Spice editor

[KjellMorgenstern]

Editing and testing spice data for a part could be easier.

Currently, to edit spice data of a part, one has to find the file, and open it in a custom text editor, then reload in Fritizing. This process is hard to figure out, error prone and slow.

How should a spice editor look like?

It could be a simple text input.

But it might be easy enough to implement:

• listing available connectors of a part
• highlight / link connectors to spice nodes
• linking to spice reference and documentation
• syntax highlight
• syntax check
• SPICE model type/template selection

This would be intended for part developers, but ideally the interface would be friendly for first time ngspice users.

[failiz]

I definitely agree that this is needed. It is a pain to test the parts right now.
One tricky point is are we generating a different part when we modify the spice field (and then we have to give a new moduleID to the part) or does it modify the spice field for all the parts with that ModuleID?
See an initial attempt and our discussion a few years ago: #3988

[KjellMorgenstern]

In theory the editor could be a widget in the Parts Editor, but might also be called from the Inspector. This decouples it a bit from #3988

[failiz]

Obviously we would not add the editable attribute on the resistor

This is more a question on where we set the limits between full functionality and usability (and target users). ngspice admits more things in a resistor component. From the manual:

3.3.1 Resistors
General form:
RXXXXXXX n+ n- <resistance|r=>value <ac=val> <m=val>
+ <scale=val> <temp=val> <dtemp=val> <tc1=val> <tc2=val>
+ <noisy=0|1>

So, advanced users could want to add extra stuff in the resistor. One option would be to have an editable field that are spice options appended at the end of the spice line. For example, if there is a editable field property called spiceOptions, this would make it more safer to the users and allow advanced simulations.

<spice editable="no">
    <line>R{instanceTitle} {net connector0} {net connector1} {resistance} {spiceOptions}</line>
</spice>

In any case, the resistor case is maybe to narrow and I do not expect that normal users would need to change this, but for transistors and other components may be useful. For example, a transistor is a model. The spice line should not need to be changed, the important stuff for the simulation is defined in the model card:

<spice>
  <model>*Typical bipolar transistor </model>
  <model>.MODEL NPN_GENERIC NPN ()</model>
  <line>Q{instanceTitle} {net connector2} {net connector1} {net connector0} NPN_GENERIC</line>
  </spice>

As it could become easy to make errors, a nice features would be to see a diff with the original spice and a button to reset the spice field to the original spice