gEDA-dev: Fwd: google soc

[al davis]

On Sunday 27 May 2007, John Doty wrote:
> On May 27, 2007, at 2:39 PM, al davis wrote:
> > The biggest need related to that is in how the tools work
> > together.
>
> The biggest advantage of gEDA is that it plays nice with
> other tools.

Both statements are true, sort of.  It is amazing how poorly 
most tools work together.

There are lots of holes.  There are lots of little details that 
you learn to cope with, but make it very difficult for 
beginners.

> Simulation isn't the only target for translation.

and Spice isn't the only simulator or simulation format.

> "A program should do one thing well." We have a program that
> translates schematics already: gnetlist. Translation doesn't
> belong in the simulator: its focus should be simulation.

The plugins are like separate programs.  The simulator will call 
it to read any format.  The simulator core will have no file 
reading capability.

gnetlist only translates from gschem, only one way, and lossy.  
There are lots of other formats.  There is lots of information 
in the schematic that is not properly translated.