Re: Debian and the User Friendlies
> > Right now, our biggest hot-spot is X configuration. We have lots of
> > other things which are important to deal with, but X configuration is
> > the most glaring thing likely to trip up a new user.
Bill Leach <bleach@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> agreed again but... The overwhelming majority of video systems (on
> i386) will run X in vga mode.
Yes, but the system whose display I'm using to compose this message
is a vga system that will not run under vga16. Ferinstance. And,
last time I checked, the technique used to make vga16 run without
configuration isn't even available to a newbie trying to set up their
system. At the time, I also was not able to find documentation on
how to do this -- I had to take apart the configuration program
just to figure out how to get this to work.
Also, there are a number of applications which are fairly unusable
on a 16 color display.
Basically, the situation here is that there's a lot of "easy" things
we could do if our approach to X configuration was a bit different.
> Most people don't know what is inside their computer and they have
> even less of an idea how a video monitor works.
Yes, and I don't think isolating them from this information is going
to do anyone any favors. But I think we can do a lot better than what
we have.
> All of what you say here is true and some of it is just plain
> unavoidable. The ability to maintain a history of previous
> configuration choices is OTOH a sorely lacking situation.
Also, it's easy to be intimidated by the sheer bulk of text that can
appear in the configuration file.
> The driver, monitor, and configuration documentation in the X
> tree is possibly the most under-appreciated documentation in the
> entire Linux project while it is at the same time possibly the best
> trouble-shooting documentation in existence.
Yes. But figuring out timing parameters by hand is tedious. If
you have great documentation on your card and monitor, then fine:
it's a trivial calculation, plug it in and go for the best value.
However, even when the documentation is available, it isn't always
adequate. I've yet to run into a system where my first shot at
figuring timing parameters worked well, and I've run into plenty
where they didn't work at all. After a few dozen runs through the
calculations, as I refine my model of what's happening, I begin
to wonder if I shouldn't be writing an inference engine or some
such...
And, of course, there's those machines where you get to guess what
timings are supposed to work. Here, I generally start with common
vga timings, then branch out into svga settings, and so on. You
can kind of glean this information from the X documentation, but
it's not presented so that I feel comfortable telling someone:
just read the documentation on X configuration.
I wonder if debian has any constraint-based systems that would
be good for casting this kind of information into. [I wonder if
gap or pgapack would deal with this kind of problem elegantly?
Or maybe I should learn to use rbase? Sometimes I think it's
easier to just implement something than to learn yet another
system for representing information.]
--
Raul
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-request@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org
Reply to: