Re: gEDA-user: CERN goes for KiCAD

[John Hudak <jjhudak@xxxxxxxxx>]

   Um, with all due respect....I don't consider myself 'simple
   minded'....I am a professional EE, been working in this industry for a
   28+ years, and have a few technical advanced degrees.I have both worked
   in and managed groups of EEs doing state of the art EE  research and
   design. So, while I am not a hard core EDA user, I have used commercial
   tools from time to time, ranging from schematic capture to all out
   intricate board spins. I looked at opensource EDA tools perhaps 10- yrs
   ago, and decided Eagle was a better option. I decided to look
   again...my first impression about geda: I liked the philosophy (loosely
   integrated, extensible, multioptioned tool approach).  I looked
   further...a lot of the last revised dates on documents and some tool
   drops were YEARS - giving the distinct impression of a dead/dormant
   effort.  I polled a few NG that cater to practicing EEs...gEDA feedback
   was non-existant.
   Since I needed to get up to speed fairly quickly, I decided to RTFM and
   try it.  While I fully acknowledge the "difficulty" of producing good
   documentation, without conveying the mechanics to potential users, you
   will loose them, guaranteed. (as an aside, that comment smacks of high
   power, overly clever sw developers who relish that fact they can
   program anything but can't keep focused on the real requirements).  The
   more I read, the more I figured I had to 'write my own' scripts to do
   things (after all, if things don't work what else is there to do?). Um,
   I did not expect that I'd have to do that much additional work to get
   what I needed. As my attempts to do simple things resulted in trying
   yet another tool/approach, the frustrations built, productivity went to
   zero.
   Another impression, look at the websites of the two tools.  One is
   definitely more polished than the other. That casts a big impression on
   potential users. If I have to hunt through 6 different websites  and
   then burrow down 4-5 levels to find out the 'better' tutorial or find
   out how to do a BoM,  that is one sure way to put off potential new
   users.
   Hmmm, free speech and free beer...I know there is no 'free lunch'...I
   have contributed to some open source efforts in the past, by way of
   small  how to's, specialized scripts to do things, etc.  I even started
   to 'clean up' the 2006 tutorial as I went along, figuring I'd 'give
   back'....As I progressed, It became clear that it would be a much
   bigger job than what I had time for.
   and finally: "Smart people
   seems to have not really big problems with current gEDA state."
   If you believe that, you are seriously deluding yourselves. I came
   across posts from two university instructors who gave up using the
   tools (I would not consider them 'simple minded').  In a nutshell, user
   frustration got the best of them.
   I gave one of my summer students the job of trying to use
   gschem+pcb....he plain gave up b/c of inefficient use of his time.  So,
   while this is a small sample, it may be wise to consider these issues
   as the project moves forward.
   OK, well sorry about the critical posts - it is not personal.  If I
   violated protocol, I apologize.
   Some insightful ppl made some very good observations about the CERN
   situation...perhaps those observations may lead to changes for the
   good.

   On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 8:18 AM, Stefan Salewski <[1]mail@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
   wrote:

     Hello John,
     I am really happy (and a bit of surprised) that critical postings
     are
     still allowed for this list.

   On Tue, 2011-09-06 at 22:07 -0400, John Hudak wrote:
   > You might want to consider import/export capability for the most
   widely
   >    used commercial product (not sure what that is at the moment).

     Import/Export is fine for all free/open available formats.
     Unfortunately
     many important formats are not free, so we would have to do reverse
     engineering or use confidential leaked documentation. Some of us
     refuse
     to do that, including me. An example is the specctre format.

   >    You may want to consider the following as well:
   >    1) An updated tutorial that is accurate

     Yes, to make simple minded people happy we need all that. Smart
     people
     seems to have not really big problems with current gEDA state. The
     problem with simple minded people (like me :-) ) is, that they are
     consumers (stupid and greedy), with no intention and skills to
     really
     contribute. And they do not understand or care about the difference
     between free speech and free beer.
     Many of your points are easily  to fix even for people with no
     programming skills, ie. writing new, really fine documentation. But
     it
     is hard, boring work, so I do understand  that the developers prefer
     coding. DJ has done it very well with his
     [2]http://www.delorie.com/pcb/docs/gs/gs.html
     -- unfortunately some beginners miss that tutorial. And it would be
     fine
     to have a few more clean and consistent documents like this.
     Do you think all that is really better for other tools?
     I am not convinced.
     Best regards,
     Stefan Salewski

References

   1. mailto:mail@xxxxxxxxxxxx
   2. http://www.delorie.com/pcb/docs/gs/gs.html


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