[Synaptic-devel] Proposing Interface Changes

[Sebastian Heinlein]

Hello list,

working on a SuSE system with yast recently I've discovered some
advantages of this piece of software compared to synaptic. So why not
profiting in the other direction :)

I tired to address the following issues in a (not complete) new concept
for the synaptic main window:

1. Using a tree in the package list seems to be suboptimal, since it is
quite hard to close an once expanded tree because there are just so many
packages in it:  you have to scroll quite fast to get to the beginning
and so I often miss the section.

Expanding two or three trees and  finding one in the middle of both is
also quite hard task.

=> Moving the section, status and tag list to another widget would make
the sorting more usable. The selected section/tag/status would act as a
filter of the list of shown packages.

2. The area with listed packages is quite small especially if the
package list also includes the section tree on small resolution. 

3. The package name and short description are duplicated on the common
tab and the package list.

4. A scrollbar for normal user interface widgets like we use in the
common tab is pretty ugly.

=> A solution would be to move the notebook into a new "package detail"
dialog (gnome-apt does this, too). In the main window we could show the
description of the package only, since this is perhaps the most
important information for users. An option in the view menu to toggle
the description on and off would also provide more space for the package
list.

The glade file with the mentioned changes and a screenshot for the ones
without glade can be found here:

http://pimpldrive.pimpzkru.de/renate/synaptic/mockup-13-01-2004.png
http://pimpldrive.pimpzkru.de/renate/synaptic/mockup-13-01-2004.glade

I would love to get input and comments on this.

Regards,

Sebastian