[Magic-dev] Re: plot PNM in magic-7.2

[R. Timothy Edwards]

Dear Mark,

> Executing 
>  :plot pnm foo.pnm 0.3
> 
> or, for just an inverter blown up to size
>   :plot pnm foo.pnm 50
> 
> gives me
>   PNM module given negative scale; cannot plot


   "plot PNM" was originally designed for scaling down huge
layouts to a manageable plot size, and was not capable of
exceeding 1 pixel per magic unit.  I sort of hacked in the
capability in 7.2, but I didn't really get it working
right until 7.3.  The above problem, however, has a very
simple fix, although I failed to transfer the fix back to
magic-7.2 (which I will now do).  It should be fixed by
adding

	#include "utils/utils.h"

to plot/plotCmd.c;  the header gives the return type for
MagAtof() as type double; otherwise, the compiler assumes
type float, and a wrong value gets passed to PlotPNM().

> Works in the latest 7.3, but I haven't been ready to upgrade
> to the "alpha" stuff.

Version 7.3 is now considerably more trustworthy than 7.2, in
my opinion.  I have taped out four chips with version 7.3.
One of these, a 5mm x 5mm rotary clock test chip, used virtually
every novel feature I've thrown into 7.3---grid subdivision,
non-Manhattan geometry, stacked contacts, Tcl-script-generated
subcells, etc., etc.  The last one of these was a more standard
AMI 1.5um process chip using the SCNA80 techfile (albeit I
hacked the techfile in an attempt to get varactor devices).
I intend to redesignate 7.3 as "beta", not "alpha", but have
not yet done so.

				Regards,
				Tim