gEDA-dev: Fwd: google soc

[John Doty]

On May 27, 2007, at 9:38 PM, al davis wrote:

> 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.

I've spent huge amounts of money for worse. Never seen anything  
adequately flexible for my needs that was better.

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

Then let's plug the holes.

>
>> Simulation isn't the only target for translation.
>
> and Spice isn't the only simulator or simulation format.

No, but it's an *important* one. At this time, it's irreplaceable.

>
>> "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.

But for your ambitions, it needs:

1. An internal data representation for *any* data any EDA tool might  
use.

2. A plug-in interface capable of passing such data.

That's not a focus on simulation: it's a focus on things the  
simulator should not be dealing with.

>
> 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.

gnetlist does an *amazing* job. The fact that I've been able to  
support four different design flows with gEDA is largely due to the  
flexibility of gnetlist.

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