Re: gEDA-user: wishful UI

[Stefan Salewski <mail@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 2010-08-16 at 13:55 -0400, Rick Collins wrote:

> 
> I guess I am not thinking that there is a problem with 
> implementation.  My concern is value.  How are these ideas to be used 
> by... well, the users?  After all, this is the geda-user list, 
> no?  If getting the work done is the hardest part of it all, then 
> maybe I can help...
> 

Of course, my concern is value too.
But what people regard as important is very different. Here in Germany
most people related to electronics seems to give visible appearance a
very high priority. I have seen many complaints about gEDA/PCB to be
ugly. All what does not look like Windows7 or MacOSX is regarded ugly
and unusable by that people. (Some Linux users now regard Gnome as ugly
too...) So one may consider optical tuning of GUI most valuable?

For the concept of defining attributes at the schematic level:
You may know my DSO board. Doing that layout took me 500 hours of
carefully work. That is OK. A smart layouter may need less time, maybe
only 300 hours with PCB. I think that layouter will take 50 $ per hour,
so I have to pay 15000 $. Or I have to do next layout again myself. But
that layout will be more complicated, it will contain fast differential
signal pairs and BGA footprints. Should be more than 500 hours for me. I
think attributes can support my work, so I will need only 350 hours.
Maybe much less with autorouter support. That would make me happy.

Some of our users may want a nice shiny toy with a colorful GUI. That is
OK, and may be useful for very small hobby projects. Some users may be
more interested in better support of larger designs.

Of course, transferring the attribute stuff from schematics to the PCB
layout tool is difficult in many points: It concerns gschem, gnetlist
and PCB. And we have to ensure that we do not break something and do it
in a clean, professional way.  

      



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