Re: [Gnucap-devel] Readline support implemented

[Al Davis]

On Monday 29 April 2002 12:29 pm, Simon Hoffe wrote:
> I've been looking for a decent free replacement for spice3f5, in
> particular one which supported POLY constructs (so that I can use
> NatSemi models). I also really wanted something with a graphical
> editor and decent EPS graph output. gnucap, while severely lacking
> in the graphics department has loads of potential (especially when
> considering that the latest update is under 3 years old ;-), as
> opposed to similar packages). I started playing with it, and
> realised that adding readline support would be quite
> straight-forward. So here is a patch file for gnucap 0.31 which
> will add basic readline.

Thank you, but the attachment didn't come through.  Can you mail it 
to me, or tell me where I can get it?  If you can, I will try to 
include it in the next release.

Since you mention POLY ....

It already supports POLY(1), for all basic devices.  I only need to 
add the parsing to make it support any order.  The numeric code is 
already there, and being used for the transistor models.

You didn't mention this, but it is related.  The Spice-3 "B" device 
has the same status.  I have an expression parser/reducer in a 
separate module, that I plan to merge in soon, hopefully this summer. 
 This will give compatibility with that, and with minor changes with 
the expressions in some commercial simulators.  The method that I 
have precalculates what it can, generating a simplified table based 
model, so it should be much faster than the Spice3 B device.  I have 
it as part of the IBIS support, which is in development.

The base for this is the classes "DEV_CPOLY_G", "DEV_FPOLY_G", 
"DEV_FPOLY_CAP".

> 3rd year Elec Eng student
> Wits University
> South Africa

That brings up something else I am working on ...   I want to get 
Gnucap into the mainstream, including for use in undergraduate EE 
courses.  There are hundreds of books all promoting PSPICE.  We need 
some for Gnucap.  How PSPICE is marketed to schools is one of the 
reasons I feel so strongly about GPL.  They are not giving.  They are 
taking away.