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 --- "R. Timothy Edwards" <tim AT stravinsky DOT jhuapl.edu>
a écrit : > Dear Calin,
> 
>    Yours is rather a knee-jerk reaction to the idea
> of a GUI for magic.
> However, I think of it this way:  More and more
> Linux window managers
> appear by default in a "Windows emulation mode"
> where they mimic the
> appearance of the Windows desktop and task bar.  A
> veteran UNIX user
> will likely reject this on principle, complaining
> about the poor saps
> who can't wean themselves off of the Bill Gates'
> Manifesto.  And I do,
> and I gripe about it to my circle of friends. 
> However, at the same
> time, I recognize that Linux has taken a
> not-insignificant chunk of
> the OS market away from Windows, and part of this
> has to do with
> converting some users by giving them what they
> already feel comfortable
> with.  The rest of us don't have to take that path,
> although it is a
> good idea to be wary that one day, suddenly, XFree86
> ONLY supports
> Windows emulation mode.  But people are wary, and
> this has a near-zero
> probability of happening.
> 
>    So what does this have to do with Magic? 

I'm scared about the idea of having a gnome-magic or
kde-magic with the ideea of modularity that this
environments promote. (i had a kde program which
started an applet and then another an so on until i
had to kill it because 12Megs of ram wasn't enough)


> The
> long-term survivability
> of Magic lies in its ability to compete with its
> closed-source rivals
> such as Tanner, Cadence, and Mentor Graphics for a
> share of the VLSI
> user base.  If Magic is viewed as a "toy editor"
> (which I've heard said),
> it will lose that user base.  If it loses the user
> base, it will lose the
> support to keep it viable.  I first realized this
> when I started dealing
> with vendors other than MOSIS, and started coming
> across design rules
> mandating non-Manhattan geometry.  I realized that
> magic was eventually
> going to be ignored altogether if it was not brought
> up to a level
> competitive with its non-open-source alternatives. 

At the company where i work magic is regarded by some
people as a "toy editor", because it doesn't have a
proper GUI and because is in linux. When i try to
advocate it, the only thing that they say to me is
that this it is a non-GUI program writen for a non-GUI
operating system (that's what they say !) because they
_like_ windoze.

And they choose tanner which has a GUI (which fills
your screen with buttons and other things) but has a
desgusting user interface in the windoze style (i.e.
the user interfece controls you)

> This really annoyed
> me because I think Magic is fundamentally better
> than any other layout
> editor, and the things it lacks which causes people
> to think that it is
> not as "powerful" as the costware are largely
> superficial.  Of course,
> the marketing folks at Tanner/Cadence/Mentor
> Graphics encourage the view
> that poor little open-source Magic is a toy editor,
> useful only for
> beginners in the classroom.
> 
>    One of the superficial things that adds to the
> impression that magic
> is just a toy is the lack of a GUI.  Those of us who
> work deep in the
> code know that the lack of a GUI both streamlines
> the graphics processing
> and makes the core part of magic independent of the
> graphics environment
> it's in.  A lot of people will reject Magic on the
> basis that when it
> came up, there was just this big empty window
> sitting there, and they
> were required to work through a large tutorial to
> learn how to use it,
> and there wasn't even an online reference manual. 

so is tanner.

> In other words, if
> you weren't forced to learn Magic in your first
> college VLSI course,
> you're not likely to pick it up on your own.  A GUI
> with menus and
> tool buttons and integrated help windows and such
> will always be
> considered "unnecessary fluff" by veteran Magic
> users, but if it captures
> more users, then there is a greater chance that our
> development team is
> not here just trying to keep a dying patient alive.
> 

Sure but it should have an option to remove individual
buttons from the screen (buttons which are not used -
to not cover the screen with unnecesary things)

> Okay, now that I got that off my chest. . .  Pardon
> me for trying to be
> the Voice of the Open Source Revolution.
> 

I was some time ago a "Voice of the Open Source
Revolution" :) but i stoped that when i begun to
realize that i was talking with the walls, that people
love to have somebody (even a stupid PC) to tell them
how to live rather than choose themselves.
 
> > there is _a lot_ of space in the window not
> used.(in
> > the atachment you send). We used to make a little
> > window for commands and a very large window for
> layout
> > because we must see as much layout as possible
> without
> > using details.
> 
> Hey, calm down.  It's just an example.  I agree that
> it could use some
> work on the "conceptual design" level, though.  The
> best concepts for
> VLSI layout are 1) maximize your layout area, and 2)
> get yourself a 21"
> monitor.
> 
> > TclTk is slower than pure X routines.
> > One of the good things about magic is that it can
> be
> > run on old, low memory machines (but in new
> versions
> > this is hard to achieve).
> 
> I've always disliked Tk/Tcl.  BUT. . . it's open
> source.  Possibly open
> API, too.  If you don't like it, suggest a viable
> alternative.  At
> least the window-grabbing concept means that Tk/Tcl
> only affects response
> to input events, not rendering (all widget sets seem
> to want to redefine
> all the graphics rendering commands, thus slowing
> them down to
> unacceptable levels, but most don't *require* their
> use.  Here, Tk/Tcl
> presumably would only deal with menus, buttons, and
> input events.  So
> it only has to keep up with the user, which is not a
> great demand).
> Ghostscript/Ghostview works on almost exactly the
> same method:  Ghostview
> forks off ghostscript and "grabs" its window,
> framing it and adding
> buttons, menus, etc.  Ghostscript continues to run
> (and more to the point,
> render) at its usual rate.  This setup doesn't
> prevent Ghostscript from
> running as an independent program (which I often do
> when testing snippets
> of PostScript code).

Xaw3d ? (I really like that one). Only for menus
tcl/tk is good :-) (i was actually scared that _all_
magic GUI will be rewritten in tcl/tk)

> 
> > old machines don't have native OpenGL, and not
> every
> > university in the world has money to buy the
> latest
> > computer technology every year
> 
> Remember that the graphics interface is independent
> of the rest of the
> program and can be chosen at run-time.  OpenGL is
> just an option;  the
> proposed setup should not disallow the X11
> interface.  By the way, I
> run OpenGL on my machine, which required a $120
> video card and the
> purchase of a $99 X server, two years ago.  Now you
> can get an OpenGL
> video card for < $100 and the X server for around
> $20.  That's the nice
> thing about Linux. . . every university in the world
> *can* afford to
> have computer technology competitive with companies
> with large budgets
> for workstations and servers.

I work as a sysadmin at a university in Romania
together with a student and they pay us with 40$ (20$
each). They accepted to buy a PC to serve as a faculty
internet server after one year of requests and a
couple of hardware failure -- they did't buy a server
because they "don't have money" 

> 
> > The company where I work didn't use magic for
> layout
> > because of the lack of a free hierarhical scematic
> > editor for linux.
> 
> I sense that xcircuit is also being viewed as a "toy
> program".  Although
> it depends on how long ago they made this decision.

At my work they told me to find a good schematic
editor for linux to use with magic and a LVS program.
The choises were: xcircuit, electric, oregano.
Basically they wanted a hierarchical schematic editor
which they wanted to use without learning nothing.
They didn't like xcircuit because "it was't
hierarchic" in the sense tanner is (they _love_
tanner). They didn't like electric because it had
strange symbols.( :-)) ).
Oregano was too buggy 

Your's "directory of programs" seems to be a very good
point to start (thanks). And it's the only place i
could found a LVS program for *nix.

By the way, is there any chance that someone will
maintain a LVS program to use with magic ?

> 
> > Magic is allready [sic] a very fast layout editor.
> With
> > macros you can do great things at "a touch of a
> > button". 
> 
> Interesting choice of words.  I would have said "at
> a touch of a key".
> Perhaps you are really a closet GUI proponent?  ;)
> 

That choice of words was because I'm not a native
speaker of english and i was trying to make myself
understood. 

> 						Regards,
> 						Tim
>
Bye 
Calin
Please excuse my english   

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