Re: To the Debian Project, IMHO
>>>>> "Keith" == Keith G Murphy <keithmur@mindspring.com> writes:
Keith> Havoc Pennington wrote:
Havoc> For example, look at "info" or "dselect" - regardless of
Havoc> whether you personally like them, the many people that _don't_
Havoc> like them don't like them because the keystrokes are really
Havoc> stupid and the general "flow" through the programs doesn't make
Havoc> sense. However, this has _zero_ to do with the power of the
Havoc> tools.
Info keybindings are virtually identical to Emacs, and thus don't feel
at all stupid to this Emacs user. In fact, I would be VERY annoyed if
the info maintainers heeded Havoc's advice and redid the keybindings
in the image of, say, vi.
Keith> Dselect? Nice in many ways; yes, it's the non-standard
Keith> keystrokes and lack of visual feedback ("has my search finished
Keith> yet?") that are probably the worst things. Other than that *I*
Keith> can't think of a much nicer way to address package installation
Keith> in ncurses.
That's right. And I have to disagree that the general flow of control
in dselect "doesn't make sense" and "this has _zero_ to do with the
power of the tools". Change the flow of control and I bet you'll lose
some flexibility somewhere.
dselect is the No. 1 reason I prefer Debian to Red Hat, period.
--
Ian Zimmerman
Lightbinders, Inc.
2325 3rd Street #324, San Francisco, California 94107
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