Re: [PROTEL EDA USERS]: Re: Simple Macros

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <marjan@vom.com>]

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At 04:53 PM 10/19/00 +1000, Protelcsc wrote:
>Hello Everyone,
>
>Further to the recent discussion regarding creating macros in Protel 99SE,
>we noticed that a couple of questions remained unanswered.

I want to commend Protelcsc for stepping in to answer these questions.

Readers of this list know that I have many times said that this list 
generally provides better support than that provided by Protel itself. This 
is no negative reflection on Protel; rather it represents the power of more 
than a thousand users banded together for mutual support.

Because of the existence of this list, I would assume that Protel might 
possibly be able to lower support costs; this will benefit all of us, 
because cost of support must be a very large component of the cost of 
complex software.

However, sometimes this list, for whatever reason, will fail to completely 
answer a question, or might even answer incorrectly, without any correction 
appearing in the discussion. It is therefore appropriate that Protelcsc 
monitor the list to ensure that responses are complete and accurate. It is 
much easier to do this, I am sure, than for Protel to directly answer all 
questions.

I would, in fact, recommend the development of a web-accessible support 
hypertext document that summarizes *all* relevant questions asked on this 
list (as well as through direct Protel support) and that provides answers. 
Because this is a fairly large and on-going task, it is difficult for the 
users to provide this for themselves. The document should be thoroughly 
categorized, indexed, and cross-indexed. It would also include Knowledge 
Base items, though I would think that this document would eventually 
replace the Knowledge Base (or perhaps it would be called the "Knowledge 
Base," because it would more fully reflect and deserver that title.)

Users could then download this document and be able to find fast answers; 
on-line support (whether through this list or otherwise) would only be 
necessary when the answers were not already in the database (or the user 
cannot find the answer, which might indicate that the index could be improved).

The database would be designed with an update tool so that changes could be 
inserted without requiring a complete download of the entire database. Thus 
users could easily keep their local copy current, and obsolete information 
could be removed or marked as obsolete (as with, for example, bugs and 
workarounds that have been fixed at a certain revision or service pack level).

I do recognise that to be complete, this would be a major project in 
itself; but, then again, it is a major project to maintain support for a 
program like Protel 99SE. The project could start out small, perhaps 
incorporating the existing Knowledge Base -- which would be much more 
easily searched if it were local rather than only available over the web, 
especially when one's internet link is relatively slow.

The existence of such a document, user accessible, would make Protel 
support absolutely the best in the industry. It's already quite good, 
especially when this list is considered.

I could write more about details, but will leave that for another day.

marjan@vom.com
Abdulrahman Lomax
P.O. Box 690
El Verano, CA 95433



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