Re: gEDA-user: wxPCB Goals

[Bob Paddock <bob.paddock@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Friday 02 December 2005 01:44 pm, DJ Delorie wrote:

> > If you're going to drag out the "don't use it, it's not free
> > software" argument, please back it up with a reason specific to the
> > problem at hand.
> 
> How about "the people who write the documentation don't want to pay
> money for tools they can't fix or share, when there are comparable
> tools they can get for free and can fix and share" ?

There are a lot of free tools for doing 'help' file formats:

Microsoft HTML Help 1.4 SDK
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?URL=/library/tools/htmlhelp/chm/hh1start.htm

Free Help Authoring, Manual and Documentation Writing Tools
http://www.thefreecountry.com/programming/helpauthoring.shtml

http://xchm.sf.net has links to tools as well.

Keep in mind that the target audience for wxPCB is Windows.  It is just as likely that a Windows
user may want to contribute something.  To a windows user things like texinfo et.al. are completely
foreign.  The lowest common denominator, that is cross platform, seems to be RTF.  Sad day when
software development has to sink to the lowest common denominator tools because of lawyers
(Licenses).

A refresher for anyone new to the list.  I want to use PCB at work.  The only way that is going to happen
is that if there is a version of PCB that is a native windows application, native in all respects including 'help'.
The IT guy at work has told me "Linux is a toy", they put out a edict that said my Linux laptop was
not allowed in the building (just got in a Linux SBC that I'm considering for a product, this should be fun).
IT has come around and nuked Cygwin on my machine, they needed a scapegoat when they could not 
restore a backup tape,  some of the Cygwin files "had funny permissions
on them"; got called in to the VP's office to explain why.  Hope that explains my  motivation for wxPCB.
If anyone is taking  resumes the whole wxPBC 'help' issues becomes moot. :-)

> How about "The license for PCB (GPL) requires that sources must be in
> the preferred form for editing, and any tools required to build or
> compile those sources must be included in the distribution, unless
> they're normally distributed as part of the operating system" ?

My OS works just fine without X, GTK, or wxWidgets, distro doesn't come with them either,
so that is going to make for a very large download, and hideously long build time.  :-)
 
> How about "that tool doesn't work on my obscure operating system, so
> I'm excluded from using it unless I can build it from source myself" ?

Any one for PCB on the Imlac?  Only two working ones known in the world,
can't think of anything more obscure.    I have been toying with converting some
of those old Imlac games to a ARM micro.  Mainly to see how a 1968 RISC machine,
with 4K of core holds up to a moder part for a code density comparison.