Discussion: FreeCAD is not ready for 1.0

[Joel_graff]

I just don't want to rush development to call it 1.0 and subsequently disappoint many people. The numbering version is important because in most people's minds it does provide a good sense of the state of completeness of the software.

That's absolutely true. I don't think anyone wants to rush things because v1.0 really does say a lot. But there's really no consensus out there that we can look to for a determination on what gives us the right to call it v1.0. Really, the majority of criticism that FreeCAD seems to receive is the "clunky" UI, which is really more a product of its modular workbench design than it is bad UI design. In other words, I really think it's always going to have a clunky feel compared to other systems by virtue of what it is, and the modular workbenches are, of course, a core strength of FreeCAD.

I also suspect many resist calling it v1.0 because of the negative public view of FC as it lacks parity with commercial options. That's really the same pushback that I think GIMP gets - it doesn't have parity with Photoshop, therefore, it's 'garbage'.

That's why I think we ought to let the domain experts tell us what needs to be done before FC is ready for v1.0. Let Kurt decide on the packaging / dependency / infrastructure stuff. Let realthunder determine what assembly needs at a minimum. We need to decide that for ourselves by those who are most responsible for the project, no matter what anyone else thinks. There's always going to be haters.

[chrisb]

ping

Joel, this morning I have already silently deleted a double post of yours. Now we have three of them. Do you have an issue with your browser? I usually don't delete things without involving the author, so please tell me what to do.

[Kunda1]

That's why I think we ought to let the domain experts tell us what needs to be done before FC is ready for v1.0. Let Kurt decide on the packaging / dependency / infrastructure stuff. Let realthunder determine what assembly needs at a minimum. We need to decide that for ourselves by those who are most responsible for the project, no matter what anyone else thinks. There's always going to be haters.

I would call your your view a seasoned OSS worldview, @Joel_graff. I think it captures the situation well. I feel the concern of not disappointing users for sure but we're in a rigged-game if we're comparing FC to other proprietary software.

The trade-off of making the lives and precious time of the volunteers you mentioned above easier, is that it makes the forum interactions with users who are disappointed more frequent and tedious (at times). But that's not new... and it's something we're already contending on different fronts with on a weekly (sometimes daily) basis anyway... (for example, having an annual release cycle and users who are tenuous about trying the development version that is light-years ahead of the stable version).

So, my 2cents here is, lets make a manifesto of some sort - that we can direct users to that kvetch. Lets make it structured and well written from content of posts like this. Obviously, the folly of it would be that people won't read it and still kvetch... but at least we establish that FC isn't competing with Solidworks or Catia. We're moving forward through necessity of people who volunteer their time and enjoy sharing and building stuff with others.

Think of it as a > /dev/null of a sorts.

[kisolre]

Do you have an issue with your browser?

Might be a problem with the forum? I noticed that several times when I press the submit button I get a warning that there is a new post and that post is actualy what I was just trying to post.

[chrisb]

Might be a problem with the forum?

Looking at the posts again I rather think that Joel wanted to correct something in his first post and got the button wrong, thus quoting his own post. Then he somehow got it right again posting a third time.

[Joel_graff]

Joel, this morning I have already silently deleted a double post of yours. Now we have three of them. Do you have an issue with your browser? I usually don't delete things without involving the author, so please tell me what to do.

So I noticed issues as well. If I went back and edited my post, it would quote me in the edit... then I'd post the changes, see that I quoted my entire post, go back, and delete the quote tags. The second time I posted, it quoted me twice. I didn't bother to look at everything afterward, so I didn't realize it created multiple posts.

This is not behavior I've seen before in the forum software, so I don't think it's me, but who knows? Very odd...

Code: Select all

browser: Firefox 73.0
OS: Linux shawty 5.3.0-29-generic #31-Ubuntu SMP Fri Jan 17 17:27:26 UTC 2020 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

EDIT: Testing the edit process...

EDIT #2: Ok, so I think I may have been hitting the quote button instead of the edit button. I can't reasonably explain it other than operator error.

Sorry about that.

[vocx]

... Noone, especially no company will rely on a "1.0" label and say "oh it's a 1.0, great! That means it is reliable and has all the features we need. Let's take it"....

This is exactly Bernd's argument. According to him, companies do not want FreeCAD because it's not 1.0 at least.

[vocx]

That's absolutely true. I don't think anyone wants to rush things because v1.0 really does say a lot. But there's really no consensus out there that we can look to for a determination on what gives us the right to call it v1.0.

There is no consensus if we don't make consensus. That's what this topic is about. It's about hitting the brakes and saying, "don't rush it, we first need x, y, z".

Really, the majority of criticism that FreeCAD seems to receive is the "clunky" UI, which is really more a product of its modular workbench design than it is bad UI design. In other words, I really think it's always going to have a clunky feel ...

This is just not true. FreeCAD can look very polished in terms of user interface, if we decide to focus on this. Currently we haven't, that's all. There is no reason why FreeCAD should be clunky while other programs like Blender are nicer; they just decided to put their time on that.

Case Study: Musescore (FLOSS cross-platform sheetmusic/scorewriter) UI/UX

Now, personally, I don't mind FreeCAD's interface. To me this isn't a showstopper when it comes to calling it 1.0. I like it the way it is; to me what makes it not good enough are the features, and things like surrounding infrastructure (documentation, manuals, programming references, etc.).

...
We need to decide that for ourselves by those who are most responsible for the project, no matter what anyone else thinks.

Ultimately, I don't mind if Werner and Yorik take the decision of calling FreeCAD 1.0; it's not like I would stop using the software. But I just want a bit more quality in the entire experience before taking that big step.

[vocx]

...Do you have an issue with your browser?...

I also think it was a problem with the forum. I almost posted a double reply like that. The forum errored out, and it showed a message. Once I reloaded the page, the post was already made, but the editor was still open, so somebody could double post without realizing. I think Kurt is migrating the servers so these types of errors are to be expected, I think.

[Zolko]

Really, the majority of criticism that FreeCAD seems to receive is the "clunky" UI, which is really more a product of its modular workbench design than it is bad UI design. In other words, I really think it's always going to have a clunky feel ...

This is just not true. FreeCAD can look very polished in terms of user interface, if we decide to focus on this.
...
Now, personally, I don't mind FreeCAD's interface. To me this isn't a showstopper when it comes to calling it 1.0... But I just want a bit more quality in the entire experience before taking that big step.

Case Study: Musescore (FLOSS cross-platform sheetmusic/scorewriter) UI/UX

This musescore vid is really cool.... The UI is really neat

The thing that is really cool about their UI is that a user can create an entire new "palette", from scratch, like a FreeCAD WB, but user-configurable. Ths is exactly what NX-11 does, and it's really nice. From what I see in the FreeCAD UI, this should be quite possible to do also here, but today it's not entirely possible: a WB is defined at start-up, and can only define some UI elements (the toolbar, some additional menu entries) but not others (the entire menus, contextual menus, keyboard shortcuts...)

What would be nice to do for the next release is to extend the WB concept to be user-configurable:

• make the entire UI, including menus and contextual menus, WB-dependent (if the WB so wishes). It would be possible to create an entirely new interface with custom panels, toolbars, menus ...
• make the UI re-loadable, including WBs, so that optimising the UI (see point above) can be done faster
• make the UI configuration save-able and load-able, so that they can be shared among users and ported from one workstation to another

This would need some low-level update in the FreeCAD code, but would allow to not have to make huge discussions about how the UI should behave, and instead leave the decision to where it belongs: in the hands of the users. So instead of trying to make the best possible UI, where no consensus will exist, make one that can easily be configured. Then, like with the Addon-Manager, we'll see specific UI configuration files pop-up from everywhere, optimised for some workflow.