[phdl-devel] Welcome aboard.

[Peter D. <hd...@ho...>]

Mike,

Welcome aboard.  Thank you for understanding what we are trying to do.  You
might be surprised by the number of people who are offended by even the idea
of using something other than a schematic editor to define circuit
connectivity.

We are writing this tool for people like you and me.  I got my MSEE in 1984
so I'm a couple years older.  I have worked 28 years for a similar company
doing electronics design.  I feel like I could go another 28 years.

We also admire K&R. In the design of the language we are keeping with the
philosophy of "less is more" or the simpler the better.  For a board design
you really only need to instantiate components and wire them up. A few
"attributes" are needed to decorate the design for board layout, bill of
materials, etc. PHDL has nice support for hierarchy so you can break up your
design for re-use or just to make it more readable. I like my top level
design to have just major sub-design instantiations.

It is our goal to define an intermediate format that is super easy to parse.
We call it PHDLIF.  Then anyone could write utilities that convert that
intermediate format file into whatever they need.  For PHDLIF we are
considering JSON, XML or just a super simple plain text format.  We want
people to be able to retarget their PHDL source to any board layout,
documentation or other tool.  I had not considered it before but you could
easily go the other way, back to PHDL, since it is such a simple language.
We will certainly write netlisters to go from PHDLIF to PADS, Eagle and at
least one open-source layout tool.

Right now, we are rewriting the compiler from scratch in C++ for
maintainability, packagability, extensibility and all the other ilities.  

Please stay tuned. When we have the new compiler working I'm sure there will
be an announcement.  That would be a good time to develop some XML tools
like you propose.

Best wishes,

    Pete Dudley

-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Crowe [mailto:mc...@gc...] 
Sent: Thursday, March 14, 2013 8:20 PM
To: phd...@li...
Subject: [phdl-devel] Greeting and salutations

Hello
I am new to the list.  Since this appears to be a small group, I'd like to
introduce myself, ramble a bit, then ask a question.

Background
Age: 50
Education: MSEE, 1987
20 years as a defense contractor as a design engineer (Qinetiq), primarily
in underwater acoustic data acquisition systems.  Last five years at
http://www.gcdataconcepts.com designing data acquisition systems.

Some development groups that I subscribe to geda-user, ghdl-discuss,
ngspice-devel, sdcc-devel, openocd-devel.

yada yada yada.... enough said.

<ramble>
I'm really interested in text based schematic entry and associated tools.
I've noted in recent years that graphical schematic have become nothing more
than a box with pins on it and lines with net-names stuck onto the pins.
Not exactly pretty.  Certainly not clear.  I've toyed with the idea of
creating a text based schematic language, but it's never really gotten past
being a fantasy, ... until now!  PHDL are you my dream child?  Well,
maybe,...  I like many of the things I see in PHDL, but if it could only
.... :-)

One of the things that I think of when I think of a 'HDL is a text based way
for a human to create something.  The syntax must be terse, but not too
terse.  Consistent with as few rules as possible.  Powerful, but stay within
scope.  In other words, logical, clean, and clear.  For myself I take as the
benchmark for a logical, clean and clear language, "The C programming
language" by Kernighan and Ritchie.  I feel that your project has many
elements that are embodied by the K&R work.  The PHDL_3-0-0_language_spec is
clean and concise.  I am reading it now.
More on that in the future.

A concept that I like to think of about a schematic is that it is projected
in many different directions, like light being reflected from a diamond.
Sometimes it is projected into a new PCB layout, sometimes into a BOM,
sometimes into a spice simulation, sometimes into a power
point presentation,...  well you get the idea.    Humans work in terms
of 'HDL tools,  computers on the other hand need more precision.  In my
current design development, I project my schematic into an XML document and
then through an XSLT into the desired product.  What I'd like to see is a
way to convert PHDL into XML, and then be able to back annotate PHDL from
the XML, that is reciprocity between PHDL and an XML.  The XML would need to
contain the same hierarchy as the PHDL.  

I've done some work with xslt transformation, it's wordy, but otherwise
consistent and logical.  I've done some work work with xslt 2.0 in
transforming plain-text documents into xml, but seem to have problems
capturing the hierarchy into the XML.  

Back annotation into PHDL is important because XML doesn't do a very good
job with whitespace (it's mostly ignored), and just as there is more than
one way to skin a cat,  there is more than one way to express a design
thought.
</ramble>

So finally the question
Is there a tool being developed that would provide this reciprocal
relationship between PHDL and an XML equivalent version?  If not, I'd be
interested doing some development in that direction.

Thanks
Mike



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