On Thu, Dec 07, 2000 at 04:12:12PM -0500, Daniel Burrows wrote: > On Thu, Dec 07, 2000 at 09:09:35PM +0200, Arto Jantunen <viiru83@mbnet.fi> was heard to say: > > Aptitude has the cool tree-like thingie, but it just doesn't "feel right" > > (again, the version in potato). > > I know this is hard, but do you have any idea what doesn't "feel right"? :) Since you asked for this, here it comes. 1. Too many mostly empty nodes between me and the packages 2. The 'Information about'-screen just sucks so bad. It screams 'I just coded a tree-thingie and I'm so proud I need to use it everywhere!' (don't take this personally). Seriously using the (cool) tree-system in that screen makes it nearly impossible to use. Since all that info fits into a single screen, why do you need a tree? 3. The basic view of the packages doesn't really tell anything about them (this has been improved greatly in newer than potato) 4. I'm used to dselect, and want to see the description-fields when I'm browsing packages. 5. Binding space to what enter does would make RedHatters feel at home. 6. "Now I'll just press enter on the package and... What??!?!" Binding enter, and (hopefully) space to view info is illogical. They should toggle between Install and Purge, like in capt and RH (I'm refering to RH's installer not because I like it, but because a large share of our new users are RH-converts). 7. Inability to handle tasks sanely. I'd like to first select the tasks I want and then move on to selecting individual packages. Currently it can be done by first running tasksel and then dselect. Having a Tasks-branch at top level would make aptitude a sensible package selector for installations. The last one is meaningless, but still annoying. 8. The versioning sucks. Why do you need 4 digits? (having 007 for a version is cool, though ;) > > What I would like to do is to write yet another tool > > like these. > > That's a fair bit of work; PLEASE consider contributing to aptitude (or capt, > or even dselect) if you just want a better tree layout. <PLUG> It's very easy > in my codebase to add a new way of grouping packages (you just have to write a > little class -- you don't really even need to know much about the rest of > the code) </PLUG> I had a look at aptitude's source, mainly the hackers-guide. It seems that I could very well use this. > Also, even if you write your own, you may want to look at a discussion > recently here where a lot of exotic ideas about organizing packages were tossed > about. Check out the thread "Misclassification of Packages" from the beginning > of October. I read that thread (actually just the start of it, before it became a flamewar). I don't think any of that stuff could be useful when working on the frontend, unless the backend implements them first. -- Arto Jantunen
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