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

[Dave McGuire <mcguire@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Jan 14, 2005, at 3:57 PM, Karel Kulhavy wrote:
> > 2) or supply gEDA simply with it's own copy of GTK etc.
>
> Yes and I forgot to note that the hyper-fossil widget kit of PCB is
> what makes it so easy to install and compile.
>
> It is ugly, but it may be better to have to click aside of menu than 
> sometimes
> not be able to install the program at all.

  This is an excellent point.

  However, one must not lose sight of the fact that "old" doesn't 
necessarily make it bad.  There are some things that truly *are* 
ancient, outmoded and should be consigned to the dustbin of history 
(the x86 architecture comes to mind) but Xt, although it's not pretty, 
isn't one of them.  It's fast, it's universally supported, and it 
*always* Just Works.

  Last I heard, we were building useful tools, not trying to win a 
beauty contest.  I really don't care if the PCB window on my UltraSPARC 
doesn't look like Marisa Tomei...because at the end of the day, I have 
a working circuit board.  And isn't that what it's all about?

  Speaking as an experienced developer who's done quite a bit of Xt 
programming, I agree that the UI should be abstracted out of PCB.  But 
tying it inextricably to some runs-on-Linux-x86-only widget set would 
be a mistake.  If I can't build it on my UltraSPARC or my OS X machine, 
I can't run it...which means I'll be stuck at [what would become] an 
old release of PCB.

  Portability is important.  It's also not difficult to achieve.

         -Dave

--
Dave McGuire              "I've watched Harley people throw up
Cape Coral, FL                      on the ceiling."    -Krissi