Electronics > KiCad
KiCad 6 is coming! (has arrived!!)
delfinom:
--- Quote from: dunkemhigh on January 20, 2022, 09:06:05 pm ---
--- Quote from: delfinom on January 20, 2022, 08:23:59 pm ---
--- Quote from: dunkemhigh on January 20, 2022, 07:13:42 pm ---
--- Quote ---The result is, all the documentation contributors have quit and we have been left with outdated docs.
--- End quote ---
What's needed to be able to write the docs? Other than a grasp of English :)
ISTM that even a current user might not be an appropriate person unless they have inside knowledge of how things are supposed to work. Documenting what you managed to find out through trial and error would be better than nothing, I guess, but the ideal would be to document what it's supposed to do. How would one go about getting involved in that?
--- End quote ---
1. Learn asciidoc/asciidoctor (it's not that bad, it's a sane alternative to markdown)
2. Know basic git and gitlab to open a merge request
3. Figure out how to get asciidoctor installed, if on Windows you need ruby + the gem
4. Install VSCode + Asciidoc Extension to get live previews
https://gitlab.com/kicad/services/kicad-doc
--- End quote ---
Thanks, but what I meant was more: where does one get the knowledge to put in the documentation?
--- End quote ---
Alot of it can be done just by being a normal user that figures it out/understands things. Some of it might require knowing developer intention, but many sections are like, "Want to make a curved track? Press this button and do this".
Or, "This button here does this"
thinkfat:
--- Quote from: Cerebus on January 20, 2022, 08:26:35 pm ---
--- Quote from: thinkfat on January 20, 2022, 07:29:07 pm ---
--- Quote from: Cerebus on January 20, 2022, 03:28:28 pm ---
--- Quote from: thinkfat on January 20, 2022, 07:26:20 am ---So, summing up the arguments: "You need to do what I want and if you don't you're stupid"!
Did I get that right?
--- End quote ---
No, the argument is "Please listen to your users". I'm not even the one offering "do what I want suggestions" beyond "Consistent UI please" and "Please don't push it out the door with big chunks of the help file missing" which is a reasonably low bar to set for any software project.
--- End quote ---
Well, I didn't respond to you in particular, but "whom the shoe fits"...
What I got is "This release was not ready, because X", with X being of such importance it dwarfs every other achievement that makes the release a proper milestone. This is not much different from "Feature X MUST be worked on or you're stupid".
--- End quote ---
In the case of basic, functioning documentation, as in help file "this is what control X does", yes, if it's missing then I would wholeheartedly endorse a point of view that it MUST be there. That's the equivalent of the garage telling your car is ready, and when you get there it's only got three wheels on.
You are the one throwing emotive words like 'stupid' around, the most insulting term I've used in relation to the matter in hand is 'amateurish' and that wasn't even in this thread. In fact I don't recall anyone who has said something to the effect of "I'd like to see X" use the kind of insulting language you're putting into their mouths. That borders on, perhaps, is, making ad-hominem arguments and there's no point in continuing to try and discuss this if you're determined to do that rather than offer reasoned counter arguments to the points made.
Chivvying people on to be better is not the same as calling them stupid. You may chose to insult people you wish to persuade if you like, but personally I find it rather counter productive.
Don't bother replying to me personally because I'm hitting "ignore thread" after this, circular arguments in place of constructive discussion are not what I want to spend my time on. It's ironic that earlier in the thread I'm the one urging people who had previously given up on it to give KiCad another go in light of recent improvements, and now I'm giving up in the face of unthinking zealotry. Go figure.
--- End quote ---
Okay. Zealot. I've been called many things. But "Zealot" is new. Anyway I don't care if you read this or not, others will, and I'm writing for their sake.
Let me say a few things from my perspective both as a professional software developer as well as contributor to a number of open source software projects. Free Software lives by and large off of spare time dedicated by individuals. There are a few "big money" projects with a majority of contributors on some companies payroll, KiCAD is not one of them.
For every such project comes a point where you _have_ to make a release. Distributions, which are your primary customers, demand it. They want something they can package and ship. Your end users demand a release, because of all the shiny bling you have been showing on conferences for the past two years. So you take inventory of the outstanding issues. And since you know you cannot fix all of them, ever, you hold a triage. And then you sacrifice stuff, and if you don't have people to contribute documentation or translations, this is what gets chopped. Because you know it's not the end of the world for your users. But a bug in pcbnew that crashes it when you draw a trace, that will hurt. So you'll find someone to fix it and you will delay the release to have it fixed. Because that's essential for your users, where a "TODO" in a help file is not, because there's always a community of other users out there that they can ask.
In a professional setup, the story is a little different. Customer gets what is in the contract. If the contract says, you need to deliver documentation, you better have a work package for it and manpower reserved. And if push comes to shove, you can still play "Escalate!" and coax management into getting you an additional technical writer on the team to help you out. Because nobody wants to argue with the customer and talk him out of what he can rightfully expect.
Call me a zealot for knowing the difference. But don't call people "amateurish" who know what is _actually_ important for their users and what isn't.
PlainName:
--- Quote ---Here's K-nTree: https://github.com/sparkmicro/Ki-nTree/
--- End quote ---
Thanks! Using the correct spelling works wonders :-DD
MadScientist:
I moved from a professional license version of DipTrace to Kicad 6. ( I had used Kicad 5 for some personal designs ). I don’t find the lack of documentation that bad the vast majority of Kicad features are intuitive and the rest get answers by the Kicad community . I just completed 6 designs last week and was very happy with Kicad 6 . With very little effort I was productive with Kicad.
Give me features over documentation any day.
Great software , keep going guys
thinkfat:
KiCAD 6.0.1 has been released.
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