Designer's Workbench: The Programmer Environment

Designer's Workbench is an interactive front end, using the PWB/ operating system,1,2 to a variety of circuit design-aid application programs. The system is designed to be convenient to use at all levels of user expertise. This is accomplished primarily through a consistent user interface and extensive on-line tutorials. A discussion of the useroriented design philosophy and features upon which the system is based can be found in Ref. 3. As well as being user-oriented, however, DWB is also programmer-oriented. This means that programming simplicity, consistency, and versatility are as important in the overall UNIX * UNIX is a trademark of Bell Laboratories. 1793 design as are issues of user convenience. The special considerations given to the programming environment of DWB are the subject of this paper. We first discuss basic objectives for the environment and the properties they require. The methods and mechanisms used in fulfilling these objectives are then discussed in detail.