Features that perhaps prevent a simple interface to other tools

I am by no means an expert in EDIF or other file interchange formats, but I believe that in order to make Schemata data bases read and write from other tools I would have to disable some features. (If any readers know better, please excuse my ignorance on the topic).

• Schemata does not necessarily have an object in the data base for a glyph on the screen. An example is the bus width marker. A bus width marker is simply an artifact (a side effect, a heuristic that runs and prints the number) of the drawing of a line of more than one net width. I think I would have to hack something to write a fake bus width object on file export and some how parse the thing on file import.
• There is not a one to one mapping of symbol to module hierarchy; in fact there is no concept of a symbol. I know that common tools have a pointer to symbol object that is “stamped out” with reflection rotation etc when the object is drawn. Schemata does not have such a methodology. In place of that data structure which would normally be a transform (position, reflection rotation) and a pointer to the symbol, Schemata stores the drawing elements themselves. The advantage of this is that each symbol is editable.
• There is no concept of a “segment” connecting points. The intuitive move actions etc are easily implemented because Schemata has only one object in the data base – effectively a point. (I call it a “blob”). Blobs have pointers to other blobs and when rendered on the screen, each draws a line halfway to the blobs to which it connects. I would need I think to translated segments in the file into blobs etc – could be done I guess.
• Transparent icons – don’t mean anything to other tools I suspect.
• All the associated file formats – are they storable within the interchange format? I.e. do I just dump the graphic SPICE results and scripts etc on write out and read in blank on read in?
• How are optional ports represented? Is there a concept a port that connects to a certain place if no wire is connected to it?
• I know from experience that I cannot dump the wires with multiple names to the interchange format – it seems very common to forbid two names on the same wire in other tools. (Why does Schemata use this? This is the basis of the PASCAL scoping of globals which is huge asset in Schemata I would not want to forgo this feature).