Re: [installer] One more template change?
Hi,
Justin B Rye <justin.byam.rye@gmail.com> wrote:
> Holger Wansing wrote:
> > Furthermore, I have to advance this whole review a bit, since I noticed that
> > I did not included all relevant terms. I'm sorry for this!
>
> Another of the disadvantages of working from the message strings
> rather than the template file.
Sure. My bad!
> >
> > The complete dialog looks like this:
> >
> > ----snip----------------------------------------------------------------------
> [...]
> > ----snap-------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > Applying the already suggested changings, and adding some more changings
> > to the other strings, that would lead to something like:
> >
> >
> > ----snip-------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > Change debconf priority
>
> One of the old rules we tried to apply in debconf dialogue reviews
> was that debconf should never refer to itself, since users have no
> reason to care how the dialogues are being implemented. Here it does
> at least help to convey the fact that this isn't setting the priority
> of the *installer*. (Mind you, it isn't setting the priority of
> debconf, either - it's setting the priority-cutoff for package
> configuration dialogues.)
>
> >
> > Packages that use debconf for configuration prioritize the questions they
> > might ask you. Only questions with a certain priority are
> > actually shown to you; all less important questions are skipped.
>
> Is "packages that use debconf for configuration" a fossil from the
> days when some packages didn't? The Debian configuration management
> interface specification is solidly enshrined in policy, so any
> hypothetical alternative to debconf would have to be indistinguishable
> from a user's point of view anyway (and might as well be referred to
> as an implementation of debconf).
>
> I'd suggest:
>
> Change debconf priority
>
> Debconf is the system used for handling any questions that packages might
> ask during configuration. These questions are given priorities, and
> debconf can be told to skip the ones below a given level of importance.
>
> What I'd really like to do is get rid of the "debconf priority"
> terminology entirely, but unfortunately that's used all over the place,
> and if it they aren't introduced to it here, users are unlikley to be
> able to guess what it means.
In the installer itself, "debconf priority" is not that much used, and in that
dialog, where it is heavily used, there is also a description what it means
(that's the one we are referring to here). So it's not that worse there.
But it's often used in the installation-guide.
I just read bug #796662 'rethinking priorities' and thought about proposing
to use "debconf-priority threshold" as new term, but given what you wrote
above I am again totally lost here...
Maybe we cannot follow all rules here apparently and get all issues fixed
at the same time ...
> > Please select the questions you want to be shown by priority level:
> > - 'critical': only show questions that are essential for a successful installation;
> > - 'high': additionally to 'critical', show questions for which the default often
> > needs to be changed;
>
> By "additionally to 'critical'" here you mean "as an additive change to
> the effect you'd get from selecting 'critical'"; I can't find a
> phrasing that conveys this smoothly without breaking the back of the
> series. The closer we can get to "a) only X; b) also Y; c) also Z"
> the easier it is to follow.
>
> > - 'medium': also show questions for which the default sometimes needs to be changed;
> > - 'low': show all questions, even if the default only rarely needs to be changed.
> ^
> By the way, we want just one space before the bullet.
>
> > For example, this question is of 'medium' priority, so if you had chosen to see
> > only questions of 'high' or 'critical' priority, it wouldn't be shown.
> >
> > Only show questions with priority level:
> > critical
> > high
> > medium
> > low
> >
> > ----snap---------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> >
> >
> > The most relevant change here is the last line before the choices.
> > I would rephrase that from "Ignore questions ..." into the "Show questions ..."
> > system we have in the other part, for consistency and easy understanding.
>
> Unfortunately you end up with something that isn't true. Picking
> "low" *doesn't* mean that debconf will only show questions with
> priority level "low"! It means that debconf will show questions with
> priority level "low" *or* anything higher - meaning *all* questions.
> So it needs to keep the definition in terms of "less than".
With the changings applied like shown above, "low" means "all questions
having low set in their preferences" plus all mentioned before in the
list (this is, what the newly added "also" says. Or at least this is how
I would understand it and what I had in mind).
As you wrote above:
a) only X
b) also Y
c) also Z
That would mean:
a = X
b = Y + X
c = Z + Y + X
That would work, right?
But apparently this seems to make everything more and more complicated, and thus
is not easier as we have it now?
And changing the whole system might totally confuse people, who have learned
to live with the status quo?
So it's not an improvement, but a worsening?
We will have to think about which change is worth the effort at all...
Holger
--
Holger Wansing <hwansing@mailbox.org>
PGP-Fingerprint: 496A C6E8 1442 4B34 8508 3529 59F1 87CA 156E B076
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