Re: gEDA-user: Resistor values…

[John Doty <jpd@xxxxxxxxx>]

As one of the principal troublemakers, let me comment.

On Dec 29, 2010, at 11:18 AM, DJ Delorie wrote:

> 
> Levente Kovacs <leventelist@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
>> So don't regret it, it is getting common.
> 
> I wish it weren't so common.

Then show a real commitment to the toolkit, not just to pcb for hobbyists. Lip service to the idea that you won't damage the toolkit doesn't count. My own work flow has been damaged by thoughtless changes, most seriously by the "promote footprints by default" change.

>  Such wars are a pointless waste of time
> and serve only to drive valuable contributors away.

You assume contributions are good. But "there's no bottom to worse". gEDA is pretty good as is: there are a lot more ways to damage it than improve it.

If the current crop of developers actually used the tool to some approximation of its breadth of application, I'd feel much better.

>  Soon, the only
> people "working" on gEDA/PCB will be those who enjoy complaining, as
> there will be nobody left willing to wade through the bitter arguments
> and actually write code.

Those of us actually using the toolkit to its limits, and extending it with scripts and plugins, don't count in this valuation. But gEDA's unique strength lies there, I think. There are plenty of free/cheap alternatives for hobbyist use, but not so many when you really need the breadth of gEDA's capabilities.

This doesn't mean I am opposed to hobbyists: indeed, much prototype/experimental work I do is functionally indistinguishable from a hobby approach, so the effectiveness of gEDA for such an approach is important to me personally. I hope we can welcome hobbyists, but I also hope we can avoid channeling the toolkit into hobbyist-specific flows. There's a difference.

> 
> So let me make this perfectly clear - if you're not willing to write
> code, your complaints about how others write code will fall on deaf
> ears.

How about complaints about how others *break* working flows? And could easily do so again in the future?

>  As far as I know, those of us who DO write code, do it for purely
> selfish reasons - we benefit from our own work.  We've said this before,
> it should be no surprize to anyone.
> 
> OTOH if you have suggestions on how to make gEDA/PCB better -

Divorce gEDA from pcb. Create a schematic plugin for pcb, since that seems to be what pcb users want. The flexibility of the gschem/gnetlist flow is unnecessary to hobbyists. The current developers are dangerously pcb-centric.

> easier to
> use, more functional, etc - feel free to voice them.  If you can back
> them up with a solid design and usability models, that's even better.
> Discussions about the details and caveats are to be expected!

Top-down thinking. Inappropriate for a toolkit with unlimited extensibility. The end point will be a tool, full of fat and sugar, useful only to hobbyists.

One of the greatest resources for gEDA is gedasymbols.org. Thank you very much for setting that up. We can't agree on how good symbols should be constructed, but we can nevertheless share them. And it has grown beyond symbols and footprints to other sorts of add-ons. That's the way to proceed, I think: keep gEDA clean, lean, and mean, and solicit contributions that optionally extend it. The core developers should not be gatekeepers for "features".

This approach works very well for other free software: TeX, Perl, Python, ...

The barriers to further "grassroots" improvement of gEDA are failures of factored, orthogonal design. The kind of suggestions you want are superficial. We already know where the source of gEDA's limitations lies: no more suggestions are required. Implementing suggested features piecemeal will only make the tool less flexible, more arcane, and more difficult to repair when repairs are needed.

And if you're really serious about having more developers working on extending the toolkit, the benefits of bottom-up refactoring should be obvious.

> 
> New users - ask your questions without regret.

Yes. Please.

John Doty              Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd.
http://www.noqsi.com/
jpd@xxxxxxxxx




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