Hello everyone,
After almost a decade of running EAGLE Central I have decided that this
will be the last month of EAGLE Central. It's been a fantastic journey and
I thank all the people who have contributed over the years. I've learned a
lot about EAGLE and hopefully been able to help others with finding the
information they needed.
I'll keep the site running through until the end of October. It will shut
down at that point.
There are many reasons for this, the main being that there just isn't the
traffic here that there used to be. With AutoDesk now pushing their
support through their own forums and not providing a way to easily sync
that with the canonical EAGLE support NTTP servers there just isn't the
need for this any more. And with the new licensing scheme of EAGLE I find
myself using EAGLE less and less.
A brief history for those who weren't around for when this all started:
EAGLE Central was started when, in 2007, I noticed that I could not access
the NNTP servers from within the corporate network of a business where I
was doing contract work. When I looked into it I found that the NNTP port
was being blocked and that this was not uncommon in the corporate world. I
contacted Rudi and Klaus (owners of EAGLE at the time) and they assured me
they had no interest in pursuing a web interface on their own, they had
enough to do otherwise. But they were happy if I could provide something
as long as I didn't break their NNTP server or corrupt its data.
Online support forums had also come a long way and had much more powerful
searching capabilities than the NNTP clients had. And there was just a lot
more effort going into web forums over NNTP clients at the time. So I did
some research and within a month or two I had EAGLE Central running. It
took a few months to tweak and get right, but it has worked pretty well
ever since.
It was gratifying to know that I had the first working web interface to the
EAGLE support forums. And when Newark purchased EAGLE they spent years
trying to get their Element14 website to sync to the NNTP servers and never
got it right. AutoDesk never tried, as far as I can tell, to sync to NNTP
but have been content to let the NNTP sync fade into oblivion by simply not
promoting it. In fact, I can't find a single mention to it on the current
EAGLE website.
And it's a shame because there are so many benefits to the NNTP protocol.
And when you can have a web interface you get the best of both worlds.
But all things must come to an end and it's the end of an era for me. I
wish everyone I've worked with here nothing but the best in the future.
May all your schematics be complete and all your layouts be clean. Perhaps
our paths will cross again in the future.
Sincerely,
James.
--
James Morrison ~~~ Stratford Digital
http://www.stratforddigital.ca
--
EAGLE support forums at http://www.eaglecentral.ca :: Where the EAGLE community meets.
