kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Clemens Koller <cko@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello!

On 2017-12-14 14:08, Marco Ciampa wrote:
>> But when you add aliases I run into troubles to keep things separate/clear:
>> {RAM} appears to me as an unnamed bus containing the net RAM. WTF is that?
>> MEMORY{RAM} appears as a bus named MEMORY containing the single net RAM.
>> I would expect to access that net via MEMORY.RAM - Oops.
>>
>> I am definitely irritated by a net MEMORY.OE pulled out of an bus named MEMORY{RAM}. 8-(
>> It's impossible to distinguish bus aliases from nets of a bus.
> 
> Apart from the _very_ unpolite expression, I agree here.

Off-Topic: Okay, this really puzzles me. There was really no intention to offend somebody personally.
I just used WTF and Oops (talking in monologue) to emphasize that the syntax or representation seems inconsistent or confusing to me.
I might also have used a confused smiley like "@:-{" to express that. I am really sorry if these phrases are considered very unpolite.
English is not my native language. In case I missed the point here in general, maybe somebody could give me feedback off-list.


>> Idea: It might be nice to virtually allow folding/unfolding of the net
>> collection contained in a bus, i.e. by showing MEMORY{*} or MEMORY{..} or
>> MEMORY{+}, whereas the '*' or '..' or '+' is shown in a different colour.
>> If that's still to long, I would not mind renaming the bus to MEM{..} or
>> even M{..}.
> 
> The idea that Clemens is describing here (IIUIC) is that what you really
> nead is _not_ a bus alias (although is a good idea anyway...) but a more
> compact equivalent syntax for a BUS name.

To be more clear, what I've tried to express:
... a more compact representation of a bunch of nets of a bus.
 
A bus name could simply be renamed (locally/per sheet or globally), if it appears too long - instead of having an alias defined.
But the possibility to use aliases (for nets and/or busses) is a nice-to-have feature.

> Once you have defined bus names like MEMORY{something} and MEMORY.OE for
> the single bus entity, you should be able to write something for just the
> bus name like MEMORY{+} or MEMORY{*} or MEMORY{..} (may I add my 2 cents
> here? Why not MEMORY{...} tree dots to distinguish it from the vector
> syntax?) instead of have to specify always all the bus elements in the
> bus name.
> So you should have on the bus name just this label MEMORY{...} (three
> dots ... I like it!) as a bus description and MEMORY.OE and such as
> connections outputting from the bus.

I was also considering the ellipsis '...' but in classical ASCII, they are three characters wide, that's why I ended up with .., + or * to keep it short.
But since we arrived in Unicode, this can be solved by using the horizontal ellipsis single character: U+2026 '…' or in our case the midline horizontal ellipsis U+22EF '⋯'.

Regards,

Clemens