Read more about <a href="../menu2"> the new default menu file </a>, that
is probably the biggest UI change we had in pcb-rnd so far.

<h1> 1. Dislike it as a user? </h1>
<p>
If you don't like it as a user, you have the option to use a custom 
menu file (e.g. the old menu file). But this will make your life harder on 
the long run:
<ul>

<li> you will need to maintain your menu file as new features appear

<li> makes communication with others harder; e.g. when you are reporting bugs 
with a recipe, you can't assume anybody else uses your menu file so you 
will need to reproduce them using the default menu file or have to 
translate in your bugreport; or when you are reading documentation, you 
will find references only to the default key bindings and menu file so you 
will need to translate to your own

</ul>

<h1> 2. Whether our existing users will be unhappy with the switch </h1>

<p>
<ul>

<li> I am worried too, but I've been planning and promoting this switch for 
some time and basically this is the last moment we can do it (we are 
getting into RPM based distros, we are releasing 2.0.0, our number of 
installations is constantly growing - delaying the switch more would only 
affect more users)

<li> so far, from our hard-core power user team I got generally positive 
feedback, so as far as I could sample it, our users like the change

<li> we did have a poll about this before I started and that showed the same: 
more voters agreed with the change than opposed it

<li> once you have more than 5 users, it's impossible to make decisions that 
everybody agrees with. It is important to not do things that everybody 
hates, but we shouldn't block progress just because of our old habits. 
(And I am saying this while still struggling with panning - still clicking 
the wrong mouse button 2+ days after the switchover, lol)
</ul>

<h1> 3. How new users will learn it </h1>
<p>
<ul>
<li> the original modifier based single-stroke setup became a hell to learn; 
it was probably easy when PCB had 20 key combinations, but with 100+, it's 
just a mess. And we literally ran out of keys. Which finger do you bite: 
remove some strange "nobody knows what it is for" binding and make the 4 
users of that feature rage or not add key bindings for important new 
features and make new users wonder why the least used/important features 
have key bindings instead?

<li> I spent some time looking around in other EDA tools in the past few 
years, for various reasons. The multi-key approach is not unique to 
pcb-rnd. As far as I can tell protel/autotrax and altium both use the same 
concept. So our target audience is either already familiar with this, or 
generally have no problem learning it.

<li> I also figured that aside of the new wave of mainly web2.0 based stuff 
targeting the arduino crowd, every single EDA (and generally CAD) package 
has a "non-standard" UI in one way or another. Our target audience is 
advanced UNIX hackers, not windows/web2.0 users. We code for engineers, 
not secretaries, we don't need to copy the UI of excel. So I am not 
worried that meeting new concepts will scare them. I was more worried 
about meeting a "historical mess that accumulated over decades and we are 
too weak to fix it" kind of menu would drive them away.
</ul>

<h1> 4. How geda/pcb users will switch </h1>
<p>
I think who haven't switched from geda/pcb so far will not ever switch. 
We'll have the 5th anniversary of pcb-rnd this year. If 5 years was not 
enough, 10 or 20 won't be either. I think they most probably won't switch 
unless geda/pcb dies and they are forced to switch because of bit rot a 
few years after that
<p>
<ul>
<li> if that happens, I expect majority of them will be two kind of 
switchers: those who realize they need to learn something new and will use 
this opportunity to learn something super-popular at that time (e.g. kicad 
today) for the sake of "everyone uses that so it must be good"; and those 
who hope to get something that's 100% geda/pcb just under a different 
name, so they can go on doing their thing without learning anything new. 
pcb-rnd is neither of those, so they will need to re-learn the tool 
anyway. The menu system doesn't make much difference in this.

<li> I think during the years I promoted pcb-rnd on geda-user@, I made one 
thing clear: pcb-rnd improves a lot over the original code base, which 
also means differing a lot. This inevitable means the later you switch 
from geda/pcb to pcb-rnd, the further we got, thus the steeper the 
learning curve is. The only way to avoid this would be to avoid UI changes 
and stand still, preserve 2011, waiting for everyone to switch before we 
start coding. That's not our strategy since 2016, and when that was 
our strategy for three years, the same people didn't switch either - 
that strategy didn't work. So in short: who haven't switched so far are 
most probably not our target audience, so I am not worried whether they 
will find the menu change making their (non-happening) switch harder.

<li> geda/gschem uses a similar system of keys, and geda/pcb has little 
practical use without gschem so I am sure geda users are familiar with the 
concept; the only hassle for them will be learning the actual key combos.

<li> I do not have exact statistics, and the geda-user@ mailing list is 
really hard to search. If my memory doesn't fail, I've seen many emails 
requesting geda/pcb to learn gschem-like multi-stroke key bindings and 
only a very few that asked gschem to switch to alt+ctrl+shift keys. Which 
seems to support our direction even among our non-users.
</ul>