Re: testing is broken

[David Nusinow <krmt1984@ucla.edu>]

On 06 Apr 2001 20:09:30 +0200, Josip Rodin wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 05, 2001 at 10:27:46PM +0200, Wichert Akkerman wrote:
> > > How about the horrible user interface?
> > 
> > Once you get used to the interface it's very useful actually.
> 
> In the general case, Linux and Debian, when newbie users complain about
> things that are hard to do for them, they can be pointed to the appropriate
> documentation, which is mostly easily accessible.
> 
> With dselect, this is not the case. The manual page is sparse, the `dselect
> Documentation for Beginners' document isn't referred to by anything so it's
> unknown to the beginners, and despite what the intro "help" screen says,
> there isn't really much online help available. Those help screens are not
> organized in a straightforward way, either, it's all cramped, more like
> reference cards. Also, one doesn't scroll the screens, instead you have to
> press a key to switch to the next screen.
> 
> Additionally, the ways to access the online help are arcane, for example,
> the spacebar key exits help, whereas that same key is used to scroll the
> screen in selection screen (and in all other programs). The key for the next
> page of the help is `.', which is also much less intuitive than spacebar, or
> down arrow, or page down key. Pressing any other key than those that are
> bound to an action returns you to the main help menu, which is also not
> helpful (imagine a newbie trying to read help and accidentally pressing the
> down key after reading two help screens: "oh, darn, I'm back at the start...
> hmm, on what page was I?" -- not quite the desired situation).
> 
> YMMV, IMHO, flames to /dev/null, whatever. And yes, I know that changing
> keybindings wouldn't be nice to the old users. <sigh>


Is there a config file for keybindings on dselect? If not, why not
create one for each user, and have it default to better bindings (what
those are exactly, I'm not sure) and provide the old keybindings in the
package for whatever experienced users want them? Would this be that
difficult to do?

- David Nusinow
   krmt1984@ucla.edu