gEDA-dev: Re: GEDA development ....

[John Doty]

On May 8, 2007, at 9:31 AM, al davis wrote:

>
> The bit about compatibility of file formats is one reason why I
> brought up VHDL, the structural subset, a while back.  Verilog
> would work too, but require a hack to work around the missing
> entity/architecture feature.

That's what's making me nervous. We have been extremely well served  
in gEDA by custom open file formats designed for specific parts of  
the flow. For capturing the abstraction beneath the drawing, gnetlist  
is a work of genius. Even this old grey haired physicist's rusty,  
barnacle encrusted Lisp suffices to coax out netlists in any format  
I've been able to get documentation (or even just an example) for.

I have that book you have on order. Maybe next code sprint I'll try  
to cons up a Verlog-AMS gnetlist back end.

I was burned by EDIF back in the 90's. Huge waste of time and money.  
The *format* was portable, but to use it in practice the tools had to  
be using identical underlying data models. It worked much better just  
to translate one tool's netlist into the other's format with an AWK  
script. So pardon my skepticism.

>   Unfortunately, most people here
> don't understand the problem, don't follow leading developments
> in EDA, and don't see where they are looking to us to lead.

If where you're leading is a better simulator, I'm interested. If  
where you're leading is breaking gEDA's flexible modularity to better  
support your vision of a better simulator, I'm opposed. Remember,  
your problems are different from my problems.

>
> If the use of "OpenAccess" is through a stand alone translator,
> licensing becomes a non-issue.  Just release the translator
> under a license they approve and don't worry about anything
> else.
>
> There are technical issues too, but if somebody wants to write
> the translator I won't complain.

Translators are good.

John Doty              Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd.
http://www.noqsi.com/
jpd at noqsi.com