Can't use layers

Robert Pearce wrote:

Greetings Martin van den Nieuwelaar,

 

on Fri, 14 Mar 2008 you wrote saying :

Really, when you can click and drag and find all the options you need

under a menu like any other windows based interface, why would you

bother to learn the extensive command line interface?

 

Because, as I keep having to tell people whose computer experience has

been crippled by Windows, the command line is very much faster and more

powerful for a lot of jobs. This doesn't just apply to Eagle - it's true

of lots of stuff from the *nix shell to text editors.

I have observed people using CAD tools of all sorts, and computers of

all sorts. In my experience, your "The GUI is BEST" cry is common among

inexperienced to intermediate users. True experts prefer the greater

power of a command line. Good software therefore provides both.

Fair comment, and I think you're right too.  Perhaps what I should

have said was "why would I bother to learn the extensive command

line interface?".  The difference here is that I obviously don't use

Eagle as much as you do, and I suspect never will; I will never be an

expert Eagle user because I simply don't use it often enough.  If I

take the time to learn the Eagle command line, that will be great in

the short term, but I'm only working on a small/short project, so in

six months or a year when I go to design another board I'll have

forgotten a good chunk of it.

What I'm trying to say is that it would be nice if the easy windowing

interface didn't make the beginner and intermediate users move out of

their comfort zones into the command line realm of the expert user (as

was necessary in this case in order to get the two extra signal layers).

For what it's worth I play on *nix systems all day on the command line

and also use a text based editor for almost everything.  I still think

it sucks though when a "GUI only" user runs into a problem where the

solution cannot be found by way of the GUI and they have to use the

command line.  The 'trick' I believe is to make the human-computer

interface (whether Eagle, or any other software) usable by users of

all abilities and without assuming that beginner users will eventually

become (or even want to become) expert users.

Robert Pearce wrote:

Greetings Martin van den Nieuwelaar,

 

on Fri, 14 Mar 2008 you wrote saying :

Really, when you can click and drag and find all the options you need

under a menu like any other windows based interface, why would you

bother to learn the extensive command line interface?

 

Because, as I keep having to tell people whose computer experience has

been crippled by Windows, the command line is very much faster and more

powerful for a lot of jobs. This doesn't just apply to Eagle - it's true

of lots of stuff from the *nix shell to text editors.

I have observed people using CAD tools of all sorts, and computers of

all sorts. In my experience, your "The GUI is BEST" cry is common among

inexperienced to intermediate users. True experts prefer the greater

power of a command line. Good software therefore provides both.

Fair comment, and I think you're right too.  Perhaps what I should

have said was "why would I bother to learn the extensive command

line interface?".  The difference here is that I obviously don't use

Eagle as much as you do, and I suspect never will; I will never be an

expert Eagle user because I simply don't use it often enough.  If I

take the time to learn the Eagle command line, that will be great in

the short term, but I'm only working on a small/short project, so in

six months or a year when I go to design another board I'll have

forgotten a good chunk of it.

What I'm trying to say is that it would be nice if the easy windowing

interface didn't make the beginner and intermediate users move out of

their comfort zones into the command line realm of the expert user (as

was necessary in this case in order to get the two extra signal layers).

For what it's worth I play on *nix systems all day on the command line

and also use a text based editor for almost everything.  I still think

it sucks though when a "GUI only" user runs into a problem where the

solution cannot be found by way of the GUI and they have to use the

command line.  The 'trick' I believe is to make the human-computer

interface (whether Eagle, or any other software) usable by users of

all abilities and without assuming that beginner users will eventually

become (or even want to become) expert users.