Re: gEDA-user: Re: change from ngspice to gnucap

[Svenn Are Bjerkem <svenn@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thursday 20 April 2006 16:59, Stuart Brorson wrote:
> However, I do agree with the other posters who said that you should
> get used to the command line, since when you become more advanced you
> will find that it is much more powerful than using a point-and-drool
> interface.  Using Makefiles to automate building your project is just
> one such example of the power of unix's command line.

You are right when you say that the command line is more powerful than any 
GUI, but then, why do you care to use a graphics tool to capture your 
schematics? You can write your netlists perfectly with ed, sed or vi? Could 
it be that it is easier for the human brain to manage something that is 
graphich than something which is textual?

The real problem is that as soon as you are able to program such tools, you 
are also able to manage Makefiles and then your personal need for such a GUI 
tool is eliminated, and since you don't earn money on writing open-source 
software you don't waste time writing tools /you/ don't need. It's a dog 
bites tail thing.

Even billion dollar tool creators like Cadence don't manage to make simulation 
front-ends which really help the designers. A simulator front-end does not 
need to be fancy, but it has to support a lot of simulator options. And since 
there are at least  more than two simulators, you would have to make the 
front-end modular to support whatever the end-user like to use. And that's 
when the fun stops.

Even if nobody are going to write any of these tools, it would be nice to have 
a collection of the features that users would like to see. If the 
specification for such a program would be there it is easier to start from 
somewhere. 
-- 
Svenn