Re: gEDA-user: Which are the biggest looking gEDA warts?

[Ben Jackson <ben@xxxxxxx>]

On Sun, Feb 25, 2007 at 05:07:59PM -0600, John Griessen wrote:
> >On Sunday 25 February 2007 16:44, Ben Jackson wrote:
> >>I think gEDA has some big warts compared to the
> >>commercial offerings 
> 
> Which are the biggest looking gEDA warts?

Building:
	The fact that the development pace is so fast that the last
	snapshot of PCB is comparatively unusable vs the latest CVS.

	The lack of guidance at build time as to whether PCB should be
	used with GTK or Lesstif.

Integration:
	No visibility of footprints from gschem (where they are assigned).

	No means of mapping symbol pins to package pins other than 1:1 --
	come on, everything is available in 3 or 4 packages these days!
	Even the lowly 7805 regulator can be had in at least TO92, TO220
	and SO8, and the pins don't even match between TO92 and TO220.
	And diodes in SOT-23 are a disaster.

	No back-annotation.

PCB:
	The complete mishmash of footprints for PCB.  No indication of
	which ones are preferable, or tested.  The TO92 symbol I got
	for my first board (for m4) is nonstandard and uses the wrong
	drill size.  The TO92 I got by changing to --use-files violates
	the default drc.  There are probably half a dozen others if I
	went looking.

	The DRC report interface is terrible.

	Rats don't move when you drag a group.  And sometimes they don't
	move in other situations.  Having seen the internals now, I can
	see why it's a crapshoot.

	You can't see an element without placing it in a layout (the
	placement view is the silk, and the library has no image).  Of
	course typically in a gschem->pcb flow you never see an element
	at all until you do your first 'Disperse' to see what's there.

	It's never certain whether a line is going to move when touching
	elements like pins, pads, vias and other lines are moved.

	Rats don't auto-optimize when you complete tracks.

	Rats don't find nearby line segments, only line endpoints.

	The default layer stackup does not match the physical reality.
	I was very confused when I loaded a 4 layer board and I could
	see solder side lines between the component side lines and an
	inner plane!

	Too many keyboard operations require either taking your hand off
	the mouse or reaching across the keyboard -- important ones should
	be focussed on the left hand.

	Some things don't undo, like changing board size.

	There are lots of DRC parameters that PCB doesn't know.

	The whole via/thermal/plane thing.

gschem
	Component window doesn't remember size.

	Component window doesn't alphabetize.

	The default components are poorly organized.

	The component selection doesn't have any nice quick features
	like favorites, or advanced filters.

	You have to restart to update available component lists.

	Adding large numbers of attirbutes (like assigning packages
	or resistor values) is clumsy becuase the add-attribute window
	does not remember any of your selections from use to use.  Only
	nets have any kind of smart behavior.

	Adding attributes requires too much mouse work (selecting,
	careful pointing to position the attribute, then you use
	both hands to type a net name, hand back to mouse, etc).

	The text attach point for refdes and value (and any attribute,
	really) is random among the components, and:

	The printed output doesn't use the screen font, so your hand-
	positioned text sometimes moves quite a bit because the attachment
	was away from the object.

	The log window logs too much meaningless crap, and it has no
	filter.

	Completed nets can easily be broken by moving lines when you
	wanted to drag corners.

	The PNG output is not smooth, and rendering large and scaling
	externally doesn't work because the lines are too thin.

-- 
Ben Jackson AD7GD
<ben@xxxxxxx>
http://www.ben.com/


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