Re: gEDA-user: PCB suggestion

[Dan McMahill <dan@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Jan 10, 2005 at 10:15:40PM -0500, Daniel Nilsson wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 09, 2005 at 10:30:51AM -0500, Dave McGuire wrote:
> > On Jan 8, 2005, at 12:18 PM, Stuart Brorson wrote:
> > >2.  The biggest reason to not use XML is that we already have a
> > >working file format with associated file reading and writing code.
> > >Transitioning to XML is a major, architectural change to PCB.
> > >Everybody talks about changing the program; almost nobody actually
> > >implements the changes.  If I had my druthers for PCB, I'd rather see
> > >developer effort used to upgrade the UI to GTK, rather than wasted on
> > >migrating to an XML file format -- a change which would be invisible
> > >to ordinary users.
> > 
> >   While I'd certainly like to see some look & feel improvements in the 
> > basic UI elements, I think GTK would be a mistake.  Contrary to popular 
> > belief, all the world is *not* a PC running Linux, and GTK can be a 
> > cast-iron pain in the ass on anything but.
> > 
> 
> Dave,
> 
> While working on fixing the problems with the mode buttons only
> working on some combinations of X and window managers I realized how
> old the Athena Widgets are by now. As other people noticed, finding
> good documentation is a little hard but more importantly getting help
> is not easy at all. I asked for help in a few related newsgroups but
> the answers I got were not terribly helpful.
> 
> I think another aspect that certainly applied to me was that my
> interest for spending hours trying to understand how the Athena
> Widgets work just to fix a stupid bug felt like a waste of
> time. Spending that time on GTK+ though I felt was more rewarding
> because I could actually use that for new program development.
> 
> I reached the conclusion that for PCB to survive in the long term a
> GUI based on a more modern widget set then the Athena widets will
> probably be required. This is in order to attract new developers to
> have an interest in improving and expanding the GUI. Doing a little
> research and following similar discussions on the GTK list I think
> baseing a layout program on the GnomeCanvas would be fairly
> straightforward and should give good performance. I have had plans for
> a while now to write a simple "proof of concept" GUI for PCB based on
> this but it seems like you would disagree that this is the right
> path. So my question is to you (and others), you you think there is a
> need for a new GUI and what widget set should it be based on in that
> case (besides GTK+ and the Gnome widgets) ?
 
I like GTK+, but I really really dislike it when you have to start
pulling in all that gnome stuff.  In my experience thats when you really
start having major pain.  Despite the age of Xaw, one advantage is 
that you a pretty light dependency list.  That said, I'd still
like to see something newer.  

I'm not a QT fan.  Despite the claims I've heard to its cross-platform
nature, I've had fairly bad luck with having it run correctly on
non-intel-architecture systems.  For example, last I checked I couldnt
even build QT on my alpha.  Some piece cores out while trying to
build its self.  Of course gnome and its 50 gazillion dependencies has
issues on most non-linux-x86 boxes too which is why I prefer GTK with
as few extras as possible.

-Dan

--