GTK fe, updated buglist and wishlist
Hi
today i've made some small bugfixes to the SVN gtk.c and from the
testing i was able to to some new bugs, mainly related to the jump
mechanism, showed up.
The GTK frontend is actually just a simple prototype and needs more
accurate betatesting, the new found bugs are reported at the head of the
buglist.
Please read this list since help and clever ideas are really needed!
ciao
Attilio
* BUGS TO FIX
- The following one is a problem that is related to the jump from a
question to another while switching between different languages too.
If the user is working in italian, clicks on "Scegli la lingua/Choose
language" and then selects "French - Francais" (just an example, it
applies to any pair of different languages) , jumps to "Configura la
rete" saving his changes then the string "Configura la rete" is stored
inside "jump_target".
The frontend returns then DC_GOBACK to the client, the client passes the
frontend a new main-menu question, this time in french as it should be,
the frontend notices that a jump is waiting to be executed to "Configura
la rete" but now the jump can no longer be executed since the
corresponding main-menu option has been translated to "Configurer le
reaseau".
We have so to find a different way to code the jump's target in the main
menu: would it be a good idea to save the index of the choosed button in
the main menu instead of its translated description?
Anyhow a temporary workaround to the problem could be disabling the
saving of changes if the user jumps from the languagechooser module.
- If the client has passed to the frontend a list of questions made up
by a single note/text question (like after the cdrom integrity has been
successfully checked) and then the user clicks on a main menu button
instead on the "next" button there is no point in asking him if he wants
to save his changes since he could have made no changes at all.
-When the partitioning prorgam runs progress bar values are not handled
correctly by progress_set()
* TODO LIST
-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?
- The "Do you want to save your changes before jumping?" question inside
jump_corfirmation() has to be localized, how can this be done?
-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
-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
-clearly highlight the next step of the instalation to be configured (
bold text inside the button, bigger button , "->text<-" are possible
options)
-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
-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).
* TERMPORARILY ABANDONED IDEAS
-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)
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