Thanks, Luke, for mentioning Alliance. I had forgotten about it, but now
have read this book which has a nice example of using it:

http://www.cc.toin.ac.jp/sc/palacios/openbook/vlsie.pdf

An existance proof for Alliance documentation!  Thanks for dredging
this up!

Honestly, I have never seen Alliance documentation before.  This is
more of a tutorial than actual proguram documentation, but it does the
job.

Slightly discouraging is the line that the (NERO) router can handle "up
to 4K gates".  

Another discouraging line is "Real pads are specific to
a foundry and must be designed to fit to those of Alliance".

  The rate
at which I came up with discouraging lines by randomly perusing the
document was also discouraging. . .