On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 2:42 PM, Petter Urkedal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 2008-11-04, Timothy Normand Miller wrote: >> Also, there are updates to the tools that Howard has made that need to >> be merged. Also, I myself prefer modularity. Perhaps a compromise >> with Howard's needs would be to ensure that everything stays within >> one directory. > > How about a small API for accessing the card? I made a sketch of some > headers, > > > http://git.eideticdew.org/cgit/ogp-pu/tree/tools/oga1lib/oga1?h=oga1lib_suggestion > > I'm not sure about the top level directory name (tools/oga1lib), and > other suggestions are welcome too, aesthetic or semantic.
As a software engineer, I love complete, well-documented APIs. _I_ think you should go for it. Howard's statement prompts me to wax philosophical for a moment... You'll encounter with any engineering discipline, science, or art a set of attitudes and specialized needs that are quite different from those held by those of us who come from Computer Science. Howard, like many people who come from an Electrical Engineering background, is competent with software coding, but the software (coding and end-user apps) are merely tools to serve the job off designing hardware. Throw a hierarchical chip design at your EE guy, and he'll think it's great. Throw a hierarchical software design at the same guy, and he'll appreciate all the analogies, but he isn't any more interested in software engineering than mechanical engineering. We should keep this in mind when we develop tools for different audiences. As an open hardware project, we need to make sure that software libraries are simple, and applications are exactly on point and intuitive to the specialized user. Of course, the hardware can be as complex as we want it. It should not be inferred that hardware designers aren't interested in freedom as much as the software engineers. It's just WHAT they want to be free is different. Stallman wants software to be free but isn't too concerned about the hardware, as long as that doesn't interfere with Free Software. I and my friends want hardware to be free, and we're willing to compromise a bit on the software (i.e. drivers for Windows and using proprietary tools) for the sake of the hardware. A mechanical engineer is going to want blueprints and machining processes to be well-documented but isn't necessarily so concerned about the programs he uses to run his CNC router. These differing priorities don't really complete, because we're all working to make different kinds of knowledge freely available. -- Timothy Normand Miller http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/~millerti Open Graphics Project _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
