A number of enhancements have been made to the latest release of CapFast for Motif and Windows. Installation and operation of the program remain fundamentally unchanged, however. The User's Guide has also been overhauled and is now accurate for the Motif and Windows versions.
Some rarely used commands remain available from the command line only. The flexibility to create customized menus remains for those users wishing to make some or all commands available from pull-down menus. For detailed information about developing custom menus, the chapter in the User's Guide on customizing CapFast is very helpful, as is the new section in the chapter on Commands detailing each of the internal commands, with examples.
The latest version incorporates several bug fixes. A number of fixes will not be directly visible to most users, but have resulted in a stronger, more cohesive design environment of benefit to all users.
Enhancements (Motif and Windows versions):
| 1. | The instance name of the symbol being edited is now in the title bar of the properties dialog box, so users will know which symbol's properties they are editing. |
| 2. | A property that has just been added is now selected and visible in the scrolled list. Previously, the list was reset to the top after each addition or modification. The number of visible entries in the scrolled list of properties has been restored to 14, as in pre-Motif and MS-DOS releases. |
| 3. | (For EPICS users) The CALC property checking has been changed to use the EPICS expression parser. Although the EPICS parser is not very robust, it was used as requested by the EPICS community. An example of its non-robustness is the fact that it will accept a invalid number like 1254.23.66 (multiple decimal points). |
| 4. | If the user double-clicks on a property in the scrolled list in the Properties window, then if the property has an enumerated rule (i.e. list of valid values), the value selection dialog box for that property pops up. Nothing happens if that property doesn't have an enumerated rule. For example, suppose the property is "TIMER" and the valid values for it (defined in the rules file currently in use) are { off, "5 second", "2 second", "1 second", ".5 second"}. If the property has already been defined, then when the user double-clicks on the TIMER property in the properties list, a dialog box pops up with the valid values listed, and allows the user to select a value from the list. |
| 5. | The values lists of enumerated property rules are no longer sorted. Previously, they were sorted lexically. Now they are listed in the order entered in the rules file. Note: this refers to RULES values, not properties. Properties are still sorted. |
| 6. | In the Properties dialog box, the Add/Modify button is now the default button and is disabled until either the name or value field is changed by the user. Input focus goes to the name field, initially and after an Add/Modify, and to the value field when a property is selected from the scrolled list. |
| 7. | Now, when reading a schematic, the current working directory is not changed unless a design file (.dsn) is read. This allows reading in designs translated from Mentor Graphics and other systems without adding all the design's subdirectories to the data file search path. |
| 8. | In Edif2sch, if the instance designator suffix property is given in
the control file, and that property appears on an instance, its value is
appended to the designator (CapFast "ref" property).
The usage in the control file is:
This is useful especially when translating designs from other systems such as Mentor Graphics, when the "ref" property or "designator" doesn't have enough information to make the instance unique. For example, it may be desired to append the "section" property to the "ref" property when the "ref" property contains something like "U24" and the "section" property contains the section like "B", resulting in "U24B". |
| 9. | Edif2sch has a new command line option, "-fq". See the next item for discussion on its use. |
| 10. | Edif2sch now assumes that cell (symbol) names given in the EDIF file
may contain paths, so it translates using the name after the last slash
in the name given in the EDIF file. When name collisions occur, a character
before the last slash is appended, to make the name unique. If the "-fq"
command line option is given, the program will prompt the user for a new
name before generating a name.
For example, if the EDIF file contains definitions for the symbols /lib/digital/74vhct373 and /lib/ics/74vhct374, and the translation is being done for DOS (8-character file names), then the default translated names would be 74vhct37.sym and 74vhct_i.sym. If the -fq option was specified, the user would be prompted before the default name for the second symbol was used. The user could enter a different name or use the default. |
| 11. | In Sch2edif, error reporting has been enhanced. More detail is given in error messages, making it easier to find the cause of the error. |
| 12. | In Sch2edif, design directories are now added to the search path if the "-ap" command line option is specified. This is useful when running Sch2edif on a design that is hierarchical, with the hierarchical symbols' schematics in subdirectories under the main design directory. |
| 13. | The menus have been modified slightly. The major enhancement is that the Copy command in the Edit menu has been expanded to be like the copy commands in the older versions (pre-3.0). Although this was a customization that could be done by the user, we put it in the release because so many users asked for it. Also, the View menu now includes Zoom In Under Cursor and Center Specified Point. Other changes have been made to make the menus more consistent and robust. |
Enhancements (Motif versions):
| 1. | Motif properties dialogs can be resized and will remember their size from one popup to the next, during a single program execution. |
| 2. | The Solaris and HP versions now use the SentinelLM license manager, except when an unexpired timestamp exists. The user is now informed, at application startup, how many days remain on their timestamp. |
Enhancements (Windows version):
| 1. | The Xilinx 4000 parts have been added to the Xilinx library. Previously this was only available with the Motif versions. |
| 2. | A new internal variable, checkEPICSexprs, was added to the Motif version 3.02.23. It is now in the Windows version as well. When set to YES, it allows use of the CALC property for special EPICS related expressions (default is NO). See the discussion in the User's Guide or in the release note for version 3.02.23 for details of its use. |
| 3. | The following commands have been implemented in the Windows version, which were previously only in the Motif version. |
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Fixed Bugs:
| 1. | External window closure now prompts to save if necessary and possible. |
| 2. | Replacing the static menu no longer causes the design area to resize/repaint. |
| 3. | :read now uses the search path. |
| 4. | Blitting images are now initially positioned within the current view, if they fit, to prevent the view from zooming out unnecessarily. |
| 5. | Property rules that use the values of other properties now work, if
those proerties already exist. For example, the following rule works:
if at least one of the two (HOPR or LOPR) has already been defined as a property on a symbol or wire on the schematic prior to reading the rules file. |
| 6. | (MS Windows:) "Properties Display" dialog box no longer changes visibility to "All" just by clicking "OK" or pressing Enter. |
| 7. | In Sch2edif, VCC (and others) on IC's is not connected to GND (or others) in the netlist. This used to occur under certain conditions. |
| 8. | In Sch2edif, an onpage connector with the same name as an offpage connector no longer causes the offpage connector to disappear from the list of schematic ports in the netlist. |
| 9. | In Sch2edif, a property consisting of only ":" no longer causes Sch2edif to crash. |
Summary of Editor Commands Currently Implemented:
Following is a list of all the internal commands, past and present. Those commands that have not yet been implemented in the Motif and Windows versions are preceded by a hyphen (-). Those commands that exist in the Motif and Windows versions but not in the DOS/UNIX versions are preceded by a plus (+). Those commands that are never going to be propagated to the Motif and Windows versions are preceded by an asterisk (*).
For many of the commands that will not be ported to the Motif and Windows versions, a macro can be defined to do the same thing. For example, if a macro called ":moveproperty" is defined as ":prop M", it will have the same effect as the original command (note that the property must be selected first for this macro to work). To make this available every time Schedit or Symed is run, it should be saved in the schedit.rc and symed.rc files.
GENERAL COMMANDS
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WINDOWS ONLY
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SCHEDIT ONLY
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SYMED ONLY
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