Re: More ideas from juhtolvi (LONG!)
On Fri, Sep 10, 1999 at 06:13:53PM +0300, Juhapekka Tolvanen was heard to say:
> Heretic:
>
> http://samuel.cs.uni-potsdam.de/~wertmann/index.html
>
> Sources of this famous Doom-clone were released some time ago, and Linux port
> made of it is now in version one-point-oh.
I actually made private Debian packages of this several months ago, but it
suffers from license issues -- I'm barely certain that my making a Debian
package for *my own use* is legal, let alone someone putting a package into the
main distribution. Not only is there stuff under id's license (see the thread
about Doom's licensing) but the porter's modifications to it are licensed under
the GPL! This is a fairly broken situation. (unless it's been changed, I
haven't checked the recent versions since I finished the single-player shareware
level on all difficulty settings :) )
> Some time ago I proposed, that new section called "security" for packages
> should be established. But then I thought, that many other new sections
> should be established, because current sections has so insane number of
> packages. It is real pain in the ass to read them with web-browser,
> because you must scroll so much. Here is my proposed sections:
Please don't do things this way. The sections need a redesign, but simply
adding more is a bandaid. We should provide for a hierarchical organization --
I wrote a message about this sometime last summer which I could repost if
people are finally taking a look at this. Basically the problem is that you're
throwing too much information at the user, 90% of which is probably irrelevant
to the task at hand. A consistent and logical package hierarchy, with an
interface which allowed sections to be collapsed and expanded, would make
things easier both for newbies and for experienced users.
This problem is probably one of the two major usability hurdles in Debian;
the other one is the configuration situation. (there's a proposal somewhere
to completely rework the way package configuration is handled. Where is it,
and how far along is the project coming?)
> I like menu-system of Debian very much, but it has some issues, I'd like to
> point out.
>
> Compare these screenshots:
>
> http://www.jyu.fi/~juhtolv/tmp/menu-gnome.jpg
> http://www.jyu.fi/~juhtolv/tmp/menu-enlightenment.jpg
>
> As you all can see, Apps-Tools-menu is absolutely way too long. Some
> windowmanagers and menuing programs can handle that, but some of them can't.
I think this is what the 'hints' attribute is for. I don't know if anyone
uses it :) See the menu documentation.
Daniel "sending application to new-maintainer Real Soon Now" Burrows
--
Believe in the Great God Om or be stricken with thunderbolts?
Is that the way it always has to be?
-- Terry Pratchett, _Small Gods_
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