On Nov 25, 2009, at 3:39 PM, Dan McMahill wrote: > Net probing won't work because gschem doesn't understand anything > about > connectivity.
Which model of connectivity should it understand? There isn't just one. And if you implement one model in the gschem core, it will interfere with the possibility of implementing others. > That's also why we can't have a click-to plot interface > for simulators. Well that and because we don't have a consistent > way of > dealing with hierarchy from *inside* the tool. Which model of hierarchy should it understand? Does that model fit every design flow? > I'm told having gschem > being graphical only is a good thing. It is. Consider TeX. Should TeX understand document structure? Which model of document structure? It's a *good* thing that TeX only understands typesetting, and is extremely script-friendly. If TeX understood how to structure a document for, say, one of the IEEE journals, it would be a mess getting it to work with AIP or AMS styles. And making it work with a non-european language would be even worse. But take TeX, add in the LaTeX macros, a class file, a style file, maybe some others, and you can format an article for whatever English-language journal you're publishing in. Or a book. Or a memo. Or you can choose a different macro package as a foundation for some other purpose. One consequence of this excellent design is that TeX is extremely stable and bug-free. Now, gEDA's design isn't nearly as clean as TeX plus LaTeX plus all the other stuff. Still, it's *much* better the competition, and can be improved. Unfortunately, there's a lot of pressure to make it dirtier. The criticisms at http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/wp.html apply to the usual sweet, low-productivity EDA packages (but don't take them too literally: EDA is different from document preparation in some ways). What limitations in the Scheme API prevent you from coding a set of procedures that implement the particular model of connectivity you are interested in? One place where gEDA is really special is the gnetlist Scheme API, which enables gschem to feed a wide variety of downstream flows. Rather than changing gEDA into just another sweet, low productivity EDA application, we need to build on that strength. John Doty Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd. http://www.noqsi.com/ [email protected] _______________________________________________ geda-user mailing list [email protected] http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
