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R. Timothy Edwards wrote:
> 
> Dear Erik,
>    I've heard "space" mentioned a number of times;  it would be really
> nice if they would open-source it and not require a license. 

agree, we had to buy a license: not cheap ($20k) but we are a company
making money with these tools, and weve made our money back with that 
tool a long time ago.  its probably cheaper now too, given the current
economy.  but if youre a school, you get the free license.  in both 
cases you dont have to sign up for "maintenance", whatever that means.

  But it
> is a better answer than an expensive Synopsis/Avanti/Candence/Mentor
> Graphics license. 

yes.  ive used this tool in front of foundry guys and debugged THEIR
techfiles with it.

  The "wrapped" (scripted) version of magic should
> allow one to swap the magic extractor for "space", so when you type
> "extract", your layout gets piped through "space" rather than the
> magic extractor.

that would be cool, although leaving magic as is and doing this is 
easier probably:

  :calma write foo
  :quit
  cgi -f foo.strm
  space foo
  xspice foo

thats easy to shell script, and :sh run from magic too..

  The script that does this should be able to figure
> out what tech file magic is using and map this to the correct
> technology for "space".
>           

useful too, but god help you if you are actively working on 3 projects
EACH with different techfiles at the same time and you need to quickly
swap the current techfile used in the layout->lvs cycle.

my wish: keep magic streamlined and slick, dont add features that have 
nothing too do with what magic does better than anything else on the 
planet: LAYOUT+DRC.  seems to me there are enough things to get right
already, why add new threads to the todo list?  as far as i can tell, 
the 45deg and the new macros in magic were that last things we all 
cheered.  the "windows" version and the wrap-magic-in-a-gui deal 
is making us all burn the current magic to cd-roms and encasing
it in glass.  

dont take this the wrong way, im just trying to report what us as 
a company that depends on stable magic for paychecks feels about this
discussion :)

 -erik
                                      ---Tim

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