Exploring the possibility of making LaserCad open source

[SWMS]

I'm relatively new to LaserCad but it strikes me that with one lone programmer in China the software doesn't move forward as much as it could. This is no reflection on Marco as his tech support is great.

However, there are ittle bugs with the software that could be ironed out ,features that could be implemented. Clear explanations of what settings mean etc in the manual. Since the DSP is one of the few that can do raster for home brew lasers I think that making the software open source would help the sales of the DSP. I was recently reminded of this by lynksys re-releasing their highly configurable wrt-45g router with new wifi and open source firmware. In addition to this I have noticed that Marco has said he has asked 'Li' to implement features and this has taken a while and Marco can't program in C.

A powerful open source user community would help the DSP sell since the software would be upgraded rapidly. Donations to the cause to pay for people's time could be implemented, if there was a small group of programmers. I can imagine a programmer having a stack of bugs and features with a priority list and unfortunately some things take longer to do.

By the way I can't program in C, so that's me out. I'd gladly donate though.

What are people's thoughts?

Ryan.

[Axeman]

If this was possible...I'd donate to the cause. I definitely would. My growing business relies on this software so if it would be improved somehow, I would help with it.

[Tech_Marco]

The tough part is to find a good C# programmer and one that we can trust. Li, the LaserCad and PHCad programmer is very concerning about the sources code so he will only open a few port to allow me to made modification when I ready to do so. Beside the user interface, there is "embedded" programming for the DSP chipset and he will not open it for anyone as it is the main core.

I'll discuss it with a friend of mine who is working as programmer in IBM see if he can help.


Marco

[SWMS]

I suppose I can see Li's point of view. The Chinese are known for their love of copying things and have no qualms about breaking copyright, It's a shame.

[vastonsmith]

That is a good chart but unfortunately it is of little use to AWC608 users.

For some crazy unknown reason, LaserCad will not accept more than two decimal places in the scan gap setting.

No matter what you enter, it rounds that number to two decimal places.

I have asked if this can be fixed a number of times over the last couple of years, but without any success.

Tim has a write up about this issue on his blog. He also has a chart there, which is more use to AWC608 users.




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ahsan

[yaddatrance]

I would be satisfied by detailing the 'job' (.ud5) file format?

The most frustrating thing is when LaserCad decides to 'optimize' small ovals by deleting them on import of dxf.