Re: gEDA-user: Solving the light/heavy symbol problem

[Aaron Turner <synfinatic@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Everyone,

I'm a new gEDA user and someone who's just learning electronics design
and basically everything that comes with it.  I started using Eagle
(since that's what most people in the Arduino community use), but the
limitations of the free/non-profit versions + the cost of moving to a
professional license should I ever want to sell my project for a few
bucks, made me quickly realized that Eagle wasn't going to work for
me.

Anyways, there's been quite a lot said about "new users" like me and
so I figured I'd give my .02:

As a new user I don't care what direction you go.  Light, heavy,
whatever.  I suspect most gEDA newbies are like me: pretty confused
what the differences really mean in practice.  You guys discuss back
and forth which is "better" which is great, but not only do I have no
clue, I don't even have the experience to make an informed decision.
Mostly, I'm just hoping to find the parts I'm using.  For the rest, I
just want some directions of how to make the symbols/footprints/etc of
a good enough quality that not only do they work, but that I can share
them with the rest of the gEDA community.

Mostly, I just want gEDA as a project to say "this is the officially
supported and recommended way of doing things, adjust your workflow
accordingly."

At first I thought creating symbols was hard, and so I asked around
and learned it was actually really easy and I can churn them out fast
enough where it isn't an issue anymore.  Point is, I never thought
this would be "easy", but I'm willing to put in the effort if I know
which direction I should go.   If there is a consistent story about
how this is supposed to work, I'm sure people can improve the
UI/experience to make it easier, but right now I just feel a bit lost
and that makes learning a lot harder then anything else.

That and newbies like me aren't very likely to help code- we don't
have enough vested in the project to do that and in my case at least,
I've got my own projects that I'm supposed to be working on.  What
newbies like me are more then willing and able to do though is create
symbols/footprints etc.  Just need to make it clear what you want and
make it easy to submit for review/inclusion.

Thanks for reading,
Aaron

-- 
Aaron Turner
http://synfin.net/ ;        Twitter: @synfinatic
http://tcpreplay.synfin.net/ - Pcap editing and replay tools for Unix & Windows
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary
Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
    -- Benjamin Franklin
"carpe diem quam minimum credula postero"


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