In the last 10 years I have seem various CAD tools for use in the field of
electronic design automation (EDA) -- a few of them I have used for some time.

The problem with 


While all of them seem to work fine, threre exist still some shortcommings
regarding the user interfaces. Some have an ugly look disigned in eighties of
last cebtury, some do not allow the user a really simple, natural interaction.
this is especially true for the free open source software.

I have to admit that the visual appearance and "natural interaction" is very
subjective. And of course an ugly look does not really make the tool
ubnusable, and even strange interaction methods may work fine when the user
has become familar with it. Generally we have to accept that EDA tools are
different from common apps like web browsers, emailclients or simple word
processors. There must be some difference in look and usage, and we can not
assume that we can simple start using such a tool without some kind of
introduction.

But we can still try to make usage not bunnecessary complicated and offer the
user a nice looking graphical interface. 

In the lst years I have read many complaints about ugly and unusable EDA
tools, mostly concerning the FOSS tools. Most complaints are really silly --
people exspect EDA tools looking exactly like their favorite tool of their
favorite operating system, and they exspect being able to use it without any
instruction. On the other side there a some people who seems to be fully
sat5isfied with the tools they are using -- the have accepted the ugly look
and the have become comfortable with stange usage. Some of these have even
make some hacks or applied special scripts to remove some shortcommings of the
tools.

One general problem with existing FOSS tools is inertia: Large code basis in a
language and graphical toolkit popular many decades ago, some remaining
tired or retired initial coders with decline to larger changes, and some users
being afraid of largerb changes. For tools that generate data, there is the
additional problem that it should be possible to continue using it.

Generally it seems that the time period where smart young people where willing
to write great FOOSS software are gone -- kids prefer playing with their
smartphones and watching videos. Some motivation may come from paid projects
like Google SOC, but often these projects die when payment is over.

With the increasing popularity of Tablets and Smart-Phones the situation has
become even more complicated: EDA is generally a task for desktop PS's, but
kids may want to use tablets and smartphone.




