Re: gEDA-user: 2 make errors installing gwave

[Dan McMahill <dan@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Werner Hoch wrote:


>> It seems strange to me that when there is an obvious, easy to
>> read for humans, easy for a computer to read, easy to generate
>> format, that everything except Spice uses ..  that Spice
>> doesn't change to that format.
> 
>> Every Spice variant has its own raw format.  They should all be
>> thrown away.
> 
> Yes, but I'd still would like to have a "standard" binary format. 
> hdf5 would be nice.
> http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/products/hdf5/index.html

How well to ascii output files scale when you want to write out 30,000 
node voltages and be able to pick out one to plot without it taking a 
long time?  I don't know the answer, but it seems like a binary format 
could have advantages there.

Like Werner, I've also wondered about hdf5 since there is a library 
available for it and octave and I believe scilab both support it.  My 
weak understanding of hdf5 is that it would meet some of the 
requirements for a simulator output file (you can write many variables a 
sample at a time instead of .mat file where you write all the samples of 
1 variable followed by all the samples of another).  It also appears 
that it would not nearly be enough to just say "hdf5" but you'd have to 
  further specify the file format.

In terms of commercial simulators, it is annoying as all get out that 
they insist on wanting to use their own proprietary binary formats for 
results because sometimes you really want to get the data into a 
different tool.  grrrrrr.  This is clearly an area where geda can hands 
down win just by documenting the file format used.

-Dan



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