Re: gEDA-user: fritzing

[Dave N6NZ <n6nz@xxxxxxxx>]

al davis wrote:
> On Thursday 07 May 2009, Dave N6NZ wrote:
>> Slapping a gui on top of a command line, in 100% of the cases
>> I have personally experienced, has been a disaster.
> 
> NeXT????
I have no experience with NeXT...

> 
> "Slapping" is usually (100%) a disaster, but a well designed 
> system where the GUI and command line are designed to operate 
> together can be the best way. 

A good example is QCad -- the gui and the command entry window work 
together nicely, and you can switch mid-command.  For example: to move 
some objects, you might:
a. click to select move tool
b. click with various selection tools to pick up the pieces that you want,
c. click to select the reference point
d. enter a target point on the command line.

You can choose the mouse or the command line to enter most pieces of data.

Let me tell you, moving a group of holes 3.5mm to the right is a heck of 
a lot easier if you an just say: 3.5,0 on the command line to enter an 
offset, instead of having to precisely mouse 3.5mm x 0mm. You can also 
say things like: (3.5*2+4),(33.4/5) as an X/Y and it does the math for 
you.  There is nothing that gripes me more than having to use a 
calculator to reduce expressions before entering them in a command line 
-- isn't that what computers are supposed to be good at?

Anyway, QCad is a good example of getting  gui and a command line to 
play nicely with each other.  Which is not to say that learning the UI 
is painless... the learning curve is pretty tall.  But once you climb 
it, entry/editing is extremely fast.  I think that in general, the best 
CAD tools will always be this way.  It's not word processing or 
spread-sheeting (to verb a noun...) the tools need to reflect the 
concepts of the problem domain.  For CAD tools, that usually requires 
both precision and graphical presentation/orientation, and above all the 
graphical product is not the end product (as in PowerPoint) but is a 
view into a database of design data that must be both complete and precise.

-dave



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