Re: gEDA-user: putting spice commands and options in gschem

[sdb@xxxxxxxxxx (Stuart Brorson)]

> On Wed, Sep 21, 2005 at 07:19:59AM +0200, Berni Joss wrote:
> > On Wed, Sep 21, 2005 at 12:59:27AM -0400, H.S. wrote:
> > > The other method of course is to put these plotting commands in a
> > > separate file, called foo.cmd, and copy them into ngspice whenever I
> > > want to repeat a simulation.
> > 
> > I have never used ngspice - and failed finding a reference manual in a
>                                   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> > brief amount of time - but assume it  provides an INCLUDE or similar
> 
> Typical disease of some free software "products". The creator assumes
> that all people on the Earth have the knowledge necessary to use the
> program already inborn.

The SPICE netlister (and specifically spice-sdb) is more of the most
extensively documented facilities in gEDA.  A simple Google search
(keywords "spice geda") will turn up more info about spice-sdb in
particular -- and SPICE in general -- than Carter has little white
pills. 

Nothing, unfortunately, prevents total newbies from trying a
complicated program for 20 seconds, and then posting a clueless
question before trying Google.  That's just life.  My experience at
the day job -- where we make spectroscopic instruments used by PhD
chemists -- is the same:  Nothing can be made so simple or well
documented that a PhD user can't be flummoxed by something obvious.
That's why we have a customer support organization staffed by
chemistry PhDs who can hold the hands of the educated-but-clueless.

This e-mail list serves the same purpose, and I am always ready to
post a few links to documentation.  However, the clueless user needs
to do some more homework, and ask more informed questions before he
will get better support.  I do tend to answer extensively questions
posted by folks who have obviously done their homework first.

Finally, I have long hosted a tarball of the full source text of my
SPICE document (in LyX format, with a Makefile converting it to
DocBook, .pdf, and .html) here:  

http://www.brorson.com/gEDA/HOWTO/

Anybody interested in pushing gEDA's SPICE documentation forward
(rather than complaining) is welcome to grab the source and edit it.
I will be happy to accept any and all useful patches to the document. 

Stuart