Re: dselect survey

[Florent Rougon <f.rougon@free.fr>]

Bernd Eckenfels <lists@lina.inka.de> wrote:

>> Er, these are shortcuts. *shrug*
>
> Uh, so there is a non-shortcut method of operating?

I awaited this comment, but didn't know which other word to use. No, I
don't claim there is a non-shortcut method. I would say that dselects'
control interface consists of only shortcuts (or whatever you want to
call that) *by design*.

I understand that this may be unpleasant to some people, but I think
that for a very often-used program such as dselect (if this is your dpkg
front-end of choice, of course), this is not a problem: you don't need
10 months to learn 10 shortcuts in a software that you use every week or
so. And you are very efficient with these shortcuts.

> And which is left with enter, just like you need to do to install (unless
> you really want to ignore the conflict, which means you have to use "Q" to
> install, then :)

FWIW, <space> was used to exit help in woody's dselect version. I cannot
say I prefer the new behavior[1], but I don't see a major problem with
the two uses of <enter> you are mentioning: <enter> in dselect has
always[2] meant (in the context of an action) "do the work that has been
marked so far" (usually: install according to the selections I have
under the eyes). Consequently, whenever you hit <enter>, you are
supposed to have convinced yourself that you want to do what has been
marked so far, which is generally right under your eyes (list of
packages to install or remove in a dependency/conflict dialog
resolution, for instance).

So, in the case of exiting help, you are just somehow led to pay a bit
too much attention to a pretty harmless action, that is, exiting the
on-line help. I admit this may not be perfect, but I don't see it as a
big problem (how often do you need on-line help when you use dselect
every week or so?). I think if we could exit help with <ESC>, that would
be perfect, but perhaps tty technicalities would require you to hit it
twice as in mc (I don't know much about this problem), which would be a
slightly ugly.


[1] I still use both versions and happen to often hit <space> instead of
    <enter> when I use sid's one, which doesn't have any bad
    consequences (simply scrolls help). And the problem will disappear
    automatically when I don't have to use woody's dselect anymore.

[2] Well, since slink at least.

-- 
Florent