Re: making dselect easier to use

[Milan Zamazal <pdm@fi.muni.cz>]

>>>>> "s" == sacampbe  <sacampbe@mercator.math.uwaterloo.ca> writes:

    s: 1.  More informative characters for individual package
    s: selection. +-_ are not very intuitive - especially for the
    s: novice.

I disagree.  +-_ is much more intuitive for me than a couple of
letters.  I'm still confused from magic letter codes which `dpkg -l'
produces.

    s: 2.  Make dselect hierarchical. It could be implemented similar
    s: to the way lynx works: you use the arrow keys to move up and
    s: down and go right to get more detailed info on the current
    s: selection.  The top level would be a list similar (identical
    s: would be best) to the directories in the binary level of the
    s: distribution, i.e. admin, base, comm, devel...

Good idea.  I don't like long scrolling in dselect when I need some
e.g x11 package.  But '/' search facility should remain global.

    s: One other modification at the second level is that packages
    s: providing the same functionality could be further grouped into
    s: a third level. For example, under web, all the web browsers
    s: would be in one group while the servers would be in a
    s: 2nd. Possibly more fine grained than the expert wants, but this
    s: is for the beginner. The expert can still just use a search at
    s: the top level to jump right to a desired package.

I'm not sure whether adding third level good or not.  It helps in
orientation but makes browsing more difficult.

    s: Also at the top level would be an options selection. In there
    s: you could set options to personalize dselect. For example you
    s: could set a Silent option to let dselect silently select any
    s: dependencies for you.

And option for default package order (`oO' keys) would be very nice
too.

Milan Zamazal


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