Re: gEDA-user: Ben mode feature request

[Vanessa Ezekowitz <vanessaezekowitz@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, 31 Oct 2010 20:39:40 -0600
John Doty <jpd@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> 
> On Oct 31, 2010, at 2:31 PM, Markus Hitter wrote:
> 
> > Then, there are many people which know "cp xxx yyy", but prefer to avoid
> > it anyways. You want to catch these.
> 
> You don't want to dumb down the toolkit [...] gEDA is the toolkit for
> *experts* doing *great* things *now*. Let's not lose that. One size does
> not fit all here.

Ok... Sorry, John, but I have to stop you right there, as you are completely missing the point.

To clarify Markus' example somewhat:  I don't want to have to fire up a terminal every time I want to copy some random file to/from a thumbdrive, memory card, etc.  Sometimes, I'd rather just plug the damn thing in and let a file manager pop up so that I can handle it from there.  It isn't because I can't, it's because I don't *want* to.

On the other hand, I use a simple script that uses rsync to back up a few important partitions and directories and take logs of the activity, which is best run from a command line, because for that particular case, it is the right tool for the job.

<rant mode="on">

To bring this back into context, I am by no means an expert in electronics or programming, but I am reasonably good at the few things I do with gEDA and PCB, at least so say the other folks who are in my particular field.  Your implication here is that these tools are and should be reserved only for experts, which is akin to saying that everyone else should basically just uninstall their copies of these programs and get out of the way, even if the intent is to help improve the project.  Um, no.

In the old days it was common, if not *expected*, for a person to first draw his or her schematic on paper  and then lay out a board on one or another physical media prior to etching.  Hell some people *still* do it this way if it is more convenient to do so.  What we didn't have back then was an easy way to do circuit simulation - you did your truth tables and math on paper, built a prototype on plugboard, and then prayed that it passed the initial smoke test when you switched it on.

Now we have easy to use systems to allow one to design a schematic and ensure that the board created from it is at least electrically identical, so far as the copper is concerned anyway.  We just need the equivalent for circuit simulation.  Some reasonably good GUI tools already exist for this (Xcircuit, QUCS), they're just not part of (or compatible with) the gEDA suite.

Just because one is doing this on a computer instead of paper does NOT mean one should be forced to use the command line to do it.  Computers are supposed to make things easier for people, and allow them to be more productive; that's what they were created for.  If introducing a computer to a user's workflow doesn't improve his or her productivity, then either the computer is simply the wrong tool altogether, or the person responsible for the software therein is the one who is at fault.  In the commercial world, if the software were the problem, one would of course blame the admin for installing ineffective programs, or the programmer(s) for failing to understand what users really need.  I hesitate to make that claim against gEDA, since it is a *very* effective tool set, and the need for improvement is clearly recognized (or we wouldn't be discussing this).

The existence of a GUI does not have to preclude the use of equivalent command-line utilities.

</rant>

-- 
"There are some things in life worth obsessing over.  Most
things aren't, and when you learn that, life improves."
http://starbase.globalpc.net/~ezekowitz
Vanessa Ezekowitz <vanessaezekowitz@xxxxxxxxx>


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