Mail Archives: geda-user/2015/07/08/23:46:30
Erich I think you meant to post that to the other thread.
On Thu, Jul 9, 2015 at 3:16 AM, Erich Heinzle (a1039181 AT gmail DOT com)
[via geda-user AT delorie DOT com] <geda-user AT delorie DOT com> wrote:
> The reason I have been using Java for a few recent utilities is that it is
> what is being taught in my comp sci subjects, and practical tasks help me to
> familiarise myself with the language.
> If we remain vaguely compatible with what the majority of comp sci and
> engineering students are currently playing with, which, judging by a recent
> stroll through the engineering/computer science portion of the campus
> bookstore, would certainly include java, some c or c++, and python, common
> sense would suggest that potential contributers are more likely to get
> involved.
> One big plus is we can quickly compile gEDA on a 1.6GHz netbook with 1 or
> 2GB of RAM. The Kicad crowd are struggling to build without tens of gigs of
> RAM and beastly CPUs at present.
>
> On Thu, Jul 9, 2015 at 11:21 AM, Evan Foss (evanfoss AT gmail DOT com) [via
> geda-user AT delorie DOT com] <geda-user AT delorie DOT com> wrote:
>>
>> John, I understand. I was soliciting idle talk hoping to find
>> something actionable in it. Like market research only less gross and
>> MBAish...
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Jul 9, 2015 at 12:09 AM, Stefan Salewski <mail AT ssalewski DOT de>
>> wrote:
>> > On Wed, 2015-07-08 at 22:02 +0000, Evan Foss (evanfoss AT gmail DOT com) [via
>> > geda-user AT delorie DOT com] wrote:
>> >> A few people have said that projects slow when developers loose
>> >> interest. While everyone is here (admittadly sucked in by the gravity
>> >> of the other thread) it is worth asking what would excite developer
>> >> interest?
>> >
>> > Sorry to be so negative...
>> >
>> > But my feeling is, that chances for FOSS development in EDA area is
>> > generally very bad today. Generally activity in Free Open Source seems
>> > to shrink since a few years -- there may be many reasons for that. For
>> > EDA area, interest of people in free open source software seems to be
>> > especially low.
>>
>> No offence but this is not a new insight. It is after all why I asked
>> the question.
>>
>> > Here in Germany we have a large microcontroller and
>> > electronics forum -- very few people use KiCad, no one does contribute
>> > actively. For most people cheap is good enough, which is eagle or
>> > LT_Spice or the new web based tools, for example from Digikey. For the
>> > gEDA area -- I have learned in the last years that people really hate
>> > GTK. They hate the non native look for Mac and Windows, and they hate
>> > GTK coding in plain C. Most people even ignore that there are GTK
>> > bindings for many other languages available. When you do a google search
>> > "GTK vs Qt" 95% will vote for Qt. No one starts new projects in GTK
>> > today, some people may still work on Inkscape.
>>
>> I really like GTK. No offense to QT but my machine is gentoo with Mate
>> as the desktop. I liked the feel and efficiency of GTK2 but I wanted
>> GTK3 compatibility.
>>
>> > But Qt's popularity seems
>> > to be shrinking now although, which indeed was my expectation for some
>> > years already: Qt is a very big blob, closely coupled to C++, which is
>> > not so popular although in these days any more. And Qt's strength was
>> > the strong support by large companies in the past, which is gone now.
>>
>> That is why QT is antethetical to the Unix mentality of small atomic
>> things the user combines into a flow. QT is more inline with what the
>> kicad people are doing than geda. IMHO
>>
>> > With GTK, C, scheme there is really no hope for gEDA becoming popular
>> > again. Qt seems to help not much, Qucs is Qt for example, but it is very
>> > quiet. Exciting projects: Anthony's toporouter was considered exciting
>> > by some people, but he retired, no one continued the work. The C code
>> > was a nightmare indeed, I have understood nothing. Mr Wirts router was
>> > called exciting, Java code was available for a period, someone wrote
>> > that the code looked not bad.
>>
>> I have been on this list since it was on the older domain in 2004. I
>> remember all of this.
>>
>> > Is there continuation? The push&shove CERN
>> > router? Was called exciting. Is there continuation? Or Gnucap? Coded in
>> > C++, I think no one except the original author ever worked on it. But
>> > wait, there was a GSOC I think. No result?
>>
>> Yea remember all that too. (avoiding the topic of PCB because of my
>> opinions starting other now tired debates)
>>
>> GSOC has faded into a shallow husk of it's former self. It now mostly
>> exists to continue development of open source projects google finds
>> valuable in the long term. At least as I see it. They dropped a number
>> of former favourites last year and this one.
>>
>> > But generally, EDA development is not that hard today. With a fine
>> > language, a fine GUI and good libraries a good EDA tool set can be
>> > developed in only a few thousend hours I guess. GUI may be the main
>> > problem, GTK is only accepted for Linux/Unix today. Native Mac or
>> > Windows GUI maybe instead? Or Android, HTML5?
>>
>> I could debate that but it would just lead back into the other threads
>> endless debate over the perfect language which will no doubt end it us
>> all having to use PL/I, Ada or LISP for everything.
>>
>> --
>> Home
>> http://evanfoss.googlepages.com/
>> Work
>> http://forge.abcd.harvard.edu/gf/project/epl_engineering/wiki/
>
>
--
Home
http://evanfoss.googlepages.com/
Work
http://forge.abcd.harvard.edu/gf/project/epl_engineering/wiki/
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