Im wondering if anyone would like to see a new Schematic software available. It would be schematic design, and could be saved in a few formats. It wouldnt be able to do anything with PCB designs until a while later.
Just curious if anyone was interested.
No.
If you really feel like doing that sort of thing, why not contribute to one of the existing open-source projects (Fritzing, geda, kicad) ?
No.
For one thing, I spend far more time designing a PCB than capturing a schematic. Current schematic capture applications are all fine, most just lack a library. Which offering another alternative in a saturated market won't serve. Second, unless you were going to do something radically different, why bother?
As already mentioned, there are plenty of other projects in need of help. Why not contribute there instead.
maybe
I have to agree with westfw, if you were going to do anything, contribute to an opensource project already in existence.
To that end, I would say Fritzing first, gEDA second.
Primarily, what Fritzing needs more than anything else is a larger parts library. It has a good start, but at the same time, there are a lot of missing components that could be added. There's also a lot of stub functionality that needs to be created (import/export Eagle CAD files, for instance).
gEDA needs a more seamless UI to it - it has all the "parts", but from what I have read about it, there is still a lot of command line level stuff you have to do to say, transfer a netlist from gschem/xcircuit to pcb, for instance. The command line tools already exist, what is needed is a way to glue it all together so that the command line isn't needed as much (or at all). Alternatively, helping to port the components of the system to other platforms (windows, mac) could help the project.
kicad, I don't know what it needs most, but I am certain there is plenty to do there as well.
