Redesign translation system to allow proper unit translation when getting parameters

[neuralensemble]

Redesign translation system to allow proper unit translation when getting parameters

[apdavison]

apdavison wrote on 2008-02-02 17:07:39:

The new translation dictionary is more complex, having entries for the translated name, the forward transformation and the reverse transformation. However, the specification of the dictionary has been simplified by providing a function, common.build_translations(), which constructs the translation dictionary from a list of tuples:

• For the simple case of a name translation only, the tuple should contain the PyNN name followed by the simulator name.
• For the case of a unit translation as well, the tuple should have a third element, the quantity to multiply the PyNN parameter value by to get the simulator parameter value.
• If the simulator parameter depends on several of the PyNN parameters, the tuple's third element should be a string to be evaluated in the context of the parameter dictionary giving the forward translation, the fourth element a string for the reverse translation
  See any of the cells.py files for examples.

A translate1() method has been added to the StandardCellType class, since oldneuron still uses the original translate(), and since oldneuron will be deleted soon it didn't seem worth converting it.

The other modules were all converted to the new system as of r198.