Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
On 09/10/2011 11:33 PM, Abhijit Kshirsagar wrote: i find that the documentation for creating hierarchical designs (schematics encapsulated inside a gschem symbol) is rather scattered so I'm going to start off with that first. If anyone has already written this please let me know! I have some notes here: http://www.gedasymbols.org/user/john_griessen/ the pcb-hier-cells Generator is a script changed a little form John Luciani's pcb-matrix http://luciani.org/geda/util/matrix/index.html I'll help you with that write up and editing also. John ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
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/ j...@noqsi.com ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
On Sat, 2011-09-10 at 10:19 +0530, Abhijit Kshirsagar wrote: On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 22:20, Dan Roganti ragoo...@gmail.com wrote: 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. +1. There's lots of good documentation, but there are things missing and lots of details need to be added. I think it would be a very good idea to have some collection of documents (or at least link to these). I'm willing to help with the documentation since I do use gEDA regularly (and i'm not much help with the programming). ~Abhijit What we really should consider: A lot of documentation can be bad. Consider the toys from the big company with the damaged fruit: A reason for the success of the toys is that documentations seems to be not needed. A lot of documentation can make people think that it is very complicated. For gEDA/PCB we have collected a lot of documentation over the years -- some is obsolete/outdated/redundant now or covers details, which most people are not interested in -- at least not when starting with gEDA/PCB. Send to geda-user: Sat Sep 10 13:34:27 CEST 2011 ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
On Sat, 2011-09-10 at 13:35 +0200, Stefan Salewski wrote: A lot of documentation can be bad. Consider the toys from the big company with the damaged fruit: A reason for the success of the toys is that documentations seems to be not needed. A lot of documentation can make people think that it is very complicated. This can be true if you don't manage the reveal well. IMO, what we could do with is a showcase of the kinds of things people have done with the tools - simple, complex and in-between, so people can gain confidence that the tools can do what they want them to do, before having even picked them up. Others have done good things with gEDA - haven't torn their hair out and given up... it _CAN_ be used to make a relatively complex design. There is a place for technical documentation on file-formats, but a getting started guide should not look like a Lord of the Rings style manuscript ;) -- Peter Clifton Electrical Engineering Division, Engineering Department, University of Cambridge, 9, JJ Thomson Avenue, Cambridge CB3 0FA Tel: +44 (0)7729 980173 - (No signal in the lab!) Tel: +44 (0)1223 748328 - (Shared lab phone, ask for me) signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
Very good point! and if I may add: ALL contained in ONE place, sufficiently reviewed to make it 100% correct with the current version of the tool(s) it is intended to be use with (and stated in the document itself). From my experience, ONE person is accepted as the book boss and is responsible for organizing/coordinating the development/revisions of ALL user documentation. I also believe the book boss should have a user perspective, rather than a developer perspective for the user documentation. If developer documentation is to be (re)organized as well, the same oversight model should be used, and I think a developer should have coordination duties. Just my 0.02 (your favorite currency here...USD, pounds, Euros, etc...) -J On Sat, Sep 10, 2011 at 7:35 AM, Stefan Salewski [1]m...@ssalewski.de wrote: On Sat, 2011-09-10 at 10:19 +0530, Abhijit Kshirsagar wrote: On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 22:20, Dan Roganti [2]ragoo...@gmail.com wrote: 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. +1. There's lots of good documentation, but there are things missing and lots of details need to be added. I think it would be a very good idea to have some collection of documents (or at least link to these). I'm willing to help with the documentation since I do use gEDA regularly (and i'm not much help with the programming). ~Abhijit What we really should consider: A lot of documentation can be bad. Consider the toys from the big company with the damaged fruit: A reason for the success of the toys is that documentations seems to be not needed. A lot of documentation can make people think that it is very complicated. For gEDA/PCB we have collected a lot of documentation over the years -- some is obsolete/outdated/redundant now or covers details, which most people are not interested in -- at least not when starting with gEDA/PCB. Send to geda-user: Sat Sep 10 13:34:27 CEST 2011 ___ geda-user mailing list [3]geda-user@moria.seul.org [4]http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user References 1. mailto:m...@ssalewski.de 2. mailto:ragoo...@gmail.com 3. mailto:geda-user@moria.seul.org 4. http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
On Sat, Sep 10, 2011 at 4:35 AM, Stefan Salewski m...@ssalewski.de wrote: Consider the toys from the big company with the damaged fruit: A reason for the success of the toys is that documentations seems to be not needed. I agree with the idea, but the thing is, the Apple software that doesn't need documentation doesn't do a whole lot. I don't know of any sufficiently powerful tool, especially CAD, that doesn't require some time learning how to use the thing. Try to sit down in front of SolidWorks and pump out a widget without first reading some documentation; build a 3d animation in 3d Studio or Maia; pump out a board in Orcad. Sufficiently powerful tools need learning. People build careers out of being very good at using just one of these tools. A lot of documentation can make people think that it is very complicated. IMHO, it _IS_ very complicated (relatively), and necessarily so. There are a lot of options that need considered, a lot of details to get right, a lot of workflows to support, etc.. But complicated doesn't have to mean hard to use and not intuitive. For gEDA/PCB we have collected a lot of documentation over the years -- some is obsolete/outdated/redundant now or covers details, which most people are not interested in -- at least not when starting with gEDA/PCB. For me, there is no such thing as too much documentation. The problem is when there is too much obsolete and just plain wrong documentation and not enough of the right kind of documentation. Jared ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
There is a problem that seems to occur often with open source software. Since it is created by programmers to scratch their particular itch, they are more concerned with the programming and getting it working to solve their problem. Other than bug fixes that affect their use of the program, their motivation to fix bugs and do documentation, release management, etc. is somewhat less. Consider Apple, their motivation is a bit different. It is user oriented so that they can extract the maximum amount of dollars from said customer, (Disclaimer, I am one.) This changes a number of priorities. Since Apple must provide support, in various forms to include documentation, customer phone support, in-store support and training, minimizing these costs is important. Apple has a yearly version cycle for many of its programs. This allows them to concentrate on bug fixes and interface and documentation before release. Open source with irregular updates will always have problems keeping documentation in sync with the program. Apple concentrates on a 'slick', graphical interface on their programs. However, a better place to look is at OS X itself. OS X is a Unix underneath the graphic interface. The command line is available and works for those rare instances when you need to go beyond the 98 percent of tasks that are usually done and covered by the graphic interface. I have used a couple of EDA tools over the last few years. Most had horrible interfaces. They won't change because so many people have invested so much time learning them and don't want to learn any new changes, let alone a new interface how ever much better it is and no matter how much easier and more productive it will make them. As a new and or occasional user, I want that new and easier, more productive interface. (Rant Off!) Ross On Sep 10, 2011, at 8:35 AM, Jared Casper wrote: On Sat, Sep 10, 2011 at 4:35 AM, Stefan Salewski m...@ssalewski.de wrote: Consider the toys from the big company with the damaged fruit: A reason for the success of the toys is that documentations seems to be not needed. I agree with the idea, but the thing is, the Apple software that doesn't need documentation doesn't do a whole lot. I don't know of any sufficiently powerful tool, especially CAD, that doesn't require some time learning how to use the thing. Try to sit down in front of SolidWorks and pump out a widget without first reading some documentation; build a 3d animation in 3d Studio or Maia; pump out a board in Orcad. Sufficiently powerful tools need learning. People build careers out of being very good at using just one of these tools. A lot of documentation can make people think that it is very complicated. IMHO, it _IS_ very complicated (relatively), and necessarily so. There are a lot of options that need considered, a lot of details to get right, a lot of workflows to support, etc.. But complicated doesn't have to mean hard to use and not intuitive. For gEDA/PCB we have collected a lot of documentation over the years -- some is obsolete/outdated/redundant now or covers details, which most people are not interested in -- at least not when starting with gEDA/PCB. For me, there is no such thing as too much documentation. The problem is when there is too much obsolete and just plain wrong documentation and not enough of the right kind of documentation. Jared ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
A rating function for the documentations would be handy. I think this feedback is very important and you get an overview what is good or bad. Guess, the implemantation isn't tricky. best regards Felix ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
Am 10.09.2011 um 13:35 schrieb Stefan Salewski: A lot of documentation can be bad. Ha! Now that's exactly the right answer to somebody offering writing documentation. Consider the toys from the big company with the damaged fruit: A reason for the success of the toys is that documentations seems to be not needed. That's possible for an EDA tool as well, of course. It requires an intuitive design. Self-explaining features, pure technical relations being hidden and automatic, everything connected so you can't miss something or do something wrong, perhaps integrated tutorials (SolidWorks does that). But how close is gEDA here? To be honest, I think gEDA couldn't be farther away. It can't even agree on an equivalent GUI design for both major tools, gschem and pcb. Instead of doing something about that, lots of discussions about picky details on keyboard accelerators. Using a keyboard to do anything but writing text is a thing of the past, to start with. To get an idea of a fairly intuitive tool, have a look at Fritzing. Abhijit, please go ahead. Fresh tutorials and HowTos are most welcome. And please let me know when it's time to put the G-code exporter HowTo there. In case you don't want to do this yourself. Markus - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Dipl. Ing. (FH) Markus Hitter http://www.jump-ing.de/ ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
On Sat, Sep 10, 2011 at 4:12 PM, Markus Hitter m...@jump-ing.de wrote: Using a keyboard to do anything but writing text is a thing of the past, to start with. I couldn't disagree more. I only want to use the mouse for things that absolutely require a mouse (drawing things mostly). If I have to use the mouse to click buttons or menus, etc. I consider that a complete failure. To get an idea of a fairly intuitive tool, have a look at Fritzing. gEDA is as far away from Fritzing as Word is from NotePad. Jared ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
On 09/10/2011 06:20 PM, Jared Casper wrote: gEDA is as far away from Fritzing as Word is from NotePad. Jared But they both have many of the same low level primitive commands and actions. I think you could base two apps on the same code and many of the users would never know, since some are so little into craft and so into speed, they would never read about the crafty details. JG PS Fritzing is not all bad... I think it aims to be the arduino-compatible development tool for hardware. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
On Sat, Sep 10, 2011 at 6:09 PM, John Griessen j...@ecosensory.com wrote: But they both have many of the same low level primitive commands and actions. I think you could base two apps on the same code and many of the users would never know, since some are so little into craft and so into speed, they would never read about the crafty details. True. IMHO though, for an app like Fritzing doesn't seem to be the core to be the hard part, the GUI is. For an app like gEDA both the core and GUI are hard. JG PS Fritzing is not all bad... I think it aims to be the arduino-compatible development tool for hardware. Absolutely, never said it was bad. :) From what I've seen, Fritzing is a great app for what it aims to be. Jared ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
On 11/09/2011 9:13 AM, Markus Hitter [1]m...@jump-ing.de wrote: But how close is gEDA here? To be honest, I think gEDA couldn't be farther away. It can't even agree on an equivalent GUI design for both major tools, gschem and pcb. Instead of doing something about that, lots of discussions about picky details on keyboard accelerators. Using a keyboard to do anything but writing text is a thing of the past, to start with. I think you will find that a pretty much all high end commercial CAD tools put a lot of effort into getting the keyboard accelerators right. Your concept of the keyboard being only for text has no basis in any CAD tool I have ever heard of. To get an idea of a fairly intuitive tool, have a look at Fritzing. Fritzing is great, so is intuitive design. I don't really understand why gEDA gets slammed on its UI so much. It is different, and like anything worth learning takes some effort. References 1. mailto:m...@jump-ing.de ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
On Sat, Sep 10, 2011 at 04:20:27PM -0700, Jared Casper wrote: On Sat, Sep 10, 2011 at 4:12 PM, Markus Hitter m...@jump-ing.de wrote: Using a keyboard to do anything but writing text is a thing of the past, to start with. I couldn't disagree more. I only want to use the mouse for things that absolutely require a mouse (drawing things mostly). If I have to use the mouse to click buttons or menus, etc. I consider that a complete failure. I don't even have a mouse connected most of the time. I plug one in when I need to draw, that's it. -- Andrew Poelstra Email: asp11 at sfu.ca OR apoelstra at wpsoftware.net Do whatever you want. Do what you think is important. Everybody is an individual. --Ron Paul ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
On Sun, Sep 11, 2011 at 04:42, Markus Hitter m...@jump-ing.de wrote: Am 10.09.2011 um 13:35 schrieb Stefan Salewski: A lot of documentation can be bad. Ha! Now that's exactly the right answer to somebody offering writing documentation. :) I agree that too much documentation /can/ be bad - if its in a non-searchable, badly written form, etc. E.g. if one has to dig through volumes of massive stuff just to do simple tasks then it is a bad thing. 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 whereas an advanced user will be searching for say PCB complete reference or the keywords pertaining to a particular issue. At the moment, i feel that we should look at the docs from the user perspective, figure out what is missing and then fill in the gaps first. For example, i find that the documentation for creating hierarchical designs (schematics encapsulated inside a gschem symbol) is rather scattered so I'm going to start off with that first. If anyone has already written this please let me know! From my experience, ONE person is accepted as the book boss and is responsible for organizing/coordinating the development/revisions of ALL user documentation. +1. Let there be one (or some) people coordinating the documentation on the gpleda site, in addition to individuals writing their own documentation. Regards, ~Abhijit ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
On Sun, Sep 11, 2011 at 10:03:14AM +0530, Abhijit Kshirsagar wrote: On Sun, Sep 11, 2011 at 04:42, Markus Hitter m...@jump-ing.de wrote: Am 10.09.2011 um 13:35 schrieb Stefan Salewski: A lot of documentation can be bad. Ha! Now that's exactly the right answer to somebody offering writing documentation. :) I agree that too much documentation /can/ be bad - if its in a non-searchable, badly written form, etc. E.g. if one has to dig through volumes of massive stuff just to do simple tasks then it is a bad thing. 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 whereas an advanced user will be searching for say PCB complete reference or the keywords pertaining to a particular issue. Searchable heap of random documentation is really good for those who already have an overview of the field and know what they want to achieve and what to search for. I remember when I started with PCB and gschem (originally with xcircuit), many years ago, without any EE or EDA background. I think for beginner hobbists this is not a rare case. And there are indeed a lot of things to consider... The hardest thing in such situation is that you don't see the extents, so you need to go (or at least you feel you are going) randomly until you gain enough knowledge and experience to be able to see at least the extents and main aspects of the whole topic. For such users, having a specific document that only enumerates everything that falls in the domain of the tools is most useful. This document wouldn't need to have a lot of text, but a lot of links and short explanation scratching only the surface of each topic. Key is not volume, but structure. This document would cover all the common workflows, all the common possibilities (i.e. for getting data from gschem to pcb or sims). It should also cover features or flows we don't have or don't support yet or at all. Starting from such a document is better than stating with a tutorial, as a specific tutorial will most probably cover only a small portion of the whole thing, and only a single flow/tool/possibility of all. It's easier to choose which tutorial to start with, if one sees the possibilities. Regards, Tibor ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
On Thu, Sep 08, 2011 at 10:27:52PM +0100, Peter Clifton wrote: On Thu, 2011-09-08 at 13:43 -0600, Mark Rages wrote: On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 12:38 PM, Colin D Bennett co...@gibibit.com wrote: On Thu, 08 Sep 2011 17:50:33 +0200 Stefan Salewski m...@ssalewski.de wrote: For me, I never loved the many tool changes, and I was never able to remember all the key combinations. er is edit rotate, ve is view extend. For the later I am not really sure -- have not used gschem for a year. Don't forget, while “ve” is View Extents, “ev” alters all invisible text and attributes making them visible! It is not like “en” which just toggles the display mode to show invisible text, but “ev” actually changes the entities. For my money, we could kill ev and its menu item completely. I don't think it serves any useful purpose, and has caused me many a headache. Full agreement here. One feature I would like to see in gschem is to have two grids: - the default grid when moving objects or anything - a finer grid automatically used when moving a single attribute I find myself very often switching to a finer grid when editing attributes to put them in the right place, especially in denser parts of the schematics where proximity hints at which component the attribute refers. And then I switch back to the default grid when I'm done with the attributes (otherwise I inevatibly end up with off-grid pins). It's the constant switching back and forth that annoys me. OrCad had this 20 years ago: it automatically used a 1/10 pin spacing grid when moving attributes. For the GUI I don't know whether you would have to put two grid settings (with limits) or keep a single grid and use a selectable fraction of the main grid (1/2, 1/5, 1/10). I really don't mind changing grids for the other case where I have to, which is when drawing symbols. You've really no choice in this case: user settable grid is better than no snap mode (which gschem allows to use as a fallback in any case). Personally, I have no problems with the two key shortcuts in gschem, now that cut/copy/paste/undo/redo use standard accelerators: there are far too many commands to map them to single keystrokes. Besides that if you use use special characters, they may be impossible to type with a single hand on some keyboard layouts, like | for thin lines in PCB, which is AltGr (ISO_Level3_Shift in X keysyms) 1 (the digit), the single AltGr key being at the right of the space bar (I have fairly large hands, and yet I can't type it with a single hand, so I have to move my right hand off the mouse). Staying with 2 Latin alphabetical characters (which are present on basically all keyboard layouts and do not require finger acrobacies) avoids these problems, and may even be better for some kinds of disabilities. Regards, Gabriel ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
On Thu, Sep 08, 2011 at 10:32:26PM +0100, Peter Clifton wrote: On Thu, 2011-09-08 at 13:10 -0500, John Griessen wrote: gschem is not as key binding configurable as PCB as far as I can tell. Adding that would be a fine goal. It is actually - its just not immediately obvious. Look in your $PREFIX/share/gEDA/system-gschemrc file and find: (define file-keymap '((w . file-new-window) (n . file-new) (o . file-open) (s . file-save) (e . page-close) ; yes this is okay; reusing page-close (a . file-save-as) (l . file-save-all) (p . file-print) (r . page-revert) ; yes this is okay; resuing page-revert Whom are you suing again ? ;-) (i . file-image) (t . file-script) (c . file-close-window) (q . file-quit))) (Those go with the second letter to 'f', which activates the file menu). Finally, the global keymap: ; All keys in the global-keymap *must* be unique (define global-keymap '((Escape . cancel) (a . add-keymap) (b . add-box-hotkey) (c . edit-copy-hotkey) (d . edit-delete) (e . edit-keymap) (f . file-keymap) (h . help-keymap) (i . add-component) (l . add-line-hotkey) (m . edit-move-hotkey) (n . add-net-hotkey) (o . options-keymap) (bracketright . options-scale-up-snap-size) (bracketleft . options-scale-down-snap-size) (p . page-keymap) (r . view-redraw) (s . edit-select) (t . attributes-keymap) (u . edit-undo) (v . view-keymap) (w . view-zoom-box-hotkey) (x . view-pan-hotkey) (Left . view-pan-left) (Right . view-pan-right) (Up . view-pan-up) (Down . view-pan-down) (y . buffer-keymap) (z . view-zoom-in-hotkey) (period . repeat-last-command) (Shift colon . edit-invoke-macro) (comma . misc-misc) (equal . misc-misc2) (Shift plus . misc-misc3) (Delete . edit-delete) (Shift greater . page-next) ; Deprecated; preserved for backward compat (Page_Down . page-next) (Shift less . page-prev) ; Deprecated; preserved for backward compat Fortunately these were deperacted, they were useless on a Spanish keyboard: since less and greater are on the same key, less being the unshifted state and greater the shifted one. Bottom line: do not rely on non-Latin characters in the default accelerators, you'll always find at least one keyboard layout where they fail or are extremely awkward to use. Even numbers are hard to use (they need Shift on french keyboards, the non shifted top row being mostly special and accented characters). Believe me, I'm French, and I can't stand the French keyboard layout. (Page_Up . page-prev) (Alt q . file-quit) (Shift B . add-bus-hotkey) (Shift H . hierarchy-keymap) (Shift U . edit-undo) (Shift R . edit-redo) (Shift Z . view-zoom-out-hotkey) (Control x . clipboard-cut) (Control c . clipboard-copy) (Control v . clipboard-paste-hotkey) (Control z . edit-undo) (Control y . edit-redo) (Control a . edit-select-all) (Control Shift A . edit-deselect))) ; finally set the keymap point to the newly created datastructure (define current-keymap global-keymap) Notice there are plenty of single-key bindings there already, for example, the group at the bottom. Hope that helps, -- Peter Clifton pc...@cam.ac.uk ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
On Fri, 2011-09-09 at 09:19 +0200, Gabriel Paubert wrote: For my money, we could kill ev and its menu item completely. I don't think it serves any useful purpose, and has caused me many a headache. Full agreement here. Goodness, I have poor memory. I went to see about this, looked at my gschem - then found I had ALREADY DONE THIS back in January! commit 1c531ec953bb3a7fe895eafc65c3d4f85c2603c6 Author: Peter Clifton pc...@cam.ac.uk Date: Sat Jan 15 13:45:08 2011 + gschem: Delete Edit-Make Inv Text Vis menu item This menu item trips up more people than it helps. Remove it and associated code. (By popular request on geda-user.) So it will be lovely and fixed in the latest revision. You guys need to try git HEAD more often ;) One feature I would like to see in gschem is to have two grids: - the default grid when moving objects or anything - a finer grid automatically used when moving a single attribute Its an often requested feature. Please file a feature request at http://launchpad.net/geda/+filebug However - it could well be a (long) while before anyone gets to it, as there isn't much focus on gschem UI at the moment. (More core scheme changes in libgeda are taking preference). If you wanted to code this up though - I'm confident you would find people willing to help you find the appropriate code. -- Peter Clifton Electrical Engineering Division, Engineering Department, University of Cambridge, 9, JJ Thomson Avenue, Cambridge CB3 0FA Tel: +44 (0)7729 980173 - (No signal in the lab!) Tel: +44 (0)1223 748328 - (Shared lab phone, ask for me) signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
On 09/08/2011 04:14 PM, Kai-Martin Knaak wrote: My solution: A titleblock symbol that is really just that. A box, which contains the title, date, version and author, to be printed on the bottom of a page. Because these are global attributes, they can be edited wholesale with the attribute editing dialog. But the symbol includes no frame. I draw the frame after the fact to fit the schematic. The ability to expand on demand is handy, if the circuit needs some more components. http://www.gedasymbols.org/user/kai_martin_knaak/symbols/titleblock/title-block.sym I like that idea. I'd like that to be the default for new people also. John ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
On 09/08/2011 04:32 PM, Peter Clifton wrote: Notice there are plenty of single-key bindings there already, for example, the group at the bottom. Hope that helps, Yes, thanks. Maybe I'll create a tutorial based on a keybinding layout that works smoothly with PCB and see if it is popular. John ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
On 09/08/2011 07:01 PM, Kai-Martin Knaak wrote: The number of people using it one way or the other would be voted for with tutorials written and promoted. ... and create quite some confusion during the process. Does not look like a good idea to me. OK, then how about we write it up in your wiki book and get it officially linked to gpleda.org and gedasymbols.org? JG ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 22:20, Dan Roganti ragoo...@gmail.com wrote: 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. +1. There's lots of good documentation, but there are things missing and lots of details need to be added. I think it would be a very good idea to have some collection of documents (or at least link to these). I'm willing to help with the documentation since I do use gEDA regularly (and i'm not much help with the programming). ~Abhijit ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
On 09/08/2011 03:24 AM, Attila Kinali wrote: The good part of kicad was, that producing a PCB is easily possible even if you know nothing about the tool. But getting to more advanced features was hard to impossible within the time i tried it. Now comes the catch: When i was a teenager, i did an electronics project in high school. Not having access to the internet and not knowing anything about OSS (i dont think gEDA existed back then), i got a copy of Orcad for DOS (it was ancient even back then). But, within a day i was able to enter my first test schematics and produce something that looked like a PCB . . . Now the question is, why isn't there any OSS EDA tool out there that combines the availability of complex features with ease of use like Orcad did 20 years ago? If there were one, i'd be happy to throw money at it, to help it being developed. Attila Kinali PS: for my OH project, i decided to stick with comercial tools. If anyone has some time for planning user interface changes, I have a few low level ideas of what is stopping development toward complex features with ease of use. 1. The double keystrokes in gschem need to become single strokes to match with every other UI anywhwere, so de facto standard key commands can be adopted for cut, paste, etc. 2. The scales of symbols and borders in existing libraries needs to be workable for A size or letter size paper out of the box. And the beginner mode should have a create new drawing button that encapsulates this. 3. A tool manager could be the place for some of this new function. A tool manager that integrates the separate tools and serves to reinforce a pcb development work flow as a memory aid and speed tool for infrequent users. 4. PCB needs an alternate mode to start in where sequences of common tasks are started by a single button, rather than, 1. get in the right tool mode, 2. click mouse. For beginners, it needs to include: create traces all with the mouse, place parts all with the mouse, move parts with mouse and a modifier key, drag traces. Use of cut and paste buffers needs to be invisible by default and otional with a workaround that does not require knowing they exist. After these low level stoppers, we should find textbooks to study on GUI design, compare those to Orcad twenty years ago, and copy what is not patented. John Griessen -- Ecosensory ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
On 09/08/2011 03:24 AM, Attila Kinali wrote: The good part of kicad was, that producing a PCB is easily possible even if you know nothing about the tool. But getting to more advanced features was hard to impossible within the time i tried it. Now comes the catch: When i was a teenager, i did an electronics project in high school. Not having access to the internet and not knowing anything about OSS (i dont think gEDA existed back then), i got a copy of Orcad for DOS (it was ancient even back then). But, within a day i was able to enter my first test schematics and produce something that looked like a PCB yes, OrCad was a very powerful eda tool and to a certain extent quite intuitive. I used this for many years back then. . . . Now the question is, why isn't there any OSS EDA tool out there that combines the availability of complex features with ease of use like Orcad did 20 years ago? 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. If there were one, i'd be happy to throw money at it, to help it being developed. Attila Kinali I also agree. I would be willing to do the same. I noticed somewhere on the geda website that some arrangement has been made already with Linuxfund.org to help toward this cause. I only see a mention of the PCB tool - and no mention of gSchem or others. I wonder if someone can clarify this here. I think this is one more reason to compile a concise list of features contained in this tool suite as an overview to help new or returning users to see the importance of this project. =Dan ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
we should find textbooks to study on GUI design From page 540 of the wxBook, that is downloadable online for free. Actual URL's might need updated: Further Reading Apple Human Interface Guidelines: http://developer.apple.com/documentation/ UserExperience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines/index.html Key differences between Mac OS X and Windows UIs: http://developer. apple.com/ue/switch/windows.html Microsoft Official Guidelines for UI Developers: http://msdn.microsoft.com/ library/default.asp?url=/library/en us/dnwue/html/welcome.asp GNOME Human Interface Guidelines: http://developer.gnome.org/ projects/gup/hig GUI Bloopers: Don’ts and Do’s for Software Developers and Web Designers, by Jeff Johnson (Academic Press). ISBN 1-55860-582-7 User Interface Design for Programmers, by Joel Spolsky (Apress). ISBN 1-893115-94-1 Software for Use: A Practical Guide to the Models and Methods of Usage- Centered Design, by Larry L. Constantine and Lucy A.D. Lockwood (ACM Press). ISBN 0-201-92478-1 Support your local library... ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
On Thu, 08 Sep 2011 09:22:27 -0500 John Griessen j...@ecosensory.com wrote: If anyone has some time for planning user interface changes, I have a few low level ideas of what is stopping development toward complex features with ease of use. Ah! Finaly someone seeing the light! :-) 4. PCB needs an alternate mode to start in where sequences of common tasks are started by a single button, rather than, 1. get in the right tool mode, 2. click mouse. I think this is the most important of all. Ie make the common task simple and easy to use. All of them, no exception. If it takes me a minute to look up what command i need to use to place a resistor another to figure out how i connect it to the other one, then something is wrong. Also, these commands need to be easy to remember. What striked me quite odd with gEDA was that the key commands had no easy way to remember. I don't actually mind them being two key codes (at least not for most, some like rotate, mirror etc should be one key commands), but they should be easy to remember. One easy way to acheive that is to use the first letter of the most commonly used word for that operation (it does not need to be in every language, just using english is enough). Additionally a list of what the word was should be listed with the list of shortcuts, to make it easy to learn them After these low level stoppers, we should find textbooks to study on GUI design, compare those to Orcad twenty years ago, and copy what is not patented. I doubt anything from that is patented. Patenting wasnt the frency back then. And even if it would be, i doubt anyone would sue a OSS project for that kind of stuff (there are far more lucrative targets out there). As for the GUI design books, if you can find a good one, please let me know. I'm looking for one as well. And i'm also available for GUI usability testing. Attila Kinali -- The trouble with you, Shev, is you don't say anything until you've saved up a whole truckload of damned heavy brick arguments and then you dump them all out and never look at the bleeding body mangled beneath the heap -- Tirin, The Dispossessed, U. Le Guin ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
On Thu, 08 Sep 2011 09:22:27 -0500 John Griessen j...@ecosensory.com wrote: After these low level stoppers, we should find textbooks to study on GUI design, compare those to Orcad twenty years ago, and copy what is not patented. Addendum: Try to figure out what your users want, first. Write down the usual work flow and adapt the GUI to match that workflow. Yes, i know that the workflow is tool dependent, but there are many tools out there that follow a more or less similar workflow and i think gEDA should match that as well. If there is a good reason to deviate from that common workflow, it should be marked specially so that everyone who is new to gEDA sees it and also noted why it makes sense to do it that way (this is important as it makes it much more easy to remember how to do it) I don't know who developers of gEDA are, much less what their background is. But i assume that there should be enough EEs around that can provide samples of daily workflows. I can provide such as well, if anyone wants. Attila Kinali -- The trouble with you, Shev, is you don't say anything until you've saved up a whole truckload of damned heavy brick arguments and then you dump them all out and never look at the bleeding body mangled beneath the heap -- Tirin, The Dispossessed, U. Le Guin ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
On 09/08/2011 10:03 AM, Attila Kinali wrote: Yes, i know that the workflow is tool dependent, but there are many tools out there that follow a more or less similar workflow and i think gEDA should match that as well. If there is a good reason to deviate from that common workflow, it should be marked s One way to do an integrated GUI is to do it flow specific, but with settings you can change the flow. When you change the flow, the GUI looks different and has reminders for the chosen flow and nothing else. And a banner at top says, gschem-to-pcb, or gschem-to-PADS, or icarus-verilog-gnucap-simulation-gschem-pcb or, GNSPICE-simulation-gschem-gnetlist-to-chip-layout ... These GUIs could have names to launch the tool manager with the settings set, and some users would use the first one and never open a manual. And John Doty might never write the last one, since he doesn't like a GUI for EDA work. icarus-verilog-gnucap-simulation-gschem-pcb is going to need some low level work first, but you get the idea... Now if I just had a budget. John -- Ecosensory ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
I find this instructive, as some of the problems you see are just misunderstandings about how the tools work, indicating that our documentation and/or tutorials need help? 2. The scales of symbols and borders in existing libraries needs to be workable for A size or letter size paper out of the box. And the beginner mode should have a create new drawing button that encapsulates this. There is no such fixed scale in gschem. Any schematic will fit on any size page, gschem always scales to fit. My library has a range of title boxes that are all proportioned the same but various sizes relative to the parts, I just pick the one that fits around the circuit. 3. A tool manager could be the place for some of this new function. A tool manager that integrates the separate tools and serves to reinforce a pcb development work flow as a memory aid and speed tool for infrequent users. My flow is to run gschem and pcb, and use pcb's importer. I see no need for a third GUI when there are no other buttons needed. create traces all with the mouse, place parts all with the mouse, move parts with mouse and a modifier key, drag traces. Use of cut and paste buffers needs to be invisible by default and otional with a workaround that does not require knowing they exist. I almost never use cut and paste in PCB, and when I do (usually for moving the whole board around), I use the standard Ctrl-X, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V keystrokes. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
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. 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. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
I don't know who developers of gEDA are, much less what their background is. For reference, I used to design PC/AT motherboards for a living ;-) ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
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/ ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
I agree. I find the two-letter commands to be very fast to use. They're one of the main reasons why I prefer gschem to the expensive proprietary program I used at my last job. But maybe that's just because I'm a vi user. ;) On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 10:05 AM, Mark Rages markra...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 8:22 AM, John Griessen j...@ecosensory.com wrote: If anyone has some time for planning user interface changes, I have a few low level ideas of what is stopping development toward complex features with ease of use. 1. The double keystrokes in gschem need to become single strokes to match with every other UI anywhwere, so de facto standard key commands can be adopted for cut, paste, etc. The double keystrokes in gschem are excellent UI. Not as quick to grasp at first, but very very good in practice. When you use a CAD program like gschem one hand stays on the keyboard and one on the mouse. Using modifier keys (control, alt, shift, meta, etc.) comfortably requires two hands on the keyboard. So switching to standard controls would cause us users to constantly move one hand from mouse to keyboard and back. The standard control keys were designed for users of word processing systems, where both hands are already on the keyboard (and unadorned letter keys are already spoken for.) Furthermore, the two-letter abbreviations allow commands to be grouped together logically, which makes them easier to remember than whatever random control keys happens to be available. I think gschem has a pretty good interface. I only wish PCB used the same shortcuts instead of the random keys it has now. Regards, Mark markrages@gmail -- Mark Rages, Engineer Midwest Telecine LLC markra...@midwesttelecine.com ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
On Thu, Sep 08, 2011 at 10:33:51AM -0400, Bob Paddock wrote: we should find textbooks to study on GUI design Further Reading And of course not forgetting Shniederman's 8 golden rules of user interface design, it's pretty concise. http://faculty.washington.edu/jtenenbg/courses/360/f04/sessions/schneidermanGoldenRules.html ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
ditto...although I only used it for one digital board. On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 10:41 AM, Dan Roganti [1]ragoo...@gmail.com wrote: On 09/08/2011 03:24 AM, Attila Kinali wrote: The good part of kicad was, that producing a PCB is easily possible even if you know nothing about the tool. But getting to more advanced features was hard to impossible within the time i tried it. Now comes the catch: When i was a teenager, i did an electronics project in high school. Not having access to the internet and not knowing anything about OSS (i dont think gEDA existed back then), i got a copy of Orcad for DOS (it was ancient even back then). But, within a day i was able to enter my first test schematics and produce something that looked like a PCB yes, OrCad was a very powerful eda tool and to a certain extent quite intuitive. I used this for many years back then. . . . Now the question is, why isn't there any OSS EDA tool out there that combines the availability of complex features with ease of use like Orcad did 20 years ago? 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. If there were one, i'd be happy to throw money at it, to help it being developed. Attila Kinali I also agree. I would be willing to do the same. I noticed somewhere on the geda website that some arrangement has been made already with Linuxfund.org to help toward this cause. I only see a mention of the PCB tool - and no mention of gSchem or others. I wonder if someone can clarify this here. I think this is one more reason to compile a concise list of features contained in this tool suite as an overview to help new or returning users to see the importance of this project. =Dan ___ geda-user mailing list [2]geda-user@moria.seul.org [3]http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user References 1. mailto:ragoo...@gmail.com 2. mailto:geda-user@moria.seul.org 3. http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
On Thu, 2011-09-08 at 09:22 -0500, John Griessen wrote: If anyone has some time for planning user interface changes, I have a few low level ideas Yes, a few people including me voted for this for years. That was one of the reasons for me starting my ruby gschem clone one year ago. Maybe the wedana html5 clone will support a new user interface? But for gschem: Some people seems to really love the current behaviour. For me, I never loved the many tool changes, and I was never able to remember all the key combinations. er is edit rotate, ve is view extend. For the later I am not really sure -- have not used gschem for a year. But because some people love the current behaviour, our only chance may be to add an additional alternative mode, which may be not really easy. When we are allowed to make that dramatic changes at all? Moving elements without have to select it first is really nice. And drag select and zoom into window if started on a void area. And panning if we move an element with middle mouse button. And of course starting nets when hitting pin or net ends. All without having to change the tool. That is fun for new users and part time users. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
On 09/08/2011 11:05 AM, Mark Rages wrote: The double keystrokes in gschem are excellent UI. Not as quick to grasp at first, but very very good in practice. . . . I think gschem has a pretty good interface. I only wish PCB used the same shortcuts instead of the random keys it has now. Moving gschem to single strokes would allow better matching of it with PCB, and all the rest, without stopping any good keyboard-via-non-dominant-hand plus mouse-via-dominant-hand computer driving. [jg]I know -- I've done chip layout for pay -- about 28 months worth. On 09/08/2011 11:32 AM, DJ Delorie wrote: Any schematic will fit on any size page, gschem always scales to fit. [jg]I know there is no scale in gschem -- but there is a mismatch of size apparent to a new user because the default page border is out of whack with the symbols. On 09/08/2011 11:32 AM, DJ Delorie wrote: I see no need for a third GUI when there are no other buttons needed. [jg]The function is merely suggested as a learning and reminder device for new and infrequently returning users. On 09/08/2011 11:32 AM, DJ Delorie wrote: Use of cut and paste buffers needs to be invisible by default and otional with a workaround that does not require knowing they exist. I almost never use cut and paste in PCB, and when I do (usually for moving the whole board around), I use the standard Ctrl-X, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V keystrokes. [jg]Great! This one's already done. It's been a couple months since I've done a layout. I forgot. On 09/08/2011 11:44 AM, DJ Delorie wrote: Let's commission a multi-million dollar study of thousands of projects to see what the best size is. Or just pick a new one;-) [jg]It's mostly about getting some of these beginner things into the defaults. On 09/08/2011 11:50 AM, Dan Roganti wrote: 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 - [jg]I think DJs docs are fabulous too. John Griessen -- Ecosensory ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
Attila Kinali: ... One easy way to acheive that is to use the first letter of the most commonly used word for that operation (it does not need to be in every language, just using english is enough). ... Don't ever assume that a non native engligh speaker will understand thoose words or view them as anything else than some random characters lumped together. Regards, /Karl Hammar --- Aspö Data Lilla Aspö 148 S-742 94 Östhammar Sweden +46 173 140 57 ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
On 09/08/2011 11:28 AM, asom...@gmail.com wrote: I find the two-letter commands to be very fast to use. They're one of the main reasons why I prefer gschem to the expensive proprietary program I used at my last job. But maybe that's just because I'm a vi user.;) I think the double strokes could be kept as a settings option, but that would make writing docs hard with two ways to do things. We will always have that problem to a degree, because key bindings are user configurable. How do you teach it when you've changed all the keys to suit yourself? Changing all the keys is common for the speed-layer-outers among us, but I'd still like to see more commonality with mainstream for gschem. Single stroke key commands leaves you with maybe 40 unshifted commands you can do... Seems like enough to me. I bet that after implementing a user configurability like PCB has, and someone, (me), creating a set of commands that single stroke maps to the same action sequences as the double stroke commands, and writing some tutorials, (me), the numbers of future users and tutorials would go to the single stroke and double would be a few people. The number of people using it one way or the other would be voted for with tutorials written and promoted. gschem is not as key binding configurable as PCB as far as I can tell. Adding that would be a fine goal. We should be able to program a gschem single key binding action sequence without a recompile that: selects an object and enables drag on mouse click, continues after mouse up in same mode where next mouse click selects and drags to move. To get out of that mode you would go to the menus or click a button. John -- Ecosensory ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
On 09/08/2011 01:01 PM, Karl Hammar wrote: Don't ever assume that a non native engligh speaker will understand thoose words or view them as anything else than some random characters lumped together. Another reason gschem would benefit from no-recompile-required key binding configurability with action sequences. Besides keys, they can go to menu picks or buttons with user language usage hints. John ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
On Thu, 8 Sep 2011 20:01:33 +0200 (CEST) k...@aspodata.se (Karl Hammar) wrote: Attila Kinali: ... One easy way to acheive that is to use the first letter of the most commonly used word for that operation (it does not need to be in every language, just using english is enough). ... Don't ever assume that a non native engligh speaker will understand thoose words or view them as anything else than some random characters lumped together. Yes, but i somehow expect that anyone doing EE does know english. There are very few parts for which you can get non-english documentation. I choose english here as the least common denominator. And even if you do not understand the words in the first place, they might make some sense to 99% of the people. Attila Kinali -- Why does it take years to find the answers to the questions one should have asked long ago? ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
On Thu, 08 Sep 2011 17:50:33 +0200 Stefan Salewski m...@ssalewski.de wrote: For me, I never loved the many tool changes, and I was never able to remember all the key combinations. er is edit rotate, ve is view extend. For the later I am not really sure -- have not used gschem for a year. Don't forget, while “ve” is View Extents, “ev” alters all invisible text and attributes making them visible! It is not like “en” which just toggles the display mode to show invisible text, but “ev” actually changes the entities. If you don't realize what happened and undo it right away, you will basically screw up the whole schematic. (I think “ev” action should be removed or at least prompt for confirmation; I've said so before on this list.) Regards, Colin ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
Attila Kinali: k...@aspodata.se (Karl Hammar) wrote: Attila Kinali: One easy way to acheive that is to use the first letter of the most commonly used word for that operation (it does not need to be in every language, just using english is enough). Don't ever assume that a non native engligh speaker will understand thoose words or view them as anything else than some random characters lumped together. Yes, but i somehow expect that anyone doing EE does know english. Note that there is a big difference between understanding a, a textbook where you can get words meaning from context and where the main subject is understanding of physics and formulas b, a single word in isolation Regards, /Karl Hammar --- Aspö Data Lilla Aspö 148 S-742 94 Östhammar Sweden +46 173 140 57 ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 12:38 PM, Colin D Bennett co...@gibibit.com wrote: On Thu, 08 Sep 2011 17:50:33 +0200 Stefan Salewski m...@ssalewski.de wrote: For me, I never loved the many tool changes, and I was never able to remember all the key combinations. er is edit rotate, ve is view extend. For the later I am not really sure -- have not used gschem for a year. Don't forget, while “ve” is View Extents, “ev” alters all invisible text and attributes making them visible! It is not like “en” which just toggles the display mode to show invisible text, but “ev” actually changes the entities. If you don't realize what happened and undo it right away, you will basically screw up the whole schematic. (I think “ev” action should be removed or at least prompt for confirmation; I've said so before on this list.) Regards, Colin Agree. Please file a bug. Regards, Mark markrages@gmail -- Mark Rages, Engineer Midwest Telecine LLC markra...@midwesttelecine.com ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 11:51 AM, John Griessen j...@ecosensory.com wrote: On 09/08/2011 11:05 AM, Mark Rages wrote: The double keystrokes in gschem are excellent UI. Not as quick to grasp at first, but very very good in practice. . . . I think gschem has a pretty good interface. I only wish PCB used the same shortcuts instead of the random keys it has now. Moving gschem to single strokes would allow better matching of it with PCB, and all the rest, without stopping any good keyboard-via-non-dominant-hand plus mouse-via-dominant-hand computer driving. Many of the pcb shortcuts require holding shift or control or alt while pressing a key. This requires two hands to do comfortably / safely. Regards, Mark markrages@gmail -- Mark Rages, Engineer Midwest Telecine LLC markra...@midwesttelecine.com ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
El 08/09/11 16:50, Stefan Salewski escribió: Yes, a few people including me voted for this for years. That was one of the reasons for me starting my ruby gschem clone one year ago. Maybe the wedana html5 clone will support a new user interface? But for gschem: Some people seems to really love the current behaviour. ... But because some people love the current behaviour, our only chance may be to add an additional alternative mode, which may be not really easy. When we are allowed to make that dramatic changes at all? As one of the people who likes the two key shortcut method (due to being able to mouse with one hand and keyboard with the other, a bit like when playing an FPS :-)) a simple method to satisfy everyone is make the keyboard shortcuts be in a configuration file. We did this for a game (Oolite, an Elite clone). Have sensible defaults, but an alternative that's easily loaded just by changing the configuration. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
Jared Casper wrote: I read this comment to mean that the relative scale of the default titlebox and default symbol library should be such that if you print a page contained within the titleblock out on an A/letter size paper, the symbols are a reasonable size. I don't have time to check now, but iirc, the default titlebox is way to small for size of the default symbols (I replaced the default titlebox with my own bigger one on probably the second day of using gschem). My solution: A titleblock symbol that is really just that. A box, which contains the title, date, version and author, to be printed on the bottom of a page. Because these are global attributes, they can be edited wholesale with the attribute editing dialog. But the symbol includes no frame. I draw the frame after the fact to fit the schematic. The ability to expand on demand is handy, if the circuit needs some more components. http://www.gedasymbols.org/user/kai_martin_knaak/symbols/titleblock/title-block.sym ---)kaimartin(--- -- Kai-Martin Knaak Email: k...@familieknaak.de http://pool.sks-keyservers.net:11371/pks/lookup?search=0x6C0B9F53 increasingly unhappy with moderation of geda-user ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
On Thu, 2011-09-08 at 13:43 -0600, Mark Rages wrote: On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 12:38 PM, Colin D Bennett co...@gibibit.com wrote: On Thu, 08 Sep 2011 17:50:33 +0200 Stefan Salewski m...@ssalewski.de wrote: For me, I never loved the many tool changes, and I was never able to remember all the key combinations. er is edit rotate, ve is view extend. For the later I am not really sure -- have not used gschem for a year. Don't forget, while “ve” is View Extents, “ev” alters all invisible text and attributes making them visible! It is not like “en” which just toggles the display mode to show invisible text, but “ev” actually changes the entities. For my money, we could kill ev and its menu item completely. I don't think it serves any useful purpose, and has caused me many a headache. -- Peter Clifton pc...@cam.ac.uk signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
On Thu, 2011-09-08 at 13:10 -0500, John Griessen wrote: gschem is not as key binding configurable as PCB as far as I can tell. Adding that would be a fine goal. It is actually - its just not immediately obvious. Look in your $PREFIX/share/gEDA/system-gschemrc file and find: (define file-keymap '((w . file-new-window) (n . file-new) (o . file-open) (s . file-save) (e . page-close) ; yes this is okay; reusing page-close (a . file-save-as) (l . file-save-all) (p . file-print) (r . page-revert) ; yes this is okay; resuing page-revert (i . file-image) (t . file-script) (c . file-close-window) (q . file-quit))) (Those go with the second letter to 'f', which activates the file menu). Finally, the global keymap: ; All keys in the global-keymap *must* be unique (define global-keymap '((Escape . cancel) (a . add-keymap) (b . add-box-hotkey) (c . edit-copy-hotkey) (d . edit-delete) (e . edit-keymap) (f . file-keymap) (h . help-keymap) (i . add-component) (l . add-line-hotkey) (m . edit-move-hotkey) (n . add-net-hotkey) (o . options-keymap) (bracketright . options-scale-up-snap-size) (bracketleft . options-scale-down-snap-size) (p . page-keymap) (r . view-redraw) (s . edit-select) (t . attributes-keymap) (u . edit-undo) (v . view-keymap) (w . view-zoom-box-hotkey) (x . view-pan-hotkey) (Left . view-pan-left) (Right . view-pan-right) (Up . view-pan-up) (Down . view-pan-down) (y . buffer-keymap) (z . view-zoom-in-hotkey) (period . repeat-last-command) (Shift colon . edit-invoke-macro) (comma . misc-misc) (equal . misc-misc2) (Shift plus . misc-misc3) (Delete . edit-delete) (Shift greater . page-next) ; Deprecated; preserved for backward compat (Page_Down . page-next) (Shift less . page-prev) ; Deprecated; preserved for backward compat (Page_Up . page-prev) (Alt q . file-quit) (Shift B . add-bus-hotkey) (Shift H . hierarchy-keymap) (Shift U . edit-undo) (Shift R . edit-redo) (Shift Z . view-zoom-out-hotkey) (Control x . clipboard-cut) (Control c . clipboard-copy) (Control v . clipboard-paste-hotkey) (Control z . edit-undo) (Control y . edit-redo) (Control a . edit-select-all) (Control Shift A . edit-deselect))) ; finally set the keymap point to the newly created datastructure (define current-keymap global-keymap) Notice there are plenty of single-key bindings there already, for example, the group at the bottom. Hope that helps, -- Peter Clifton pc...@cam.ac.uk signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
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 recall now reading about this on some other thread last month but couldn't remember. I found the thread from last month. But now I went to your website and couldn't find any mention of this. I did see some of your work with the Renesas mcu and the geda workflow. I also found other search results about this subject regarding your work on other website and even youtube. Something like this should be front and center right on the gEDA website. Who's the webmaster for geda, this should be on there. At the very least there should be links on [2]gpleda.org pointing to this info.. =Dan References 1. mailto:d...@delorie.com 2. http://gpleda.org/ ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
But now I went to your website and couldn't find any mention of this. The info is here, under presentations and other info: http://www.delorie.com/electronics/rulz/ ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 8:16 PM, DJ Delorie [1]d...@delorie.com wrote: But now I went to your website and couldn't find any mention of this. The info is here, under presentations and other info: [2]http://www.delorie.com/electronics/rulz/ aahh, yes, I see it now, on the same page with the Renesas project, thanks ! =Dan References 1. mailto:d...@delorie.com 2. http://www.delorie.com/electronics/rulz/ ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
John Griessen wrote: The number of people using it one way or the other would be voted for with tutorials written and promoted. ... and create quite some confusion during the process. Does not look like a good idea to me. ---)kaimartin(--- -- Kai-Martin Knaak Email: k...@familieknaak.de http://pool.sks-keyservers.net:11371/pks/lookup?search=0x6C0B9F53 increasingly unhappy with moderation of geda-user ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: why some skip KiCAD and gEDA
John Griessen wrote: Another reason gschem would benefit from no-recompile-required key binding configurability with action sequences. Besides keys, they can go to menu picks or buttons with user language usage hints. If gschem wouldn't mess with the menu widget, GTK would allow for accel configuration onb the fly. This works to an extend with PCB-gtk: Open the menu, move the mouse to the item to be configured and type whatever accel you are up to. This accel is immediately in effect. This is a standard feature of GTK applications. On a Gnome desktop you might have to set gnome - interface - can_change_accels in gconf-editor. The only aspect that does not work with PCB-gtk, is that the config is lost at the end of a session. I sometimes use it anyway, if a task calls for repeated application of menu actions that are accel-less by default. ---)kaimartin(--- -- Kai-Martin Knaak Email: k...@familieknaak.de http://pool.sks-keyservers.net:11371/pks/lookup?search=0x6C0B9F53 increasingly unhappy with moderation of geda-user ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
