gEDA-user: Introduction and some questions/thoughts on gEDA/gaf...

[Paul Bunyk <pbunyk@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello all!

Have not been on this list for quite some time -- some oldtimers might
remember my guide to compiling Octtools on Linux from very early
nineties, I have been using Cadence DFII for the last 10 years though.

Now joined a small start-up (small enough not to have extra money for
Cadence lincenses ;-) ) and decided to look at gEDA again -- actually
I was quite surprized at the progress and how neat gschem user
interface feels! And having the source makes so many more things
possible! But, of course, some things might be polished a little bit
more, and I am all ready to do my part, I hope that some of the
modifications will be useful enogh to get accepted to the main branch.
Thus, before jumping to coding, I want to hear some opinions on what I
will try to do and to learn what people are working on now. If some of
the things I'd like to see are available (just not from CVS) or almost
 available and I can help an existing effort rather than start on my
own.

And maybe some opinions of this newcomer to the project might be of
interest if we want to attract more people to use gEDA. ;-)

I am using gschem -> gnetlist -g spice-sdb -> wrspice
(http://www.wrcad.com/wrspice.html) route for superconductor analog
circuit simulations. For that I needed to add two symbols, a Josephson
Junction (useful maybe only to us), and K -- coupling factor (I was
surprized that it was not there!) + add some lines to gnet-spice-sdb
to netlist them correctly. I know how I can submit symbols, but should
I contact Stuart directly to submit a patch or just post it to the
developers list?

One of the things that were not immediately comfortable to me was the
fact that it took some trial and error to find an inductor/coil symbol
which worked with spice-sdb netlister. Would it make more sense to
keep a library of analog spice-netlistable parts  as a separate
library (like Cadence analog lib which did not come with, e.g.,
symbols for batteries, but for voltage sources which sure as hell
could be netlisted to spice, spectre and hspice)?

Is there a way to get access to guile interpreter from within the main
gschem window? (I know that I can run gnetlist with -i flag). Besides
the fact that having a scheme interpreter in a separate window is
convenient even to run as a calculator, hopefully more scripts will be
written if interactive session becomes available. Those who've used
DFII/Skill will know what I mean... ;-)

Also, how hard would it be to add buttons to the toolbar from guile,
with attached callbacks to run guile scripts (e.g., some (or (system
"gnetlist") (system "spice")) , you know...).

Hierarchical netlisting support... I understand that gschem is mostly
used for board-level design (where there are only two levels of
hierarchy: package and board); Stuart's example of a "transistor with
parasitics" is on the other end of the spectrum, but still spans only
two levels. For anything more hierarchical that this, two things are
essential, IMHO: easy automatic generation of symbols starting with
pins on the schematic view and allowing gnetlist recursively netlist
subcircuits encountered in the top-level schematic. I'm wondering if
anybody is working on it, I'm eager to help.

Finally, as good as user interface is (love the keyboard shortcuts!),
is there a way to map keyboard arrows to panning actions? ;-)

Sincerely,

Paul Bunyk