----- Original Message ----- 
From: "William Chops Westfield"
>>> There's probably an existing open source library to do whatever you
>>> might wish.  But FINDING it based on a vague idea of what you want
>>> to accomplish is next to impossible...
>>
>> for anything but the simplest programs, you should have the design
>> on paper before you start coding. If you don't know exactly what it is
>> you want to accomplish, what do you think you're going to end up with?
>
> You're misunderstanding.

Rather, you've misspoken. :) There are not many ways to misinterpret "a 
vague idea of what you want to accomplish."

> Suppose, for example, that I start out with a
> task like "I want to drive my pickit1 from my linux box, using a GUI that
> looks very much like microchip's windows pickit1 software."  That's a
> pretty specific target.

I would go even further, and *list* the functionality that must be present 
in the final product. The "must-haves" and the 
"nice-to-haves-but-can-do-withouts".

> Assume that I understand the "hard" parts like
> talking over USB, the pickit1 "protocol", and so on.   Now, I know there
> are toolkits for doing windows-like interfaces under linux/X.  But how
> to I find out which ones are most appropriate for my task?  Which ones
> will work at all?  Which ones require a particular environment already
> installed?  Grr.

That's why you need to have a reasonably good understanding of what it is 
that you want to accomplish. I bet by the time you're done listing the 
requirements, you will be left with only a handful of libraries that fit 
those requirements. The next step would be to compare these remaining 
libraries to see which one would work best for your particular project.

As Peter suggested, "Divide and Conquer."

Best regards,

Vitaliy 

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