Comment 11 for bug 816739

On Thu, 15 Sep 2011, Timmmm wrote:

> For what it's worth, Eagle also has a retarded UI. I haven't tried geda
> yet but I have low hopes.

No EDA has a standard UI because standard UI is *not* useful for the
kind of work it needs to be done... for example warping *is* very
useful, actually (use LTSpice if you want to suffer because there is no
warping), especially when routing traces. I agree that there should be
an option to disable it, tough.

As for other issues there are some nice ideas in there... for example
I somehow like the ISIS component bar (a *big* listbox containing the
available parts, more or less the component browser in permanent form
near the toolbar). OTOH I'd like some kind of 2 keys macro for adding
single characters component (like A,R for resistors and A,C for
capacitors) to work faster (heck, we're paid by the hour but we have
deadlines :P)

Also (in ISIS) there is a component option of where to connect
the 'hidden' power pins... without it the hidden pin feature is
absolutely worthless for pro use (since we have tons of power rails
around). As a related notes hidden pins are not recommended because 1)
it is not evident where the part is powered from 2) you need to notate
somewhere else the bypass capacitors (never leave home without them :D)
and 3) in some kind of design there is a filter cap/ferrite on *each*
power pin so you need to show them anyway!

Also, learn your shortcut keys! The original orcad did *everything* with
single keys (something like vi) and everyone lamented when cadence
windowsized it... (there are *still* around pcb386 user groups, BTW so
it was a successful design!) A while ago someone contested there was
no menu option/toolbar for the relative zero (the space key). Of course
there is not! Since it works for the current position... choosing the
option and then clicking the position would *not* be useful, since it's
mostly used when moving stuff (i.e. doing something else...).
A 'measure' tool would be useful for the obvious function (measuring
distances) but, as a colleague of mine said (after asking for how to
measure stuff) "the space bar is way faster"

For the netlist there is a big nice button in the toolbar :D (in the
devel IIRC there is also in the menu bar, since they reorganized them)

As for the 'delete after selection'... in a text editor do you need to
select the character to delete it with Del or Backspace? of course
not... parts, wires and junctions are the 'characters' for an EDA
program... you rubberband to select if you want to do massive operations
(and you'll quickly learn that is faster to shift-drag or ctrl-drag to
copy or drag, because it's way faster than right select from the
menu...)

BTW you said the 'moving the splitters breaks the UI'... which
splitters??? since when kicad has splitters???

--
Lorenzo Marcantonio
Logos Srl