brd2svg fails when element name has illegal characters

[udif]

It seems that there is no sanitation done on characters that appear in element names.
I tried converting a board (http://www.seeedstudio.com/wiki/images/0/0b/Lipo_rider_v1.1.zip) that unfortunately has an element (on/off switch) called "ON<-->OFF".

The '<' and '>' are then copied into the XML unescaped (should be converted to "&lt;" and "&gt;" respectively). I haven't checked for other characters that might need escaping but I would guess they are not handled correctly as well.

Note: modified comment to escape the original XML escape sequence for '<'. It seems markdown has munched my original sequence and converted it to a real '<', making my comment not really clear.

[aknoerig]

Thanks, good point!
So this means that you actually got brd2svg to run? Can you share your fixes to the font issue and possible other changes?

[udif]

I took a look to see what font issues you are talking about and I see other people are having troubles getting brd2svg run without errors. Here is my flow:
I use OSX 10.10.4 with qt4.7.8 taken from mac ports.
I compiled brd2svg using Qt Creator and all went fine (just 3 warnings).

Still, saying I "got brd2svg to work" is a bit exaggerated :-)

I filed this bug while trying first to get the script to run without errors.
Later, I manually fixed all instances of '<' and '>' into &lt; and &gt; respectively, and reran.
I managed to get an output , including a '.fzp' file and several SVG files.
I haven't been able to use the fzp file but I managed to open the SVG files in Inkscape. The breadboard one, which is what I really wanted was a total mess. Instead of a nice board picture I got one grey square inside a green square.
The PCB one was a bit better, showing all the component pads, but again , rather useless for my purpose.
The schematic one looked the best , but its not useful for me.

I really needed this to be able to represent the LiPo Rider board in a wiring diagram , so I expected to get an SVG with a green or red board showing all the components in a top view.
Maybe I should try doing this via KiCad which has a free 3D export (I need a top view without perspective effects).

Frankly, I think this tool needs to be rewritten from grounds-up in your favorite scripting language (Python or whatever) and base its input on the native XML from Eagle 6.x+
As much as I like C++, I think using Qt just for some DOM processing (as far as I can tell) is a huge overkill.

Note: Reedited comment with minor fixes

[aknoerig]

Thanks! So basically no changes were required for it to run?

See issue #5 on how to properly "import" the generated files.

The breadboard image should indeed look much better. Since not all Eagle files are created equal, you might have to tweak some parameters in the params.xml. Especially for mapping layers, if I remember correctly.

The tool could definitely use a rewrite of the Eagle part, so that it's no longer necessary to run Eagle itself. (I'll make an issue for that.) On the other hand, given that it's written in Qt makes makes it possible to integrate it into the UI at some point.