gEDA-dev: New diagram (attempt at UML)

[Peter Clifton]

On Sat, 2007-04-07 at 22:03 -0400, Dan McMahill wrote:
> Ales Hvezda wrote:
> > [snip]
> > 
> >>Alternatively, we could extend the file-format slightly to allow
> >>multiple pages per file (and make this the "official" way of defining a
> >>"circuit").
> > 
> > 
> > gEDA/gaf was intentionally designed to have a one-to-one relationship
> > between schematic pages and files.  This allowed all sorts of easy and
> > interesting post processing (read: shell script, perl, etc...) to occur
> > on a individual schematic page.  Changing or even augmenting this core
> > assumption should be done with care.
> > 
> > -Ales
> >
> 
> I'm way behind on this thread, but for the record, I'm fairly strongly 
> opposed to having multiple pages per file if these multiple pages are 
> different hierarchy levels.  If is is a flat multiple pages per a file, 
> than I'm not so sure.
> 
> -Dan

I'm just catching up from being out of email contact..

The only case where I'd be interested in putting multiple pages in the
same schematic file, is if they are multiple pages of the _same_
circuit. This means same hierarchy level, and that they come together to
define one "circuit", with one netlist, and one list of "Mports" (if you
will) connecting it to other circuits.

Whilst multiple "source" attributes can do this for you when opening
from a higher level of hierarchy, means that if you file->open one of
the pages, you don't get a full representation of that circuit - any
netlist for connectivity would not be complete at that level.

It thus makes (some) sense to have a "circuit" file, which lists the
page files making up one circuit. This also makes a good place to put
toplevel attributes for this circuit.


Peter C