Re: dpkg - the letter prefixes.. what do they mean
On Sat, Mar 02, 2002 at 09:00:26PM -0600, Mark S. Reglewski wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 02, 2002 at 08:02:39PM -0500, Joey Hess wrote:
> > dman wrote:
> > > Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
> > > | Status=Not/Installed/Config-files/Unpacked/Failed-config/Half-installed
> > > |/ Err?=(none)/Hold/Reinst-required/X=both-problems (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
> > > ||/ Name Version Description
> > > +++-==============-==============-============================================
> > > ii vim 6.0.226-1 Vi IMproved - enhanced vi editor
> >
> > I wonder if this minor change would make the ascii art vaguely more
> > understandable:
>
> Yes, with emphasis on *vaguely*. See below.
>
> >
> > [ snip other version ]
> >
> > Here is another version:
> >
> > [ snip yet another version ]
> >
> > I prefer this last one. Comments?
>
> Disagree. I vote for the first fix. The slight spacing and offset
> caused by using the slash as opposed to the pipe characters are more
> likely to draw the viewer's eye to the arrows, and convey to him that
> all that ascii mess is actually pointing to the status columns. The
> second version just looks a bit more like hacker gibberish to novice
> eyes. Take it from a Debian novice who had to scratch his head for
> quite a while to decode this screen for the first time not so long ago.
>
> Note that I don't think the improvement is great. This is likely to
> be a forbiddingly confusing screen to the novice even with the
> improvement you have suggested. But any improvement is welcome.
How about not using ascii art at all, but just use something along the
lines of:
Status flag explanations:
1) Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
2) Status=Not/Installed/Config-files/Unpacked/Failed-config/Half-installed
3) Err?=(none)/Hold/Reinst-required/X=both-problems (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
123 Name Version Description
===-==============-==============-============================================
ii vim 6.0.226-1 Vi IMproved - enhanced vi editor
I think that would *really* clear things up a lot. Maybe the
explanations could even contain some more spaces.
--
Note that I use Debian version 3.0
Linux mus 2.4.17mvz2 #1 Wed Feb 27 17:41:43 CET 2002 i686 unknown
Matijs
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