
is done with a simple drag and drop. You will anyway need the FidoCadJ
standard libraries, which are contained in those files:
FCDstdlib_en.fcl as ""
PCB_en.fcl as "pcb"
IHRAM_en.fcl as "ihram"
elettrotecnica_en.fcl as "elettrotecnica"
You will also probably need some Free Type 2 fonts somewhere, if you want to
take advantage of some advanced text rendering. Take note of where your system
store those fonts and read the paragraph 3.2.
3.2 Using FidoReadPHP
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The main interface of FidoReadPHP is the FidoParser class. Basically, what you
need to do is to store the FidoCadJ drawing you want to plot in a string and
then instanciate a FidoParser class, by passing to its constructor this
string. Here is an example:
require_once('FidoParser.php');
$fidoParser = new FidoParser('
[FIDOCAD]
FJC B 0.5
LI 25 15 235 15 0
MC 25 25 0 0 115
TY 15 25 4 3 0 0 0 * R1
TY 15 30 4 3 0 0 0 * 1k
MC 40 25 0 0 115
TY 31 25 4 3 0 0 0 * R2
TY 28 30 4 3 0 0 0 * 10k');
Now your class is instantiated, but to obtain the image you must first perform
a certain number of operations. At first, we do have to load all the standard
libraries, since FidoReadPHP does not do that by default:
$standardLibraryString = file_get_contents('./lib/FCDstdlib_en.fcl',
true);
$fidoParser->readLibrary($standardLibraryString, "");
$pcbLibraryString = file_get_contents('./lib/PCB_en.fcl', true);
$fidoParser->readLibrary($pcbLibraryString, "pcb");
$ihramLibraryString = file_get_contents('./lib/IHRAM_en.fcl', true);
$fidoParser->readLibrary($ihramLibraryString, "ihram");
$ihramLibraryString = file_get_contents('./lib/elettrotecnica_en.fcl',
true);
$fidoParser->readLibrary($ihramLibraryString, "elettrotecnica");
We then specify where FidoReadPHP should find the fonts to be used for the
drawing. Note that this operation is somewhat not mandatory, since the GD
library exploited by FidoReadPHP contains some (ugly) bitmap fonts. The text
rendering will be incomparably better, however, if a decent collection of
fonts is available on your system:
// We specify the path to the Free Type 2 fonts directory
$fidoParser->setFontPath("/Library/Fonts/");
Remember to express the path to the directory in which you have your fonts
stored and leave the path separator at the end, i.e. the '/' for Unices. This
is mandatory, since this string is then concatenated with the font name to
retrieve the file containing it.
You will probably need at least the following fonts:
Courier
Times
Helvetica
Symbols
Typically, what you might want to do is to specify some installed fonts for
providing some sort of a standard set. The following code works with the
Liberation font collection distributed with FidoReadPHP:
$fidoParser->registerFont("Arial",
"fonts/liberation/LiberationSans-Regular.ttf");
$fidoParser->registerFont("Helvetica",
"fonts/liberation/LiberationSans-Regular.ttf");
$fidoParser->registerFont("Times",
"fonts/liberation/LiberationSerif-Regular.ttf");
$fidoParser->registerFont("Times New Roman",
"fonts/liberation/LiberationSerif-Regular.ttf");
$fidoParser->registerFont("Times Roman",
"fonts/liberation/LiberationSerif-Regular.ttf");
$fidoParser->registerFont("Courier",
"fonts/liberation/LiberationMono-Regular.ttf");
$fidoParser->registerFont("Courier New",
"fonts/liberation/LiberationMono-Regular.ttf");
We now set up the zoom magnification factor (i.e. the number of pixels to be
used for each logical unit) and we ask to FidoReadPHP to create the image for
us.
// We set up 2 pixels for each logical units and we ask FidoReadPHP to
// calculate the size of the image.
$fidoParser->setupSize(2, -1, -1);
// We create the image
$fidoParser->parse();
// We get the image
$my_img = $fidoParser->getImage();
The member function setupSize requires the magnification factor as the first
argument. The two following arguments are the wanted height or width of the
image in pixels. If one of those two values is negative, FidoReadPHP will try
to calculate automatically the size of the image to fit the given drawing.
That is all. You may have a look at the index.php example file which is
present in the src/ directory. It contains a rather minimal yet complete
example.
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4 - Help wanted!
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We are seeking for people interested to participate to the FidoReadPHP and
FidoCadJ projects.
If you want to do something, it is probably better to open a discussion in
the SourceForge forums, in order that the work can eventually be shared and
organized between all developers.
Do not be afraid: all suggestion is very welcomed. Feel free to help us by
reporting a bug or by suggesting a new feature. You may use the tools
SourceForge offers to you:
https://sourceforge.net/p/fidoreadphp/tickets/new/
