Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA

[John Doty <jpd@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Sep 10, 2011, at 10:33 PM, Abhijit Kshirsagar wrote:

> But having lots of searchable (over the internet) docs is much better.
> For example, I imagine a beginner will run a [google] search for "gEDA
> beginners guide" or "gSchem Tutorial"

There are many gEDA flows. Any particular tutorial is going to be wrong for most of them. gEDA is a flexible toolkit: that's its strength. Therefore, the fundamental need is *not* tutorials, but concise reference documentation.

In my opinion, we only have one decent tutorial: Stuart Brorson's fine explication of his SPICE flow (http://www.brorson.com/gEDA/SPICE/t1.html). It's good, in part, because it's explicitly about a specific flow.

> whereas an advanced user will be
> searching for say "PCB complete reference" or the keywords pertaining
> to a particular issue.

That only helps if you know the concepts and the keywords. How are you going to look up "attribute promotion" if you don't already know what it is? That's why voluminous documentation is a disaster: you can waste hours fishing for an unfamiliar concept.

One of the things that attracted me to gEDA nine years ago was its concise documentation (at that time). I hate time-wasting complexity. The original concise documentation is still there, but it's lost in the fog.

John Doty              Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd.
http://www.noqsi.com/
jpd@xxxxxxxxx




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