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Date: Tue, 25 Aug 2015 01:21:58 +0000
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Subject: Re: [geda-user] Buttons for automation (obligatory grab at our shared
 3rd rail) Re: [geda-user] Antifork
From: "Evan Foss (evanfoss AT gmail DOT com) [via geda-user AT delorie DOT com]" <geda-user AT delorie DOT com>
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On Tue, Aug 25, 2015 at 1:03 AM, John Doty <jpd AT noqsi DOT com> wrote:
>
> On Aug 24, 2015, at 8:33 PM, DJ Delorie <dj AT delorie DOT com> wrote:
>
>>
>>> Adding features to a simple tool does not make it easier to use.
>>
>> Except we don't have a simple tool, we have *many* simple tools.  The
>> large number of tools causes its own complexity.  And we've seen that
>> new users find "the toolkit way" to be difficult to learn
>
> That’s your perception. To be sure, there will be a faction that will have that trouble, but that’s not a good reason to work against those who do *better* with a toolkit. KiCAD covers the integrated tool space: gEDA should not be “me too”, but “here’s an approach you may find better”.

+1

>> because it's
>> not obvious how all the parts work together
>
> But it’s worse with a complex tool, because then it’s harder to figure out the interactions of all of the features. At least with a toolkit there are interfaces. That disciplines the interactions.

+1
This is what drove me away from my last tool and too gEDA.

>> - There's too much
>> complexity to absorb.
>>
>> Managing the relationships between tools, and encapsulating the
>> overall tasks we want to accomplish, is a neccessary part of using a
>> toolkit - it's no different than writing a shell script or makefile to
>> coordinate all the unixy tools.  If the nature of this encapsulation
>> and scripting is a button in a gui, that's only natural for a
>> gui-centric tool, just like a shell script is natural for a
>> command-line tool.
>>
>
> That forces everything to be GUI-centric, which makes all of those things for which a GUI is not natural harder. That was precisely the trouble I had with Viewlogic and the trouble I’m having with Vivado.
>
>> If we look at the extreme of simplicity - that adding features is
>> never good - we wouldn't have emacs or vi, we'd only have cat (or
>> maybe toggle switches, if you didn't like manually moving wires
>> around).  We wouldn't have email clients, we'd only have telnet (I
>> hope you memorized the SMTP protocol).
>
> The user should have the choice. There is a place for Apple-style totalitarian integration. I’m typing this at Mail on a Mac. But at least the way I use mail the inflexibility is acceptable. For EDA, it’s not.
>
>>  The tools that make up the
>> gEDA suite are, in essence, no more than text editors with lots of
>> features added - there's nothing you can do in gEDA that you can't do
>> with a good text editor and a lot of thinking, but using gEDA makes it
>> easier.
>>
>
> But much of it is graphical, and a GUI is the right tool for graphics. That doesn’t make it the right tool for the whole job, though.
>
> John Doty              Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd.
> http://www.noqsi.com/
> jpd AT noqsi DOT com
>
>
>



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