Re: Function Block / Schematic Editor

R Adsett wrote:
I've done almost exactly this using Eagle. I used the schematic to develop a communication flow with the built in check making sure that inputs and output were properly matched. The built in scripting language was used to generate an output table of the netlist. The netlist was parsed to produce an XML description that contained additional information and finally the XML was parsed to produced C code.

The XML intermediate step allowed combining multiple sources and the equivalent of an include facility. 

I would be interested to hear your experiences with
this approach.

As one of those guys that started as a digital hardware
engineer during the early days of schematic capture and
then moved later into the software (dark ;-) side of the
game, the thought of a component based approach to software
development and visual modeling has always been appealing.
(purty picture envy probably ;-)

Seems to me that the digital hardware world benefited
greatly from the use/reuse of standard components and
interfaces.

As a start:

Did you find this approach useful?

Can you describe the "communication flow" across a "wire"?

Did you model a wire as a fifo byte stream or what?

What kind of semantics were associated with the "wire"?
 o Flow control
 o Delivery (Exactly Once, At Least Once, At Most Once?)

How did you implement the broadcast semantics of a "wire"
(one output to many inputs?)

Are components/blocks independent in time (threads?)

How do you contrast your approach to UML?

What did you learn?

Maybe I ask too many questions ;-)

--
Michael N. Moran           (h) 770 516 7918
5009 Old Field Ct.         (c) 678 521 5460
Kennesaw, GA, USA 30144    http://mnmoran.org

"So often times it happens, that we live our lives in chains
 and we never even know we have the key."
The Eagles, "Already Gone"

The Beatles were wrong: 1 & 1 & 1 is 1

.

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