Re: To bird or not to bird ...

I am one of the users that has been "gone to the birds" on the current
sign issue. I have been getting some of my associates to generate
data. The rev. 1.0 spec does not mandate the current convention. The
example in the spec is correct, but there is no statement that it has
to be a certain way. The confusion is in the current to the load or
from the buffer.

The reason that I think that the parser should be changed, is that at
least one IBIS complient tool has failed to this issue. I am sure that
most of the vendor tools will fail. The purpose of the parser is to
provide pertinent information about the file correctness.

There may rightfully be a discussion of which is to come first the
"bird or the egg" (Sorry about that). I would really like to see the
"current sign issue" resolved by rev. 2. This would include a little
tighter wording in the spec and an upgrade to the parser.

The issue on monotonicity seems to be between tools vendors. Some
tools allow it and some tools don't. We have a CMOS driver that is
non-monotonic -- but a good editor can take care of that :-). So, do
we limit the ourselves to a subset of vendors, limit ourselves to a
subset of capabilities, issue warnings only, or let the user beware? I
suppose this could also become a tool vendor certification issue.

Pardon my ramblings....

+------------------------------------+
| |
| Lynn Warriner - bert |
| Somerset Design Center -- Austin |
| |
+------------------------------------+
Received on Mon Mar 21 13:19:29 1994