Re: Random bits about the graphical installer
Hi all, I've thought a bit about the Debian's
graphical installer, and came to a few
opinions/conclusions, and want to share them with you.
In the end I link to two images of a possible gtk
interface I drawed, which could be shared by d-i gtk
and debconf gtk, with some differences (debconf
interface wouldn't have the "menu" option):
- The dialog interface of d-i is equal or very
simillar to the Dialog interface of debconf when
acessing through dpkg-reconfigure. This is good (and
obvious, since d-i uses debconf, right?), and gives
consistency to these Debian tools. Maybe the same can
be made for the gtk d-i and gtk debconf?
- The constant progress bar is not necessary, because
when it is running, the interface is not interactive,
and when it is stoped, it isn't giving any
information. Having a persistant global installation
progress bar would be interesting, one that would show
the progress rate of the entire installation, but
perhaps that is not in the plans.
Therefore, I think it should follow dialog's
interface, have a separate screen with a center
progress bar and detailed progress info inside it and
general progress info below it.
- I think the d-i menu should exist in a screen of its
own, like it does now with d-i dialog interface.
Having it acessible all the time doesn't really give
you anything more than one less click to acess any of
it's options. (meaning, it doesn't give any usefull
information, like showing in which menu option the
user is currently at, what options have already been
configured and what are left to configure, etc.).
- Should the help text for each dialog always be
shown, or only if the user clicks a help button? On
the one hand, giving so much text for the installing
user to digest before each option may be a bit to
much; on the other hand, this problem could be
aliviated by improving the help text. For the
partition manager a separate help screen should exist,
though.
- No vertical aligned text or icons please! I looked
at the recent snapshot of gtk d-i and there was a
Debian gnu/linux logo in vertical position on the
left. It is less readable, and forces a user to turn
his head to the left (or his laptop to the right :))
to fully understand it. Even if we can all turn the
image just by rotating it with the software in our
brains, it's still cumbersome.
The images I drawed are
http://www.geocities.com/jobezone/xserver-xorg.png
http://www.geocities.com/jobezone/debconf.png
Sorry, they are in portuguese, but the specific text
content is not the point, so the better! They are
debconf questions, and the first will eventually be
asked to the user by d-i if he installs X.
I have placed the help text of each question directly
above the choices, but it could also be cut out, and
acessible through a help button. I've also added a
YES/NO choice to xserver-xorg instead of gtk debconf's
usage of a checkbox.
I have also reused the ideia from gtk debconf of a top
color bar containing the title and Debian's logo on
the top right. I've just changed the color to be
Debian's red (so it wouldn't follow the theme's color)
and put the Debian logo in a white background.
These images are mostly design ideas, and are not
perfectly pixel-spaced. I hope to later do some more
graphics which would show how the progress bar screen
could be (similar to Dialog's), and the Menu (also
similar to Dialog's).
Bye,
Eduardo
OH MY ... http://www.geocities.com/jobezone/index.html
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