Installer help text
I'm very interested in helping out with writing the text for the new
Debian installer (specifically, the graphical one). I guess I should
start by saying why I'm interested in helping with the graphical
installer specifically, and not just the installer in general.
First of all, I think that the text in the current installer is good
enough that it will be fine for the needs of the people using it, once
a graphical installer exists. In other words, once we have a graphical
installer, the newbies will all be using it, and the text in the console
installer will mostly be read by more advanced users. Of course, by
itself this doesn't mean that you can't make the console installer text
just as "friendly", but now we get to the reason I think the graphical
installer can be different)...
Having a graphical installer opens up a lot of options for the way
you can present the text. The way I always think of a good graphical
installer would look is to have whatever you're working on in the
window, and then a permanent scrolling box containing help text (on the
right side, left side, maybe the bottom, whatever as long as it's
consistent). This box would have a short description of the available
options for the current screen...basically, something that a person who
already pretty much knew what to do could look at for details. This is
pretty much what we have now, for the console installer, and I think it
works pretty well.
What I think we can add for the graphical installer, that would be
hard to integrate into the console installer, is an option for in-depth
help that's displayed in a way that doesn't disrupt the flow of the
installation (for example, in a separate window so it's clear that you
can go back to the installation by simply closing the new window).
This is one of my ideas: every time you ask a question, in addition
to whatever the normal answers are, you have two extra choices:
- I don't want to answer this question.
- Explain the question to me so I can make a decision.
I think new users would respond well to something like this, since
it's in plain language. If they choose the first option, the installer
will choose a generic, sensible (if un-optimized) default answer. If
they choose the second option, the installer will present an in-depth
help screen that will walk the user through the entire process of
learning what the question means and giving an informed answer. This is
what I'm interested in helping with; writing these in-depth help pages
(and the normal in-line ones too, for that matter).
Does any of this sound like a direction you guys want to go in?
I'm not subscribed to the list, so if your MUA doesn't recognize/honor
the Mail-Followup-To: header, feel free to CC me by hand (although I'll
try to monitor the archives anyway).
--
John ! Since this email isn't signed, you can't really tell it's from
Buttery! me; I'll hopefully have my computer working normally again
www.io.c! soon, but until then...gotta love catastrophic drive failure.
om/~john! Mmm, rdiff-backup...
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