On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 12:34 PM, DJ Delorie <[1]d...@delorie.com> wrote:
> I truly believe that you have to take the strict viewpoint of the
hardware
> designers who will be the majority of users -- and not sit back as a
> programmer --- when it comes to laying out a reasonable User
Interface for
> an EDA Tool. The OrCad tool was a prime example of this.
I gave a set of labs at DevCon to Windows-based hardware engineers.
The environment was 100% Fedora + gEDA. They had no problem doing
the
common tasks, and never saw a text terminal.
I certainly don't have a problem with the current state of software
development with gEDA. I just think it's all in the matter of how you
promote it. Since I returned to this, I go straight to the docs,
tutorials and examples on your website and such.
There's are still some things in the docs which could use some
elaboration for new users, beside returning users like myself -- of
which I'm glad to assist. Because it's always human nature to get in
that state of "resting on laurels" to not be aware of the views in
outside world.
Perhaps we need to wipe out all the old docs and tutorials and start
from scratch? Getting new users started with the "right" set of
expectations and shortcuts might make a huge impact on first
impressions.
I wouldn't say wipeout, from looking at the current state of
documentation, there's been a huge amount of work done there. I would
suggest just making some additions and editing some parts to bring some
attention to all of the important features.
But I still think one of the most important items to include right
smack dab on the front page of [2]www.gplgeda.org is a Feature list
which promotes the all the powerful features of this. You want to grab
attention of the community, then you have to push that information.
They won't come knocking on your door.
One thing I do personally since I'm a returning user, is scour the geda
mailing list and collect into a text file, all the relevant information
from the many postings about the available features within this tool
suite. This helps me basically catchup on what I've missed, and also
make comparisons. It's always in our nature to make comparisons.
=Dan
References
1. mailto:d...@delorie.com
2. http://www.gplgeda.org/
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