gEDA-dev: gEDA: the newbie experience

[Bernd Jendrissek]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

I finally hunkered down and got myself acquainted with gaf/PCB.  Overall
I'm impressed, I like it a lot, but I can understand that others more
used to proprietary tools might complain.  Net everyone is a command
line junkie.

My "board" (not built yet) is a newbie's attempt at a microscale welding
machine, and it's just a bunch of expendable discrete components I
happen to have in my junkbox.  Minor nits:

 * Transistors!  I realize it isn't gEDA's fault that sometimes pin 1 is
   the emitter, and other times the base.  I can still whine can't I?

 * I may be comfortable with running gsch2pcb by hand but I just KNOW it
   will creep out my colleagues.  That "major mode" work will take care
   of some of this, right?

 * Does it make sense to merge the library hierarchies in each tool so
   that if I have a directory under ~/gaf/symbols with the same name as
   one in the distributed library, the symbols under both will show up
   together in a list?

 * IWBNI the library were sorted.  In gschem "xilinx" appears above
   "idc" for example.

 * gschem crashes quite often.  Sorry this is vague, I'll try to get
   around to getting more info.  Luckily I didn't lose any work with the
   backups in /tmp.

 * illegal layer-group string: easy enough to fix with vim but things
   like this can totally kill the motivation to "evil" free tools (*).

In spite of these quirks I could see it in my colleagues' eyes that they
gained respect for gEDA/PCB when I cranked out the gerbers and drill and
placement files and BOM.  And if you consider that they have been
spending the last few weeks (or so it seems) on creating and checking
symbols and footprints for some fancy shmancy new zillion-pin BGA
components we want to use, tragesym and footgen made quite an impression
as I bashed out a 80-pin demo symbol for a microcontroller in about 10
minutes.  With some pyGTK glue bolted into the major modes patch I'm
sure that could rock some socks!

(*) https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/ had a featured test when I
was there yesterday: "Microsoft vs Open Source".  I'm sure such implicit
associations can be a strong barrier to gEDA/PCB user acceptance.

- -- 
I have neither the need, the time, or the inclination to put words into your
mouth. You are perfectly capable of damaging your reputation without any help
from me.                   --Richard Heathfield roasts a troll in comp.lang.c
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.4 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Please fetch my new key 804177F8 from hkp://wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net/

iD8DBQFEtTbHwyMv24BBd/gRAkZ7AJsFzM4gWh+kr04cnLXnpvgbDQtJqgCfWCpg
JuJf3neg675/i7CeKHs+zaA=
=Escx
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----