There are a number of bugs in gerber generation (and a number of fixes for them in 0.9.5 which hasn’t been released yet.) However I have in the past figured out how to do oblong pads. The ones in here should work and be duplicatable and movable in Ink
I expect your problems may be related to translates. The gerber code sometimes has trouble with translates. These ones have all translates removed and they work for me. As I think you know, you need a path for the oblong part and a circle with the correct hole size in the middle of the oblong to get the hole correctly (and to be able to change it easily.) The gerber code will only accept a path which is circular (and then the hole size is difficult to determine) so a circular pad is always the better bet as far as I am concerned. If you have the xml from some of the failed oblong pads, I’ll have a look at them and see if I can point out what went wrong.
an import (from a jpeg or pdf) and a convert object to path in Ink (although I often have trouble with that) or using the path editor (which I’m not very good at) should be able to create logos. As you note I usually have trouble with it and skip the logos …
Interesting, since I used the dimensions in the datasheet for the board (as I don’t have an actual board.) I expect silkscreen in pcb will be the same then.
I expect until we get some of the bugs fixed and make some progress on parts editor or its successor, that some coding and xml awareness is pretty much a necessity to make good parts. Fixing up all the parts in core parts so they are consistent and meet the graphics standards will be another good start but it will take a lot of work (as many of the core parts have various errors!)
Peter