kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx>]

I'm not opposed to KiCad taking part in this it's just a simple matter
of lack of time.  If someone else is interested in representing KiCad at
these meetings, I would not be opposed to that it's just not going to be
me.  I am completely out of free time to do any more than my current
work load.

Cheers,

Wayne

On 02/21/2018 12:44 PM, Ouabache Designworks wrote:
> This might be a good time to discuss industry standards and how they are
> currently undergoing a massive change that the Kicad team could help  with.
> 
> 
> 
> Standards have in the past been created by large formal organizations
> like the IEEE for the entire industry.They were written in a very strict
> and formal language
> and had to be complete and unambiguous. They were written by
> professionals who did that for a living.
> 
> If there was a error or omission in a standard then correcting it,
> getting all the reviews and approvals, re-releasing a revised standard,
> changing all the EDA tools
> using it and getting the end user to change all of their accumulated IP
> could easily take 10 years.
> 
> The verilog standard was revised in 1995 to allow for port creation in
> one line instead of two. It was 2005 before the design team that I was
> on allowed us to use
>  the new standard in our coding. It took us that long  to prove that all
> of our tools were correct and we could trust our tool flow with
> production code.
> 
> 
> I'm sorry IEEE but I have a problem and I need a a working solution by
> Friday. You are fired. You can no longer control the standards that I use.
> 
> This has already happened. Nobody goes to the verilog standard for
> answers about the language. The official solution is to write a test
> case and run it under verilogXL
>  to see what it does. EDA  tool smiths are no longer implementing
> standards, they are creating them. Gerber created the PCB standard.
> Kicad 5 will create its own standard
> and all the standard committee can do is to document it.
> 
> 
> We need to work with these groups not to ask them what we should support
> but to tell them what we are doing and let them follow us. We can also
> pick up some good ideas as
> to what other groups are doing.
> 
> We don't argue in a committee but rather release everything and let the
> market decide. Open source can win in that arena. If we get it wrong
> then theres always the next revision.
> 
> 
> So what can the Kicad team do? If any new release breaks designs created
> under the old release then provide tools and instructions for converting
> the end users IP to run under the new release.
>  Otherwise its a huge mess. Icarus verilog did a new release for version
> 10 that fixed an "off-by-one" error in its LOG function. Now its a
> complete mess because old code has to be rewritten before
>  it can be used with any new code. When you make a change you must also
> come up with a plan for all the old IP. Make it easy for the end user to
> use your tool.
> 
> 
> 
> John Eaton
> 
> 
> 
> 
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