On Thu, Oct 24, 2002 at 09:26:48AM -0400, Susan Kleinmann wrote: > Hello, > > On Wed, Oct 23, 2002 at 05:16:23PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: > > You can tell people to put their shit outside the debconf area, but they > > won't. > > Here are two peripherally related suggestions that might help: > > 1. There is at least one other package that has a do-not-configure-here > component to its file: grub. I wonder if it might be possible to find There is another one: masqmail (mine). I used xfree86 as an example. The main conf has these lines on top, copied from /etc/X11/XF86Config-4: ### BEGIN DEBCONF SECTION # Do not edit within this region if you want your changes to be preserved by # debconf. Instead, make changes after the "### END DEBCONF SECTION" line. I have no idea how someone can miss those lines... > some commonalities between the way grub tells users to keep their mits > off of various sections, and the way the XF86Config file does it? Just > using the same words or the same case or the same placement in the file > for the warning might be a start. My point is that if there is a common > set of characteristics in several programs that tell users to keep out, > then a broader group of users might come to expect and know to look for > "do-not-touch" sections. > It would also help users if the utilities that manipulated files > that were only partially user-changeable had common names, or some > other common features. > > 2. It might be interesting to develop either colorized vim or emacs > modes that were invoked when editing only-partially-editable files, such > that the "hands-off" part appeared, say, in some distinct color. That's an idea. Greetings, Oliver -- DAM approval waiting time: 127 days. See http://nm.debian.org/nmstatus.php?email=oku%40masqmail.cx
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