GTK fe, summary of bugfixes/wishlist
Hi
i've tried to collect togheter all the ideas about how to improve the
gtk fe that in the past days were posted to the mailing list : here are
listed and classified as TODOs and whishist
* TODO LIST
-The back button seems to be active all the time now. It should really
be greyed out or otherwise disabled unless the debconf client set the
backup capability using CAPB.
-When the partitioning prorgam runs progress bar values are not handled
correctly by progress_set()
-The main-menu tag thing is awfully hardcoded; we'd like to be able to
use cdebconf outside the installer one day too. Could the plugin feature
be used for this somehow? or maybe could we get that string from a shell
exported varaible?
-remove deprecated gtk functions with gtk+ replacements as recomended by
gtk+ guidelines
-Allow every widget (not only multiselect, like now) to properly handle
long question_descriptions that are used as a title for the sourrounding
frame in the actionbox (we can both use textareas to wrap ong text in
frame titles or simply cut-down long questions, like the installation
program one )
-verify that gtk_init() input parameters, that are hand-created, are no
cause of problems like segfaults
-remove "progressbar" from the progressbar
-clearly highlight the next step of the instalation to be configured (
bold text inside the button, bigger button , "->text<-" are possible
options)
-Give the boxes fixed size (width and height) since actually boxes
automatically shrink/expand to accomodate widgets of different size (a
japanese or russian main-menu is twice large the english one!)
-make the "cancel" button in jump confirmation dialog work to allow the
user to cancel a jump if he changes his mind
* WISH LIST
-chechmarks for every configured main menu item: after an installation
step has been successifully completed a green check or simply an "ok"
should be placed aside the corresponding main menu button to remember
the unexperienced user about the steps already successfully completed
-display the main menu with something different than buttons. The column
of buttons is a bit crude for the main menu, and we must also consider
that some translations make the strings inside buttons very long, so
long that the main menu occupies half of the screen.
-The action area is left empty when only main menu is displayed: we
should use it to give useful infos to the user, like displaying
informations about the next step to be configured.
-while progress bar runs to take count of the progress of steps like the
base system installation the main-menu is not displayed (actualy
gtk_progress_set is called but gtk_go is not): this is not a bug just a
matter of graphical coherency with the others steps of the instalation
process
-It might be a good idea to design for the possibility of having more
than one progress bar. The cdebconf PROGRESS protocol doesn't support
this yet, but it may do in the future, and it would be interesting to
have a global progress bar indicating the progress of the whole
installation (roughly, your position in the main menu) -> this seems
difficult to be implemented
-disable main menu options that need previous steps to be completed: if
the user has not yet installed the base system he should not be even
allowed to click the "install bootloader" button (this could be diffcult
to do, more or less the problems are the same as if we would insert a
global progressbar)
-chechmarks for every configured main menu item: after an installation
step has been successifully completed a green check or simply an "ok"
should be placed aside the corresponding main menu button to remember
the unexperienced user about the steps already successfully completed
-modify some installation tools to get the best out of the gtk frontend
without losing compatibility with newt-like frontends (ex: the network
configuration tool could be modified to display questions as ip,
netmask, dns, gw togheter, and to display togheter also localname and
domainname).
I hope i didn't forget anything.
Actually there are some things i would concentrate upon and as soon i'll
have time to work on i'll try to fix
-The back button seems to be active all the time now. It should really
be greyed out or otherwise disabled unless the debconf client set the
backup capability using CAPB.
-When the partitioning prorgam runs progress bar values are not handled
correctly by progress_set()
-clearly highlight the next step of the instalation to be configured (
bold text inside the button, bigger button , "->text<-" are possible
options)
-make the "cancel" button in jump confirmation dialog work to allow the
user to cancel a jump if he changes his mind
ciao
Attilio
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