On Friday 07 January 2005 02:36 pm, Steve Meier wrote: > Tool Centric and Data Centric > > Tool Centric systems move data from one tool to the next in a > sequential flow. This forces the user to be aware of back > annotation in-order to complete the design and keep all > documents current and correct. > > Data Centric systems share the data in common formats. As one > task manipulates the shared data all other views (documents) > are automatically updated. > > Currently, gEDA tends to be a tool centric collection.
That's what I have been trying to say. We need a data centric system for interchange between tools. Ideally, the data centric format would be supported directly by all of the tools. Practically, it can be done through translators, so existing tools don't need to change. The translators can be run automatically on loading or saving,so it looks seemless to users. Eventually, the data centric format will benefit the individual tools too, by freeing them from the data structure mistakes of the past.
