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From:	geda AT psjt DOT org (Stephan =?utf-8?Q?B=C3=B6ttcher?=)
To:	<geda-user AT delorie DOT com>
Subject:	Re: [geda-user] Stay or go?
References:	<98D1C4E4-581D-4A03-94E4-E0330960EADF AT wellesley DOT edu>
Date:	Sat, 23 Jul 2016 17:18:17 +0200
In-Reply-To:	<98D1C4E4-581D-4A03-94E4-E0330960EADF@wellesley.edu> (James
	Battat's message of "Sat, 23 Jul 2016 10:16:18 -0400")
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"James Battat (jbattat AT wellesley DOT edu) [via geda-user AT delorie DOT com]"
<geda-user AT delorie DOT com> writes:

> Dear gEDA folks,
>
> I’ve used gschem/pcb for several (modest) boards now, and love many
> things about it.  I do not love what I perceive to be deep friction
> and lack of cooperation among developers.
>
> It makes me wonder how long gschem/pcb will endure.  And therefore I
> must decide if, as a user, I should invest any more effort to learning
> the platform and building up custom footprint/schematic libraries,
> etc, or instead transition now to another platform.
>
> This may be an unfair question to ask on this forum, but here goes:
>
> What do you see as drawbacks to KiCad (wrt gschem/pcb)?  I’m on the
> fence about transitioning away from gschem/pcb.  Why should I stay?
>
> James

Same here, I am pondering the same, for the exact same reasons.

My colleagues use Eagle and Kicad.  Often they cannot do things that I
ask them to do, because the tool has lots of builtin heuristics that
prevent it.  gaf and pcb are transparent, general, orthogonal and
sufficiently low level.  What they lack is discoverability, especially
pcb.  Orthogonality could improve a bit, again, mostly pcb.

I don't know Eagle nor Kicad.  I'll probably try Kicad for the next
project that is sufficiently disconnected from the previous ones to make
it worth starting from scratch.  I may very well come back to work on
geda to keep it working for me.

There is a patch I submitted a long time ago to gnetlist, implementing
functionality that I depend on, but that was never looked at by anybody.
This is very discouraging, when it comes to invest time for coding.

I am also discouraged by the requirement to use a lauchpad account,
which I don't have, and do not want to have.

Cheers,
-- 
Stephan

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