Ter, 2007-04-17 às 07:26 +0200, jdd sur free escreveu:

I wrote some ideas on the discussion page, is that the expected wayout? copy below

I'd prefer people would just use the main page, as it is meant for discussion. (just write "jdd: comment", and open the sections you want) But it's cool to see any thoughts discussed wherever that is. :)

jdd

Hello,

Good idea to open this page. Some essential though, for the beginning: It's essential to keep the ncurse UI with complete functionality. openSUSE is probably the only distribution giving an intelligent complete interface, very pleasant through ssh and low bandwith connection.

Well, there is a Portuguese distribution that ships with a similar system: http://www2.caixamagica.pt/pag/documentacao/Servidor10/HTML/ManualServidor10... Better resolution for the graphical interfaces: http://shots.linuxquestions.org/?linux_distribution_sm=Caixa%20Magica% 2011 It is meant as a replacement for Suse, which was very popular for awhile on the peak of Linux popularity, and there were news of some governmental offices adopting it (now, they are investing heavily on this one). But the underlying tech sucks though. They don't re-use the interface code. They also must have been on crack when they designed the file reading and writing; it uses XML representations for them. When you launch a tool, it loads the XML. When saving modifications, it saves to the XML file. Then, it has a couple of programs that read and write from/to the system config files... And some other to do the voodoo to keep them on sync. Now, this does have some (tiny) advantages, but it seems it doesn't work as good as it should and is just painful.

second, YaST is two parts: first time install and system configuration. help is important at install time, but _on paper_ we _must_ keep YaST small to be able to install on oldfashionned hardware with minimal ram (for example). 10 years old computers are today perfectly usable and used even in our countries by money disabled people, very interested by the freeness of Linux.

The main effort I'd like to be seen is the help point. Notice that for the current help a HTML parser is also used; the difference here is that this new help system has potential to be much more rich in content, thus taking more time to parse. But it would only require cpu when you pressed F1, and the help pops up. Features that this would introduce, like searching or browsing, would surely require some cpu/disk, but it's optional stuff where you won't mind to wait for the "searching... please wait". If you do, you can live without them. The other points don't apply to ncurses, or just marginally.

third, I personnally think the way YaST is showing the config at install time is must better than the way it shows it at system config time. I speak of the summary page with all the components in a window with links (and the "change" box at bottom)

Yeah, it would probably be nice that it would tell what chances are going to be made, and allow you to go back to change something. Also, I find it annoying how some Yast tools will show you steps of what they are reading/writting, at the start and end, and don't give you time to read them. If there is a need to show them, let the user read 'em, and have a Start/Exit button for the user to proceed.

fourth, the YaST control center is un-consistent at least for the network devices. Why are them separated from the other hardware?

You can easily make a patch for that and fill as a bug. The yast control center reads the entries at: /usr/share/applications/YaST2/ . The categories are on the groups/ subdirectory. They are simple .desktop files; they are very intuitive. Btw, Yast control center interface is pretty sucky, why not just use the Slab browser for this? At least for Gnome and similar, while no Qt version of it is made. Cheers, Ricardo

fith, the most ennoying YaST lack is the systematic failing of network detect for the printers. I think I have never seen YaST detect an existing printer on my Linux+Windows net (I have from one to three printers available, depending on the period), and the wording is very difficult to understand (I know of "samba" protocol, not about the others)

thanks jdd 05:08, 17 April 2007 (UTC) -- http://www.dodin.net Lucien Dodin, inventeur http://lucien.dodin.net/index.shtml

-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: yast-devel+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: yast-devel+help@opensuse.org