Re: gEDA-user: Soft and Hard symbols

[Steven Michalske <smichalske@xxxxxxxxx>]

   On Jan 19, 2011, at 12:10 PM, DJ Delorie <[1]dj@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

     gEDA is a toolkit (toolbox), with your logic gnu unix is a tool.

   gEDA is more like a design suite, a collection of tools and related
   stuff.

   And before you said it was a tool.

     Not the computer science meaning of toolkit like GTK.

   We're doing computer science, we have to use the CS meanings of
   things.  A toolkit in CS is primarily a library.

   Not quite,  a library is a component of a toolkit,  but there are many
   other components of a toolkit. Taking qt as an example. There is the ui
   designer application, the core libraries, and documentation.  Naming
   the few top level components.

     gEDA is more than
   just a library.

   See above, a toolkit is much more than just a library.  Would you call
   libpng a toolkit?  No it is a library.

    Would you call OpenOffice a toolkit?

   No,  it produces documents that are largely independent.  Each
   application stands on it's own.

   It has a
   library.  What about Firefox?

   A single application.

   It has a library.  gEDA?  It has a
   library.

   And a few other libraries (libgeda, symbols, scheme, ...)
   Assistant applications that manage those libraries to design circuits.
    Gschem, gattrib, xgschem2pcb, djboxsym,  and many others.
   Documentation like your excellent tutorials for pcb. Guides on how to
   do simulation.
   Just because we are not compiling c code, does not mean that we are not
   a toolkit.  I have now determined that my original statement that not
   in a computer science meaning is wrong,  gEDA meets the compsci meaning
   of toolkit very nicely.
   The argument you are using to decrease the value of John's opinion is
   purely based on semantics.  Our users could not care less about the
   term toolkit verses tool suite vs many applications in a folder.
   The gEDA developers are doing computer science but our users are not.
   The gimp toolkit allows it's users to make gimp like applications,  the
   geda toolkit allows it's users to make electronic designs.
   It's all semantics and context.
   But in John's defense if geda was treated just as a tool ( note the
   singular unified meaning of tool ). Then a huge portion of flexibility
   is lost.  And it would become as limited as many of the other tools out
   there.  Such as eagle, kicad, or, other printed circuit design tools.
   I have seen this in many different projects and designs.  An I work at
   a company with arguably the cream of the crop user interface and user
   experience designers, Apple.  Yet we often drive away power users
   because things were made too simple, for one flow.
   Steve

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References

   1. mailto:dj@xxxxxxxxxxx
   2. mailto:geda-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
   3. http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user


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