Xeve Version Changes

• Initial version.
• Changes in XEVE version v1_2
• Changes in XEVE version v1_3
• Changes in XEVE version v1_4
• Changes in XEVE version v5_91

* Version v1_2 was made of three different Unix programs: xeve, bliffc2 and checkblif. The three processors still exist, but they refer now to a unique program binary file. The result of this merging is:

- the FSM is built only once, at opening time, while it was at each function call in v1_2.

- the reachable state space is built only once, at the first function call. It is kept in memory. In v1_2, it was computed at each function call.

- common internal data structures for all the functions.

* A new file format can be loaded, called bddf. Bddf is an acronym which stands for bdd format. It is the format used by TiGeR to represent a FSM with both its network, the BDDs of its combinational outputs, and its reachable state trace. Any FSM can be saved at any time in this format and loaded afterwards. This allows the saving of the computed BDDs to avoid their recomputation.

* An extension of the signal selection has been implemented in v1_3. It extends the possibilities of verification for the output signals status checking.

* The graphical interface of version v1_2 was implemented using tk3.6. New release is a porting to tk4.2. Moreover, the new release has a lot of improvements of the presentation:

- A better organisation of the intercative help.

- A balloon help on main buttons and menu buttons, that can be set off.

- A new help system.

- A recording of function calls for a single session, allowing the recovering of results, avoiding redundant calls.

* A bug in the FSM minimisation algorithm when dealing with (potentially) terminating programs having relations over their inputs that are loaded in some separate blif file as provided by Xeve. In this case, the terminating states where badly computed leading to a possibly false minimised result automaton.

* The change of the design of the palette of colors for signal selection (the functionality has not changed).

* Some files for the initialisation of the graphical environment where missing. This was not perceivable as long as you had Tcl7.6/Tk4.2 (or some compatible version of) installed in your system at a standard place (/usr/local/ for instance). Otherwise, Xeve may not work complaining about these missing files. Now all the necessary files are included in the distribution and xeve is really a stand-alone application as it should be, that is, it does not require the installation of any Tcl/Tk version in your system to work --- Thanks to Dani Livne (dan@math.tau.ac.il) and Shmuel Tyshberowicz (tyshbe@math.tau.ac.il) for signaling us the problem.

Global performances

There are some improvements regarding the performances of Xeve. For instance the BDD of the outputs are computed only when needed, that is when FSM minimization is invoked. In the previous versions, the BDDs of the outputs were computed at loading time, which could lead to a time penalty.

Bug fixes:

Colors where specified as symbolic names such as "red", "blue". A problem raised up with the color name "darkgrey" which misses in the color specifications of some X distributions. This causes the Tcl/Tk to abort its execution putting Xeve in a buggy state. Colors symbolic names are now replaced by their RGB hexadecimal specification.

In the CHECK OUTPUT verification, some input sequence paths were badly computed, especially when input signals were fixed at some constant value. The status given as result was correct though.

GUI:

The color palette design has changed. Two modes are provided to color signals. A selection mode and a painting mode. The help of Xeve explains the new coloring mechanism.

For operations that may take time, a slider is displayed to visualize the operation progression.