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Re: (forw) Debconf abuse by several packages



Christian Perrier wrote:
>   s=number of screens shown (aka how many times to press Enter!)
>  d=number of questions with reasonable defaults which IMHO shouldn't have
>    been asked (guess what "d" is for...)
>  u=number of untranslated questions
>  n=number of useless notes
> - pcmcia-cs             : 3s  1d  2u  0n
> - dictionaries-common   : 1s  1d  0u  0n
> - nfs-common            : 1s  0d  0u  1n 
> - ssh                   : 1s  0d  0u  1n
> - dictionaries-common   : 1s  1d  0u  0n
> - apache-common         : 1s  0d  0u  1n
> - libpaper1             : 1s  0d  1u  1n #226254
> - efax                  : 2s  0d  2u  2n
> - fetchmail             : 2s  0d  0u  2n
> - gdm                   : 1s  0d  0u  0n
> - libc-client2002debian : 1s  1d  1u  0n
> - xserver-xfree86       : 7s  0d  1u  0n (no autodetect by default)
>                                          (mouse autodetected)
> - dictionaries-common   : 1s  1d  0u  0n (bug?)
> - libc-client2002debian : 1s  1d  1u  0n
> - dictionaries-common   : 1s  1d  0u  0n
> - exi4-config           : 2s  0d  0u  0n
>                         _____________
> 
> TOTAL                    27s  7d  8u  8n 

And to put this in perspective, I have done installs with
debian-installer where the whole debian-installer run involved a total
of 25 keystrokes (on approximatly 13 screens). This includes
partitioning, configuring a network, and a hostname, and installing the
debian base system, a kernel, and a bootloader. One would think that is
harder than the task manty of the packages above are faced with. :-P

In the case of disctionaries-common, there exist debconf variables taken
from d-i for the user's preferred language and country; it should be
easy to use those to eliminate the question about which dictionary to
use as default.

ssh's question could be avoided by the long-standing idea of splitting
it into a server and a client package.

efax's debconf abuse is #194560.

You should have gotten X autodetection, unless read-edid does not work for
your card or something.

Let's see, assuming we manage to fix all of these, you would have still
seen only 12 screens. More like 9 if X autodetect had worked.

> General problem : when screens are too long, debconf dialog interface
> shows a right cursor and a OK button. No novice user will then type
> "Down" for seeing the rest of the screen...and thus will miss the last
> part of the shown information. The "OK" button should be something
> like a "More" button and should by default allow scrolling though the
> text.

You could try to get this improved in whiptail. However, I find it hard
to belive that any package really needs to display more than one full
page of information to the user. I've had some success in the past
editing debconf questions (such as exim4's) and would be glad to look at
any that are too long and in the standard install path.

-- 
see shy jo

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