Re: gEDA-user: Editing elements in PCB is too complicated

[Dan McMahill <dan@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Bob Paddock wrote:
> On Thursday 10 November 2005 08:44 pm, DJ Delorie wrote:
>
> > > > a)  Fix the bug yourself.
> > >
> > > That is always the inevitable reply when some one criticizes an Open
> > > Source program.  :-(
> >
> > But it is why *I* am working on pcb ;-)
>
>
> Yes.  That is why I'm working on wxPCB too (the Windows port of PCB using the 
> wxWidget set for the curious.  Figured out how to get dock-able windows 
> working today). 
>
> Still I always find seeing the "fix it yourself, you have the Source" very 
> irritating.  I have had to fix just about every program I have every used 
> that I had the source for, but I never want to do it.  Seems to say more 
> about the state of software development to me than anything else, especially 
> Open Source projects.  "Here it is.  We'll do the documentation someday, 
> maybe."  "Sorry the code is so convoluted it has built up over years" are 
> just a couple of things I've seen in many Open Source projects, frustrating.

sadly, things are not much better in some very expensive software.  I 
use a tool which is horribly expensive and there is no command line 
editing in their interactive shell.  With the sources, I could have 
recovered all of my keystrokes to add readline-like support with all the 
typing I would have saved.  That same tool has literally 10's of 
thousands of pages of manuals which appear to have been written by a 
machine.  Stuff like:  "The ?crypticFlag option lets you set the cryptic 
flag",  "Set an appropriate mystery value in the mystery value box on 
the setup form".

-Dan