On Thu, 2008-08-07 at 20:11 -0700, Daniel Burrows wrote: > On Thu, Aug 07, 2008 at 10:12:45AM -0500, Kent West <westk@acu.edu> was heard to say: > > Damon L. Chesser wrote: > > > Sadly, I have NEVER used aptitude ncurses. Ever since the early days of > > > Potato, when I tried to use it, I would get completely lost. As smart > > > as I am (however smart that is) that interface just does not work the > > > way my brain works. I still don't know how to use it and get frustrated > > > in 30 seconds trying to use it. Nothing against what I am sure is a > > > nice program, it just does not work the way I think. I feel better by > > > sharing, it has made us all better people (and dang it! People like > > > me!) > > > > > > > Ditto. I'm sure it's a fine program, but I, too, get lost with the > > ncurses interface of aptitude. (I actually found dselect easier to get > > around in. What?!!) > > Believe me, I'm not contemplating a full-on interface redesign for the > idle pleasure of it. :-) > > There are two main things I'm looking at: > > (a) a big fat menu like dselect's that gives you direct access to > the 3-4 functions you normally want to use. > > (b) making the default way of viewing packages be to do a search and > list the results (what's currently called a "limit"). The > current interface for finding packages in aptitude was designed > to let you peruse the full Debian package list. This was a > reasonable idea at the time (I generally did walk through the > whole list on a fresh install in 1999) but is kind of silly now. > The main thing that people seem to use this list for is the > smaller top-level groups (Upgradable / New / etc), and those can > be offered directly from the "front page". > > The GTK+ frontend will probably explore these ideas as well as some > other things that I can't replicate in a terminal (having multiple font > faces is just an amazing thing, let me tell you). Once we finish with > it I'll take a look at how the terminal interface should be updated. > > Daniel I look forward to testing it out! > > -- Damon L. Chesser damon@damtek.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/dchesser
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