Re: gEDA-user: gEDA just hit SlashDotOrg (why live CD wouldn't work)

[evan foss <evanfoss@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, Aug 2, 2009 at 7:35 PM, Bob Paddock<bob.paddock@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 2, 2009 at 6:30 PM, evan foss<evanfoss@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> On Sun, Aug 2, 2009 at 1:11 AM, igor2<igor2@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>> On Sat, 1 Aug 2009, evan foss wrote:
>>>
>>>>You know the mechanical people have a livecd or I think it is dvd now.
>>>>Perhaps we should have an electronics live disk of some kind?
>>>
>>> For a few semesters I was teaching gschem/pcb for undergrads. In the very
>>> first semester I tried with live cd (one I built myself) but it didn't
>>> work out as good as I expected...
>>
>> That is a group of people who didn't want to learn something new. I am
>> not being anti windows, I just expect students to want to learn.
>
> "Real men program in C" was just posted on Embdded.com
>
> http://www.embedded.com/design/218600142 :
>
> "I learned the quiche-like phrase assigns both a high difficulty
> factor to the C language and a certain age group to C programmers. Put
> simply, C was too hard for programmers of their [young] generation to
> bother mastering."

The end is near.

>>> - command line; most of windows users believe if you need to type commands
>
> Most Windows users simply can't type at all. I've seen that far to often
> when I'm trying to teach one to use a program. :-(
>
>> Seriously? Do they try to use the same tools for all tasks.
>
> The ones that are good with EMACS will.  Especially with the new Butterfly
> command in 23.1. :-)

Sorry as a VIM user I just don't agree. :)

>> How many go home and sharpen pencils with a food processor?
>
> My onion dicier might work better at that task...

LOL

>> Oh come on. I when I was an undergrad (which ended in May) my program
>> insisted we all learn autocad with the funny hotkeys and that is a
>> program that working in electronics I will likely never use.
>
> AutoCAD is very valuable in electronics for the correct tasks, like
> board dimensions and footprints.

True.

> When I was in school I thought I'd never need English, who cares
> what you end your sentences with [SIC].  Now years later I find

Yes I know my grammer is frequently faulty.

> I'm writing publications for places like CDC/NIOSH, posting messages
> like this for many to read etc.  Never Say Never.

Fair enough.

>> In most GUI's now the mounted file systems come up with icons on the
>> desktop. Since you really shouldn't work on files directly on a USB
>> stick I don't see the problem with copying them when they are done in
>> the GUI.
>>
>> This could all be solved by making a live USB key with a fat32
>> partition to transfer files between windows and linux on.
>
> Booting a LiveCD of any flavor in some companies is grounds for getting
> fired.  "Its the IT way or the highway" usually to the detriment of the company
> in the long term.

See in the places I have worked it hasn't been an issue. Both
organizations had the attitude that what ever you need or want to use
for the job is what you should get. This is of course budget limited.

>> I think most of your problems were user issues not usability issues.
>
> "Blame the user" doesn't really help in any issue.

Ok. My attitude was wrong. Sorry guys.

> "What's important is not that we can conceive the idea, but that when
> we actually test it on people you discover it doesn't work... your
> intuition is wrong." - Daniel M. Russell (IBM Almaden / Xerox PARC)
>
> There are published user guidelines for GUIs:
>
> "User Experience":
> http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExperience/index.html
> http://developer.apple.com/ue/index.html
>
> "Design Specifications and Guidelines - Visual Design":
> http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms997619.aspx
>
> "GNOME Human Interface Guidelines":
> http://live.gnome.org/UsabilityProject
>
> "GNOME Human Interface Guidelines"
> http://library.gnome.org/devel/hig-book/stable/
>
> Those are from the wxWidgets reference I have at hand, I'm sure
> there are ones for QT and KDE and most others as well.
>
>> John Dotty made a good point that if the windows users want it let one
>> of them maintain it.
>
> I agree, and I've been the most vocal over the years here about it, and keep
> trying to get there.  Alas like everyone else here we have day jobs
> and other commitments to keep us from doing what we would really
> like to be doing.
>
>> This community exists because all of us wanted an
>> open source EDA tool. If people really wanted a windows one then where
>> are they?
>
> They are at KiCAD http://www.lis.inpg.fr/realise_au_lis/kicad/ ,
>
>  http://www.freepcb.com/  note the links to TinyCAD for schematic,
> LTSpice for simulation, and OrCAD Demo (At one time there was a much
> older full package at the Yahoogroup I mentioned in the other message)
> http://www.freepcb.com/resources.htm ,
>
> AutoTrax http://www.kov.com/ (seems to switch back and forth between
> open source and not open source over the years, not sure of the
> current state)
>
> I probably could go on without much effort.

So then why do people still keep coming here demanding gEDA be more
like those programs?

>> be volunteering to help maintain a windows release.
>
> Maintaining it is far different than getting it to work correctly in
> the first place.
> I can't say much about gEDA (the schematic part) on Windows as I don't
> use it there, but PCB I do use weekly on Windows and it has some
> significant problems related
> to printing and library management.  One of my Windows printing
> patches is in the patch tracker, need to work more on some of the
> other related sections.  I've started to think it would be easier just
> to start off with wxWidgets from scratch after looking
> at what it takes to get PCB to print on Windows as it currently stands
> on Windows (I'm spoiled by how easy things are to do with wxWdigets in
> comparisons with raw GTK).

Oh. I though there was a cygwin build or something from a long time
ago and it was just not maintained.

>
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-- 
http://www.coe.neu.edu/~efoss/
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