Re: gEDA-user: Usability issues of gEDA + PCB

[John Luciani <jluciani@xxxxxxxxx>]

I believe your install problems go away if you use Stuart's ISO image.
I have installed (painlessly) using the last few releases.

(* jcl *)

On 9/9/05, Karel Kulhavy <clock@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hello
> 
> Would it be possible to do following changes to improve usability? About
> 3 people now want to help the Ronja project and explaining them gEDA and
> PCB is a pain in the ass. They get stuck on something every couple of
> hours when trying to work with gEDA and PCB.
> 
> All contributions to Ronja are in Eagle, because people say "sorry, gEDA
> is unusable for me".
> 
> So Ronja has unofficial RX TMD PCB, unofficial RX SMD PCB, unofficial
> TX TMD PCB, unofficial TX SMD PCB, unofficial CPLD Twister, but these
> cannot be merged into the development, because the former 4 were
> designed in Protel and the latter one in Eagle, because gEDA is pain
> in the ass for them to learn and use.
> 
> Would it be possible to do the following changes to increase usability?
> 1) Merge PCB into gEDA so it gets installed all at once. If installing
>    PCB is an issue, add --disable-pcb into ./configure
> 2) Make the install process one ./configure && make && make install if
>    possible. Installing gEDA fresh always takes me like 1-2 days because
>    it's like 20 libraries where you have to guess the versions correctly
>    and if you fail, you have to retry etc.
> 3) Make a gEDA install guide for trained monkeys, so they don't have to
>    spend 2 hours figuring out what combinations of libraries they should
>    download, and then it won't work for them anyway, because it's
>    PITA to install gtk 2.2 in debian
> 4) Update the PCB documentation so the format is described correctly
>    (one needed to edit solderstrip symbol source but I told him this URL
>     describes the internal format, but sorry, it's obsolete and not true
>     anymore, there is different number of fields, they are shuffled
>     around, and the resolution is now also 100 times higher)
> 5) Put into PCB library that every time you select a package, it writes
>    "put bla_bla into footprint= attribute if you want this package in
>     gschem"
> 6) If 5 is not possible, put a trained monkey algorithm into PCB doc
>    which would enable one to translate PCB library entry as seen on
>    the library menu into footprint= attribute.
> 7) Make gEDA and PCB stop complaining 100 error messages every time the
>    version changes slightly. It's like Microsoft Word - even two
>    neighbour versions are mutually incompatible.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> CL<
>