Electronotes and Synth-DIY CD

[Magnus Danielson]

From: Martin Czech <martin.czech at intermetall.de>
Subject: Re: Electronotes and Synth-DIY CD
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 08:47:07 +0100 (MET)

> Ummm, no offense, but it seems to me that at least some of the designs,
> especially triangle vco stem directly from the Harris app. note,
> other designs come from scientific publications and the reference is
> given. 
> 
> I think this applies also for the frequency shifter.

I think that many curcuits comes from a long series of improvements, additions
and adaptation to new components and techniques. Many tricks is very old and
traces back to tube curcuits. However, regardless of who came up with the idea
for the curcuit, much ogf the discussion is really about Copyright and there
a diffrent set of rules applies.

> The circuits were allready there, before E.N.
> 
> It seems to me that Mr. Hutchins has read and understood
> an enormous amount of literature and boiled that down so that we
> get an extract and don't need to read these tons of paper.
> And that was/is a very good job!

One should not underestimate the value of such research and editorial work.

> OTOH I aggree that there are some unique ideas on circuits,
> given either by Mr. Hutchins or other contributors.
> Some of the ideas are basic, so somebody might invent the wheel
> again, without even knowing that it is all there...
> 
> I must say that I prefer a paper version much more then a CD,
> the scan resolution is allways limiting and it is allready
> a drag to read all these online data sheets and app. notes
> on the screen, finally I'll print them out...

I think I agree to a degree here.

When I started to bring the ASM-1 curcuits online I considered scanning, but
my experience was that you had to scan with a fairly high resolution and have
nondestructive compression (JPEG is those out). Now, instead I thougth that I
would go for a vector base format of some sort, and I ended up _hacking_ it in
Postscript. Not ideal for time to get the curcuit up (as compared to use a
EDA tool) but at the time I had no EDA tool to use, and besides, I had full
control of the graphical layout. In the end I had a smaller file but with a
very nice final result IMHO.

My point here is that redrawing in some suitable tool in order to produce a
vector format (Postscript or PDF) is better. The use of suitable tools will
reduce the workload (hacking Postscript like I did is those not an option ;).
While this migth be somewhat of an ideal from a presentation view it will be
a larger workload then just scanning it in and dump it into a file.

Cheers,
Magnus