On 8 September 2014 00:32, Nicola Perotto wrote: > > Installed, tried to insert a resistor in a schematic... no success! > > > Deleted. > Two quite different points follow > > > In 2014 a software MUST have a decent level of functions Definitely. Because, at a minimum, of the need to not crumble instantly under the weight of market force. But > and adhere to common > standards. > Here I disagree completely. While it would be NICE if it all worked just as I expected, and just the same as any other related program . so if I learned one I'd know the lot, it can be better to vastly better if a program does things differently or very differently in some or even many cases, IF the result is better 'throughput' overall. (Where throughput is a mix of quality of result, lack of bad surprises to an expert, time to complete a given job, documentation , ... - we all know what it means, it's just hard to concisely complain). Altium costs, I'm told, about $12,000 per "seat". It certainly does not work identically to Eagle. That which make a program feel arcane to the uninitiated my help make it sing in the hands of an expert. Or not. I installed a PCB package a few days ago* to use as a basic circuit diagram drawing tool that was able to be used by others that I shared simple diagrams with if they wished to modify them. A lot of what it did was intuitive, as I'd expect. But I had to do a websearch in order to work out how to 'mirror' a component. In retrospect it was so obvious and trivially easy that I was amazed that I had not been able to work out how to do it. BUT in the process of searching I came across a list of Kicad short cut keys. All but one Kicad shortcut does nothing at all in the target program. That does not make either program 'bad' per se. And I don't know if Kicad is "standard" by any normal measure. I just bought a "new" old HP oscilloscope - 100 MHz dual 'channel' + logic analyser ... . I went to use it for the first time the day after I bought it to take a few quick measurements. My goodness gracious me! While I managed to achieve what I wanted it was nightmarishly hard, knobs and menus did not do what I expected. Functions I knew were available were unable to be found - not just "hard to find" but "you can't get their from here" hard, so far. . Even getting basic triggering going was hard. I have no doubt at all that a few minutes with the provided tutorials will work wonders and that a few months from now it will sing and dance at my merest thought, as all good HP instruments should do when fully trained [tm]. Pick up any top end digital camera and you'll find it works much the same as any others. There will be many underlying significant differences between brands in how you achieve various functionality, but at the top level they are all reasonably standard - you are unlikely to feel totally lost trying to use one. Sometime not too too long from now [I still confidently expect ...] a camera will appear that can either work "just like the others" or optionally can be managed in a way that bends the brains of the average user and makes them want to flee back to the old standard methods. But within hours it will start to make sense to the brain and within weeks it's unlikely anyone will ever want to go back (even though they can do so instantly). Is the 'new' system wrong because it's non standard? No, I suggest. In fact, I also suggest that the old system is the one that's bad and wrong and the new one is manifestly superior. But if they all had to work the same as each other that's all they'd ever do. [[No. information available yet on how this magic works :-). }} Russell * In reviewing the licence terms while writing this I found that the terms of the 'free' version are not the same as what I read when I downloaded it. So I'll not mention it here as the main thing to commend it was the $0 price for the entry level system. (No, not Eagle). --=20 http://www.piclist.com/techref/piclist PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .