Re: [Synaptic-devel] Synaptic development

[Gustavo Niemeyer]

> > Notice that if a package is Installed, there are two possible actions.
> > The user may either Remove or Upgrade the package. That's why we use
> > toggle buttons after all. We don't have a 1x1 mapping.
> 
> There can even be more actions, since it is now possible to downgrade to
> a specific version.
> 
> But do people really use the "Upgrade" so much often? I think that the
> most common way of upgrading is to upgrade the whole system and not
> single packages. That is how I do and people I know of.
>
> INHO the main GUI should concentrate on providing a clear and fast way
> of doing the most common tasks.

Fully agreed.

> This way the upgrade of a single package is not hidden, but gets the
> percentage of gui space correlating to its importance for the user.

That's the main point of importance for the user, as I said before. We
use synaptic for a long time here, including our installer. I don't know
how you or your friends use synaptic, but I'm surprised to know that you
disagree with the opinion I've presented. If the only thing you do is to
open synaptic and click the upgrade button, you don't need *any*
interface at all.

Btw, I'm surprised to see *you* complaining about the size of the toggle
buttons. After all, *you* are the one that *increased* the size of
these buttons.

> Another point would be that the current status of a package is not very
> easy to see. Ok, we got the "Installed version" column, but this is not
> very clear, since the column could be out of the visible area and the
> long string gets lost in all the text information of the table.
> The status can be abstracted from the available toogle-buttons, but this
> is also not very clear.

There are at least tree points where you can see the "status" you
ask for:

- The Installed Version column, which looks very nice to me.
- The Common tab
- The Toggle buttons.

I'm surprised to know that you still can't see the status of some
package.

> The status label is also not present on every tab and also gets  lost
> in the whole detail area.
> 
> The options menu would provide a clear way of displaying the current
> status of the package.
>
> (I already suggested to show the installed status via an "i" in the
> status column.)

Yep.. Michael told me about it. If you can't see the status of a
package, even after all these hints, do you really belive that an 'i'
will help!? :-)

OTOH, if you really belive that this additional hint will help, we
can include it for sure.

> > > Status: Not Installed 
> > >   -> Action button: Install
> > > 
> > > Status: Changed
> > >   -> Action button: Undo/Reset
> > 
> > Same issue here.. a "Changed" package must tell what kind of change
> > is going to happen. The toggle button leaves that clear.
> 
> I am open to suggestions and changes. So the button could also reflect
> the triggered action.
> 
> > Not in the near future. It will happen somewhere in the first half
> > of 2004.
> 
> I cannot get on your homepage (http://www.conectiva.com/). So could you
> please tell me the current version number of Conectiva. I want to give
> an example in the documentation when upgrading to a new major release of
> the OS. And I think that these examples should be Debian and Conectiva. 

Thanks. We're still at version 9. Next major version will be 10.

The homepage is online, at least now. Let me know if you have further
problems.

-- 
Gustavo Niemeyer
http://niemeyer.net