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From: R. Timothy Edwards (tim AT stravinsky DOT jhuapl.edu)
Date: Mon Apr 02 2001 - 10:36:45 EDT

  • Next message: Jeff W. Sondeen: "Re: Magic and GDS2" 

    Dear Andrew,

   I've been working on the magic GDS2 code recently in conjunction
with the non-manhattan geometry, and have already fixed a couple of
bugs in the GDS2 read/write routines.  However, I agree that there
are limitations to the way magic deals with GDS2 labels, and would be
happy to take a shot at improving it.  Actually, there's more I'd
like to do:  I know that magic produces huge GDS files compared to
its CIF output.  I always took this as a sign that GDS was an
inferior file format, but on closer inspection, I think magic is
writing GDS in about the most non-optimal way possible.  Anyway, if
you know of a good reference for GDS syntax (book or online), please
let me know.

   The main thing I don't like about GDS is that it's binary, so I
can't tweak an output file by hand like I can do with CIF.  CIF has
a very well thought-out syntax except for the extreme ugliness of
specifying rectangles by center and not by corner.  I think the magic
CIF output routine should be re-written to check for rectangle centers
falling on fractional values (which is easy enough to do) and opt to
write a polygon statement to the output file if so.

						---Tim

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