Re: gEDA-user: On the nitty-gritty of user-experienced problems

[sdb@xxxxxxxxxx (Stuart Brorson)]

Hi --

1.  The reason most people use off the shelf distros is to avoid
dependency hell.  You are currently trapped in dependency hell because
you prefer to roll your own Linux system.  That's fine, but don't
complain when you get bitten by dependency problems.  In any event,
I'd imagine you're smart enough to figure it out eventually.  And
you'll be a more knowledgeable person for having been through the
exercise.  

2.  Please separate your GTK problems from your gEDA problems.  We
can't help you with GTK, at least on this list.  

3.  Please provide specific details about specific problems you
experience with gEDA.  We developers can fix specific problems, but we
can't do anything with generalized grousing.

4.  As for step-by-step documentation about how to do things using
gEDA. . . .  Well, I've written some, particularly about how to do
SPICE.  Bob Wilson wrote an excellent tutorial about taking a board
from schematic capture to layout.  Dan has also contributed a HOWTO,
and Ales has written tons of documentation.  You are clearly a gEDA
power user. Why don't you write some documentation to help newbies
install and configure gEDA? 

5.  Finally, as for including GTK in the install media, I have thought
about doing that with the gEDA CD.  The problem is that GTK is fraught
with dependicies, and I don't want to turn my fairly simple Python
installer into a monster program.  Therefore, I support a few common
Linux configs, such as RH9, SuSE9, FC1, & FC2.  I test the installer on
these configs to verify that it works.  On other configs, you're on
your own; I can't test and support all possible Linux configurations.
The same holds true for gEDA in general.

Note that this is a common strategy in the commercial world.  Reality
is a very messy, complicated thing.  It's impossible to support
a program (or anything other engineered product) on every possible
configuration which it might experience.   Therefore, one specifies up
front what the supported configurations are. Beyond that, the customer
is on his own.

Stuart


> 
> Hello
> 
> 1) gtk has bug in the web version of INSTALL instructions. It
> says that Xft must be installed. "installed" is an ambiguous word.
> Presence of ambiguous words leads to failures when a users tries to
> do exactly what's in INSTALL and still fails, because uses different
> meaning of the ambiguous word than the author meant.
> 
> "installed" can mean:
> a) the package is present on the system and is not corrupted
> b) the package has been installed in the past and was not deliberately
> removed or deliberately corruped, only installations or removals of
> other packages were made, and doesn't show any signs of corruption in
> everyday usage of the system.
> 
> If you install freetype2 into /usr, then install xft, then remove freetype2,
> then install freetype2 into /usr/local, you get a system where GTK doesn't
> compile even if you follow web version of INSTALL exactly, provided that you
> think that "installed" means (b)
> 
> It can be solved elegantly - you just have to write "installed correctly"
> and then either
> a) GTK writes a guide how to test whether a Xft installation is still
> installed correctly from all points of view on arbitrarily given system
> without knowledge of prior installation and deinstallation actions on the
> system, or
> b) Xft writes a guide how to test Xft's installation on arbitrary system,
> and GTK links to this guide, or
> 
> 2) fontconfig is one of transitive dependencies of GTK.
> 
> fotonconfig homepage has bad URL in the download link on the title page.
> Instead of http://fontconfig.org/release, there is
> http://fontconfig.org/wiki/http:/release
> Double presence of "http" and single slash instead of double after the
> latter occurrence strongly suggest there is something wrong with the URL ;-)
> 
> It is not possible to download fontconfig unless you reverse engineer their
> web and somehow magically guess the right URL. If it happens to me, I assume
> also other users will be annoyed by this. This may take a lot of time to
> resolve, depends on your luck when trying various URLs.
> 
> 3) fontconfig titlepage contains an ambiguosity that prevents you from
> understanding what is the latest stable version, if 2.2 or 2.2.3.
> I won't put the whole details again here, I will just supply bugzilla item
> URL here:
> http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2282
> 
> I am already trying to install new version of gEDA for second day.
> I do not expect Windows users with Orcad will have problems with:
> * INSTALL ambiguosity
> * bad URLs at system component webpages
> * ambiguosities in transitive dependencies' projects' webpages
> They just click (and pay).
> 
> I think the users may be even less experienced in IT than me (I got a
> Master's degree in IT at Charles University (founded 1348) from operating
> systems, compilers and networks) - for example, they may be EE professionals
> with little knowledge of IT and still they might want to use gEDA.
> 
> Nor is this a problem of the fact that a distribution is not present on my
> computer. Neither gEDA nor GTK states any requirements that any distribution
> must be present on the computer for them to work. Actually, they work without
> a distribution in most other cases.
> 
> Unless problems like this are resolved, I expect average Joe EE will have sever
> problems installing gEDA.
> 
> I expect people from RedHat who administe GTK will quarrel about me that
> it's users fault when the INSTALL is ambiguous. 
> 
> I have been already quarelling with Linux kernel people over absence of
> a specification or user's manual on their kernel. I asked one friend who
> does coder at multinational gigant firm and he confirmed it's common in
> programming to specify every small piece of code. The Linux people simply
> refused to even admit that such thing should exist.
> 
> So I don't have illusions about maintainers understanding what's the purpose of
> INSTALL file. Mantras like "the code is the ultimate specification",
> "understood something different than we meant? It's your problem! That's
> because you don't know how the internals work!","You got what you paid for" and
> similar are common problem in free technology world and I think they have to be
> uprooted prior to free technology serve their purpose completely: help people.
> 
> So I suggest:
> 1) either write a petition against INSTALL ambiguoisities and pester the
> maintainers until they fix these problem (these problems can be easily blamed
> on the users but are the very core of the fact so much people are having more
> problems using Linux than Windows)
> 2) or supply gEDA simply with it's own copy of GTK etc.
> 
> Did you ever encounder a Windows distribution? RedHat Windows, SuSE
> Windows, debian Windows, slackware Windows, mandrake Windows, etc.? No.
> People are installing and deinstalling programs on Windows manually.
> 
> Why does it work? Because in the Windows word, people are less lazy to write a
> step-by-step guide how to use the program correctly. Sometimes it also
> doesn't work, but less often than with Linux. The guide is often somehow
> incorporated in the installer program.
> 
> Cl<
> 
>