On 9/5/20 3:22 PM, John Dammeyer wrote:
to me that there are some nice gcode senders out there that could do what
the noisy people want with less work than adapting linuxcnc to be a gcode
sender with an as-of-yet undefined distributed control interface on the
other end of a non-real time network interface.
Granted, that's a whole lot of work.
Eric Keller
I think first it would be appropriate to not use words like whine or clamor or
noise. A comment was made about the people who joined the group thinking about
LinuxCNC and then left. It's easy to misconstrue some of these comments or
words as demeaning or debasing and in general the Linux community has a bit of
a reputation of replying to posts with statements like:
"This information is on line or has already been answered so do your homework and
don't bother us with uniformed questions"
Sadly, when someone is starting they don't know what they don't know and don't
know where to look to find out what they don't know.
Add to that the time line of the internet and postings and the amount of out of
date material that often shows up far more often because it's been referenced
often it's really difficult for someone new to get a sense of what to do or how
things work.
For example, I'm sure there are LinuxCNC users out there who have no idea of
what a joint is in LinuxCNC. And there's the crux of the problem with a
hobbyist who wants to add CNC to his equipment. They might add a 4th axis.
Certainly not interested in a 16 joint robot. (Well they might be...)
So that new guy does his research, looks at the web site after googling "LinuxCNC
Axis" and ends up here:
http://linuxcnc.org/docs/html/gui/axis.html
His friend has MACH3 on WIN-XP but he doesn't and really doesn't want to try
and get WIN-XP running on the surplus PC he has for the CNC shop.
His friend shows him all the wizards that make simple operations on the mill trivial. So he reads
the doc and can't find an equivalent. It's not an AXIS menu item. He asks a question like
"Is there a menu entry or some Wizards like in MACH3?" and is told: "Learn G-Code.
You'll need it anyway no matter what".
Notice that isn't an answer to his question.
Another common type of response is "Yes you can add all sorts of screens and things
like wizards to LinuxCNC." Nothing more.
Remember, this new user has never written a line of software in his life. He's
picked up metal working as a hobby because he likes model trains and would like
to build a steam engine now that he's close to retirement. (or some other
reason that a person buys a mill and a lathe).
So I don't think it's whining or complaining to suggest that a nice feature to add to the
AXIS interface would be another menu entry for called say "Operations". And
fill it in with one item to perform a surfacing operation G-Code program that is then
loaded.
Then in the manual add a section that shows how to add to that list. One
possible approach is to make that list an XML file which can be edited with
free programs like XMLNotepad. There's probably something like that in the
Linux world too.
The main menu entry is "Operations"
Underneath that the name of an operation like "Surfacing" and the file name of
the program that is run to create the dialog and interact with a user.
The "Operations" dialog on save returns a pointer to the file name and then
just like opening a G-Code file it's loaded.
Now AXIS has the ability to run Wizards written in any language. I've used
this example because I'd like to see something like the MACH3 wizards in the
Axis interface.
But I haven't a clue where to start and since I don't do development on Linux
systems (other than Pi or Beagle) I couldn't even rebuild Axis if I wanted to.
Ie. I don't have a development PC that has Linux on it. But I can write
using Lazarus and test all these types of dialogs on a WIN-7 or WIN-10 PC and
on a Pi.
And at least I write software for a living. That hobbyist I've mentioned just
leaves the list and buys something else. Doesn't say goodbye. Just leaves.
And perhaps we shouldn't care.
John Dammeyer
John,
What else would you call it? They aren't asking for a feature or two or
three. All we ever hear is that the "PC is dead, we need a complete new
way of doing things, and LinuxCNC is not what we want. Give us want we
want!" And this is coming from supposedly accomplished coders.
No problem with new folks coming on board and asking questions, or
requesting features, or trying to learn. That's not what we're talking
about though.
Mark
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