Bug#380105: Show current hour in hardware clock question
On Sat, Aug 26, 2006 at 07:37:13AM +0200, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 25, 2006 at 09:10:27PM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
> > On Fri, Aug 25, 2006 at 04:57:17PM +0200, Christian Perrier wrote:
> > > > I am not sure, but in the graphical installer, we could add a clock widget
> > > > somewhere from the start, and do clock setting pretty early one (we probably
> > > > only need hwclock and a little menu thingy), it can even be done before
> > > > base-install and partman, since there are no extra dependencies.
> > >
> > > There has been such kind of suggestion last weeks but it has been
> > > ruled out. I guess that the rationale is mostly avoiding features that
> > > are only available in some D-I flavours.
>
> Personally, I find this a pity. I'd think that the graphical installer
> could benefit from some changes to improve usability, some of which
> would not make any sense in the textual interface.
>
> As an example, one place where I personally feel that the graphical
> version of the installer does not work very well, is in the partitioner;
> using different graphical paradigms to display the partitioning being in
> progress would most likely allow for a more usable interface. However,
> such an interface would need information that is not necessarily
> available in the text-based version of the installer.
>
> (No, I'm not willing to suggest how to do this, simply because I'm not a
> graphical guy; but the above is my opinion on the subject)
The work started by Xavier Oswald was to address just this, but sadly, we lost
month in the no-C++ dogma war, and as a consequence, the resulting C
reimplementation is naturally less mature than the original gparted we were
wanting to use.
The code is there though, in the parted alioth repository, for anyone to
continue with Xavier's work, as a previous post was saying here.
I still believe that going with the C++ gparted would have been more
productive, since the upstream gparted maintainer is both active and
cooperative.
Again a case where too much conservatism in the d-i leadership and active
oposition to newer ideas and experiments did stop what may have been.
> > Ruled out ? Oh well. ... Which explains the rather harsh reply of this
> > question only being 'noise'.
> >
> > > So, if a method to set the clock is offerred, it has to work for all
> > > interfaces.
> >
> > Well, the .udeb could be common to everything, and the clock button could only
> > be a shortcut to it.
>
> ... with a main menu option to allow for invoking it from the text
> version, if there is interest.
Indeed, would be pretty enough, we just need to add a new set of graphic-only
hooks or whatever to the package who can make use of it.
> That being said, of course, it should be so that no "important" feature
> must ever be implemented that can only be accessed from one particular
> interface; as "important", I would classify "anything which cannot be
> enabled and/or fixed after the installation has been finished". Thus, I
> personally would not see any harm in having the ability to set the clock
> from the graphical installer, but not from the text-based one; of
> course, YMMV.
Well, once the rest of the stuff is there, adding the ability to set the clock
from the text-based installer is trivial. A few debconf dialog boxes and
that's it.
Friendly,
Sven Luther
Reply to: