Re: [Gnucap-devel] SPICE to gnucap transition

[al davis]

On Sunday 18 March 2007 18:54, Dan McMahill wrote:
> I wonder what it would take to catch gwave up a little or to
> teach gtkwave to read the ascii data that gnucap is currently
> able to produce.
>
> A better waveform viewer (including calculator) is something
> I think is really needed.  Too many projects, not enought
> time....
>
> gwave is really lacking in any analysis features like octave
> but the octave plotting tools really aren't good for
> interactive waveform viewing (lack of scrolling, cursors,
> etc).
>
> This is an area where I think it wouldn't even be that hard
> to be way better than some of the high end commercial tools.

I think a complete replacement for gwave, with the existing 
functionality, could be done in a summer, so it might be a good 
project for the "Summer of Code".

That and a replacement for "gnetlist" are the biggest needs.

The viewer part of qucs is much better, but qucs is too 
integrated to be really useful without huge investment.

At Bell Labs, we did a lot of that stuff in "S".  For those 
unfamiliar with "S" .. it is a statistical language with 
graphics.  It spawned a commercial product "S-plus", and a Free 
project "R".  The original developer of "S" is now affiliated 
with "R".  "S" and "R" have the ability to do math on tables 
and equations easily.

What I would like to see is a new waveform analysis tool, with 
analog emphasis, entirely written in an interpreted language 
like python or ruby.  It is important that it is "entirely" 
written in the interpreted language, not a hybrid, because of 
installtion and extendability issues.  gwave is a hybrid.

Then ... someone could write a C++ wrapper that would interface 
between the new analysis tool and gnucap, which would make it 
fully integrated.