> Hello all! Greetings!
[ . . . . . ] > Thus, before jumping to coding, I want to hear some opinions on what I > will try to do and to learn what people are working on now. If some of > the things I'd like to see are available (just not from CVS) or almost > available and I can help an existing effort rather than start on my > own. Excellent! 'Tis always better to augment a working system than starting afresh, IMO. > I am using gschem -> gnetlist -g spice-sdb -> wrspice > (http://www.wrcad.com/wrspice.html) route for superconductor analog > circuit simulations. For that I needed to add two symbols, a Josephson > Junction (useful maybe only to us), and K -- coupling factor (I was > surprized that it was not there!) + add some lines to gnet-spice-sdb > to netlist them correctly. I know how I can submit symbols, but should > I contact Stuart directly to submit a patch or just post it to the > developers list? Go ahead and send me the patches. I appreciate it when folks send patches (instead of feature requests) because it makes my work easy. Please supply diffs against the latest gEDA/gaf release, 20050820. You can also just send me the symbols and I'll stick them into CVS. Please let me know which symbol directory they should go in. > One of the things that were not immediately comfortable to me was the > fact that it took some trial and error to find an inductor/coil symbol > which worked with spice-sdb netlister. Would it make more sense to > keep a library of analog spice-netlistable parts as a separate > library (like Cadence analog lib which did not come with, e.g., > symbols for batteries, but for voltage sources which sure as hell > could be netlisted to spice, spectre and hspice)? There is a "spice" directory, which holds SPICE specific components (VCCS, Voltage, etc.). There is also an "analog" directory, whose components (standard linear passives, IIRC) should all netlist correctly for spice-sdb. Which inductors failed? I agree that the symbol directories are a little disorganized. Perhaps creating a separate "spice-component" directory holding garuanteed resistors, inductors, caps, transistors, diodes, etc. might be a good idea? > Is there a way to get access to guile interpreter from within the main > gschem window? (I know that I can run gnetlist with -i flag). Besides > the fact that having a scheme interpreter in a separate window is > convenient even to run as a calculator, hopefully more scripts will be > written if interactive session becomes available. Those who've used > DFII/Skill will know what I mean... ;-) I dunno the answer to this one. > Also, how hard would it be to add buttons to the toolbar from guile, > with attached callbacks to run guile scripts (e.g., some (or (system > "gnetlist") (system "spice")) , you know...). We'll never know until you submit the patches implementing this! ;-) > Hierarchical netlisting support... I understand that gschem is mostly > used for board-level design (where there are only two levels of > hierarchy: package and board); Stuart's example of a "transistor with > parasitics" is on the other end of the spectrum, but still spans only > two levels. For anything more hierarchical that this, two things are > essential, IMHO: easy automatic generation of symbols starting with > pins on the schematic view and allowing gnetlist recursively netlist > subcircuits encountered in the top-level schematic. I'm wondering if > anybody is working on it, I'm eager to help. If you create a lower level schematic called "foo.sch", and an upper level schematic called "bar.sch", then you should be able to do this: 1. Create a symbol called "foo.sym". 2. Place foo.sym in your top level schematic bar.sch. 3. Attach the attribute "source=./foo.sch" to the symbol foo. Then, when you netlist, gnetlist is supposed to do the right thing. I don't recall testing it, however. Here's Ales' post answering exactly this question: http://www.geda.seul.org/mailinglist/geda-user7/msg00005.html BTW: One known problem with gEDA/gaf is that busses aren't passed through the hierarchy. If you were looking for a project, fixing the way busses work in gschem and gnetlist would be a great service to everybody! > Finally, as good as user interface is (love the keyboard shortcuts!), > is there a way to map keyboard arrows to panning actions? ;-) You can remap your entire keyboard using the gschemrc file system. I believe the required incantation has been documented in teh docs distributed with gEDA, but I could be wrong. In any event, you can study the system-gschemrc and system-commonrc or system-gafrc files to see what is necessary. HTH, Stuart
