Re: gEDA-user: gEDA just hit SlashDotOrg

[DJ Delorie <dj@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> > Assuming you know how to use chainsaws in general, of course.
> 
> Yes, and that last sentence is my point. gEDA is a chainsaw in a
> world of where most only know handsaws.

I think you're trying too hard to bend my analogy to your needs.  I
suspect that, no matter what anyone else says, you'll figure out a way
to say that our users are too stupid to do what we want to make them
do, when in reality, they shouldn't *have* to adapt to our way - we
should offer them something that's familiar to them, even if it's just
a starting point, in order to reduce the barriers to them trying gEDA.

I've spent some time recently with Xilinx's ISE tool.  It's to FPGAs
what gEDA is to PCBs.  It consists of a number of command line tools
wrapped in a GUI.  When I first installed it, I didn't want to figure
out all the command line options for all the tools, I wanted to write
some verilog and put it in a chip.  I wanted *results* and I wanted
them *fast*.  The GUI helped me do that.  Later on, I figured out the
command line tools so I could put them in a Makefile, but I never
would have gotten to that point if I hadn't had the GUI to help me get
started.

gEDA needs to be like that.  It needs to - at least at first - offer
an easy and OBVIOUS workflow for the common users' needs.  The
learning curve for doing basic stuff should be small.  If the user
sticks to it, more options are available later.  Let them learn all
those things as they're needed, not force them to learn it all up
front.

> They expect it to work like a hand tool.

As a woodworker, I find this analogy inappropriate - hand tools
require *much* more care and tuning than, say, power tools.  Anyone
can pick up a chain saw and cut firewood.  How many people can put a
mirror edge on a hand plane and use it to flatten a table?  Anyone can
cut a straight line with a table saw.  How many can do so with a
ryoba?  How many people even know what a ryoba *is*?

We're offering gEDA to people who *are* familiar with this type of
tool.  If we make it too different than all the other tools of this
type, people won't use it only because they can't figure out how to
get their common tasks done easily enough.


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