Version 7.3 fixed absolutely nothing?

Am 30.06.2015 um 22:55 schrieb Paul Badger:

It was my impression (from a CadSoft USA rep I believe) that the

infuriating and pointless error message

"Net name 'Foo' already exists,

please use the name command to combine nets"

 

had been killed, but it's still there. I upgraded my OS to be able to

use 7.3 and got ...    NADA

 

If you don't count  the library browser.  How damn hard is it to set

whatever property is being set in the Name dialog from the Properties

dialog, or to just pop open the name dialog with the new name already

filled in?

 

Eagle continues to be the dumbest, most infuriating GUI I use on a

regular basis, but the most infuriating part is that fully half of what

sucks in the interface, is trivially easy to fix.

 

Paul

 

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Reading your post I do not think that you are interested in an

explanation why EAGLE asks you in this situation to use the NAME

command.....

Anyway I will forward your email to our development team and wait

for a solution in a future release.

--

Mit freundlichen Gruessen / Best regards

Richard Hammerl

  CadSoft Support -- hotline@cadsoft.de

  FAQ: http://www.cadsoft.de/training/faq/

Reading your post I do not think that you are interested in an

explanation why EAGLE asks you in this situation to use the NAME

command.....

On the contrary, I am extremely interested.

So let's see, the Properties dialog sets a certain amount of properties (but far from all unfortunately).

The name dialog sets some properties.

For the Properties dialog to set the name property, would require:

Maybe another subdialog that would ask about renaming "this segment or all the segments on the page".

Would that be the end of the world, opening another dialog that the user would have to check off?

Or there could be space for the messages that would appear if the user were changing an existing signal. etc etc etc

Then a decision would have to be made whether to close the properties dialog - or just leave it open. (Leave it open obviously)

The information would have to be put in a buffer in case the user cancelled, so it could be undone.

(Although you don't worry about this in the Layers dialog - If the user checks "apply", changes don't revert on cancel.)

Is this stuff that hard?

While I'm putting in requests...

Why doesn't the text tool just open the properties dialog when you click on the tool, so I could set size, layer in one go?

That's an absolutely trivial change to make, you just call the properties dialog instead of the (mostly useless text dialog box).

    Yes, you have in initialize a text object and put it in a buffer so the user can still cancel. Tools need to clean up after themselves.

Why can't I select a whole group of items and open the property dialog, changing all of the items at once.

     For properties that vary from part to part - the field should be grayed out. Yeah it requires work, but what about the users time?

Maybe the "reverse click paradigm" makes this stuff a bit more tricky to code - another excellent reason to throw it overboard.

This might be the case why the Undo buffer works in such a crazy way - that is absolutely counter-intuitive to either Mac or Windows users.

There may be software that is this awkward somewhere, but I don't come across it in all the things I do with:

Graphics packages (see Inkscape - not up to Adobe standards but very useable), Photoshop etc, etc

CAD packages - AutoCAD etc

Text, Word processors, Excel etc etc

Paul

While I'm putting in requests...

Why doesn't the text tool just open the properties dialog when you click

on the tool, so I could set size, layer in one go?

That's an absolutely trivial change to make, you just call the

properties dialog instead of the (mostly useless text dialog box).

There's something I don't follow here. Why the extra dialog. You have

the text dialog, you type in text and click OK. The text is now floating

on your mouse cursor, you can make any adjustments on the fly from the

top toolbar.

     Yes, you have in initialize a text object and put it in a buffer so

the user can still cancel. Tools need to clean up after themselves.

Why can't I select a whole group of items and open the property dialog,

changing all of the items at once.

      For properties that vary from part to part - the field should be

grayed out. Yeah it requires work, but what about the users time.

If the properties dialog where the main mechanism for setting

parameters, it would have to grow to the point where it would become

unwieldly. Additionally, it would slow EAGLE's workflow down since for

every new object you would have to go through a properties dialog. In

PCB design you're often doing the same action, with the same parameters

multiple times so I feel this would slow things down.

The reverse click paradigm is kind of like reverse polish notation on

calculators. Its strange to most new users but once you get used to it,

its a very fast way to work.

This might be the case why the Undo buffer works in such a crazy way -

that is absolutely counter-intuitive to either Mac or Windows users.

What's odd about it? You undo and you can redo seems pretty standard. In

the list view you actually have a complete record of everything you have

done within the session which can be pretty useful.

There may be software that is this awkward somewhere, but I don't come

across it in all the things I do with:

Graphics packages (see Inkscape - not up to Adobe standards but very

useable), Photoshop etc, etc

Graphics packages and ECAD packages are not optimized for the same task

so it's not really an apples to apples comparison. Each line of work has

it's own specific requirements so it makes sense for the tools of one

domain to work differently then those of another. I haven't run to any

ECAD package that behaves like Photoshop, GIMP etc. It seems

unreasonable to expect similar behaviour.

Text, Word processors, Excel etc etc

Same argument as the Graphics packages different tools for different jobs.

hth,

Jorge Garcia

OK - You're right about the text tool. Once again I was fooled by the interface. I type the text into the box. Now in most other software THIS is where one would make options, except in Eagle it's a modal dialog box and nothing else works.  I click OK then  it does work the way you say, except it seems the alignment is left out of the top menu.

So if you're adding contextual menus to the top - how come if I do the same thing, click on some text, the same contextual menu doesn't come up?  I agree with the contextual menu idea, but they seem inconsistent to me. Ideally that would be more fluid way of working with objects. Select one or more text objects and then a contextual menu would be able to modify any of the properties that were common to the group, or all of the properties in a single object.

People are just as used to floating palettes now, that aren't modal, that would get away from the all in one Properties dialog.

So you'd have a couple of floating panels with a lot of flexibility at your fingertips such as being able to turn on and off layers - and ghost or lock certain layers so it made it easy to select items. The world has been full of this interface stuff for the last 20 years, Eagle just doesn't seem to care about looking like it's 1990.

What I was referring to about the undo buffer is the buffer's relationship to clicks. It often ends up undoing the last click with work that one wanted. So the key is to make an extra click before you hit undo. It's perfectly workable after you work with Eagle for about two years or so, and also don't mind things not working like any other piece of software that one has ever used. I've been using Eagle for five years, I've read the manual and the help files, and I'm STILL learning the interface.

I've made a handful of menus and ULP's the fill in the missing functionality and the menu items that are no where to be found, and things that only work from the command line, that I can never remember.

Paul

On 7/1/2015 8:04 PM, Paul Badger wrote:

OK - You're right about the text tool. Once again I was fooled by the

interface. I type the text into the box. Now in most other software THIS

is where one would make options, except in Eagle it's a modal dialog box

and nothing else works.  I click OK then  it does work the way you say,

except it seems the alignment is left out of the top menu.

 

So if you're adding contextual menus to the top - how come if I do the

same thing, click on some text, the same contextual menu doesn't come

up?  I agree with the contextual menu idea, but they seem inconsistent

to me. Ideally that would be more fluid way of working with objects.

Select one or more text objects and then a contextual menu would be able

to modify any of the properties that were common to the group, or all of

the properties in a single object.

That's where the reverse paradigm thing comes into play, you can't just

click on text. You have to select an action first then the item to

perform it on. In this example you would maybe use the CHANGE command

select the property of text you want to modify and then you can click on

all of the text instances you want to have that property.

 

People are just as used to floating palettes now, that aren't modal,

that would get away from the all in one Properties dialog.

So you'd have a couple of floating panels with a lot of flexibility at

your fingertips such as being able to turn on and off layers - and ghost

or lock certain layers so it made it easy to select items. The world has

been full of this interface stuff for the last 20 years, Eagle just

doesn't seem to care about looking like it's 1990.

I totally agree about the modal issue, many of EAGLE dialogs are

blocking because of it and that creates some issues. I've put it up as

one of the GUI requests, let's see what happens with that. We've

actually compiled a rather large list, now it becomes a matter of

picking what's going to be implemented to improve EAGLE's GUI. This is a

matter of debate even among Cadsoft staff since we all have different

opinions about priorities and what should be done and how. Maybe that's

why the status quo has been maintained all this time.

Let's see what happens in the upcoming releases. By moving to Qt5 we've

paved the road for anything we might need to do GUI wise, we have a lot

more options now then we used to. Exciting times ahead.

hth,

Jorge Garcia

Hi Jorge,

This post is a bit old, but I couldn't resist.

CadSoft must really take a hard decision sooner than later: just throw the current GUI overboard and start anew (of course, for the die-hards Eagle users loving the "reverse polish notation" and the antique interface, just keep a switch at hand). The fact is, Eagle is currently the only PCB CAD program using such an approach. Do you really believe that, when you say it's better? My experience with PCAD and PADS (which are, from a GUI perspective surprisingly similar) is that I am much more productive using them than using Eagle. The learning curve is extremely slow with Eagle, and I can't remember having such difficult times to learn PCAD; and with PADS it was even simpler, because they are so similar. And these are professional pieces of software (but unfortunately neither runs on Linux or Mac, which now is for me important; moreover, they cost much, much more than Eagle.

It's such a pity that nobody at CadSoft realises what a big show stopper the current UI is, otherwise as a CAD software Eagle's core is decent, robust and stable (I can't remember Eagle crashing on me or loosing data). With each major revision I was hoping that Eagle will finally do away with the past, but alas... it did't happen at version 6, nor at version 7. My hopes are now for version 8, if this will ever happen.

I believe CadSoft needs a bunch of fresh programmers, or maybe a new Eagle product manager...

Regards,

Lix

On 10/04/16 19:14, Lix Paulian wrote:

It's such a pity that nobody at CadSoft realises what a big show stopper

the current UI is,

Personally, I think it's a pity that so many trolls out there fail to

realise how wrong you are. The current UI works extremely well.

Microsoft reinvent their UI every couple of years, always for the worse,

and nobody seems to think there's anything wrong with that, but a

company who stick with what works get this sort of crap? Astonishing.

Oh, and I completely disagree on the learning curve and the so-called

ease-of-use of other PCB tools. Eagle is the easiest I've come across,

providing you set all the options back to "traditional" rather than

having the changes you trolls have asked for.

Am 11.04.2016 um 08:51 schrieb Rob Pearce:

On 10/04/16 19:14, Lix Paulian wrote:

It's such a pity that nobody at CadSoft realises what a big show stopper

the current UI is,

 

Personally, I think it's a pity that so many trolls out there fail to

realise how wrong you are. The current UI works extremely well.

Microsoft reinvent their UI every couple of years, always for the worse,

and nobody seems to think there's anything wrong with that, but a

company who stick with what works get this sort of crap? Astonishing.

 

Oh, and I completely disagree on the learning curve and the so-called

ease-of-use of other PCB tools. Eagle is the easiest I've come across,

providing you set all the options back to "traditional" rather than

having the changes you trolls have asked for.

 

I am one hundred percent agree with Rob.

And in particular the ULP and script programming possibilities I

do not want to miss.

Freundliche Grüße / Kind regards

Friedrich

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I did not say that the ULP and CLI must be eliminated; and also the current UI should be kept. But throw an alternate UI for the rest of us...that is of course, only if CadSoft wants greater market share.

On a side note, I must admit that the diatribe with Microsoft changing their UI is not very clear to me...