On Friday 23 January 2009 18:46:36 Randall R Schulz wrote:

On Friday January 23 2009, Stefan Hundhammer wrote:

...

Not everbody reads blogs, ...

Is there an all-encompassing RSS feed URL for those blogs? I see lots of individual author's feeds, but not one for the "Lizards" as a whole. Am I just overlooking it?

Firefox should show the main feed. In any case it is: http://lizards.opensuse.org/feed Andreas -- Andreas Jaeger, Director Platform / openSUSE, aj@suse.de SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg) Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany GPG fingerprint = 93A3 365E CE47 B889 DF7F FED1 389A 563C C272 A126

On Sunday 25 January 2009 02:57:35 Clayton wrote:

[...] There are quite a few improvements I'd like to see.... - remember the column widths when I resize them - do not auto-close after installing some software (or make it configurable). I never add all the software I want in one go - add a view that shows ONLY the packages that can/need to be updated - add an easy to find and clear installation summary view

I completely agree. Borrowing from a piece of software used for doing live configuration changes for an industrial video matrix switcher, I think it would also be good if Yast2 was changed to use an sql backend (e.g. sqlite or mysql-e). Now, before anyone jumps, hear me out. I'm not suggesting that the whole package management system be converted to sql, just the software management application. How would this work? On startup Yast2 Software Management would read the respository data and insert it into an (appropriately optimised) sql database. Queries/views would then be constructed as sql queries (invisible to the user, unless one wanted to do a user-defined view) which would make creating new views/queries very simple e.g. "select all from * where installed_version <> available version and installed version is not null" should show only installed packages that have upgrades (or downgrades) available. On shutdown the (modified) data from the sql database would be rewritten back to the repository cache files. If the right database engine is used and the database is appropriately designed I think there would be minimal impact on performance (in fact it may even be slightly improved). Database triggers could also be used to keep the repository cache files up-to- date in the background or to update other views that are (currently hidden) in other tabs.

I think tabs are a great idea... have a tab with a constantly updated installation summary (for example). I can see tabs being more user friendly... as long as the concerns raised in the blog entry are thought about.. like tab clutter... ability to close tabs... ability to opne specific tabs.. remember which tabs are preferred so that next time it's opened, the same tabs are shown and so on.

C.

Agreed. It would all help to make the system even more usable. -- =================================================== Rodney Baker VK5ZTV rodney.baker@iinet.net.au ===================================================

On Saturday 24 January 2009 12:24:06 am David C. Rankin wrote:

Stefan Hundhammer wrote:

...

Not everbody reads blogs, so I'd like to point you to this:

http://lizards.opensuse.org/2009/01/23/tabbed-browsing-for-packages/

What do you think? Is this a good idea?

CU

As long as they don't forget the hot-keys to allow you to switch tabs without having to grab a mouse, then I don't have any objection to it. I don't see any benefit for doing it either. A list-box is a pretty damn easy concept, that's been a standard for how long?

List-box is easy, but what is proposed will enable to have really large number of filters with easy switch between the most used.

I'm all for new and better ways of doing things, but "change for the sake of change" usually causes many more problems than it solves. What I'm looking for here is: "What problem are we trying to solve?" Further, where is any data that says tabbed is better than list?

It is not better. It is just in common use in browser which makes it easy to understand what they do. Though, if tabs don't change left side of the window, with search etc, they should not extend over whole window width. We can use configurable short list with single button Configure, or Edit, instead of list-box with all available filters.

A down side to all tabbed implementations is the loss of window real estate now taken up by a 40 px hight row of tabs.

If you get easy switchable views (filters) than space can become non-issue. Current way with limited number of filters, and 2 clicks to switch views back and forth creates need for larger list of packages, so you don't have to switch often. Few tabs presenting selected views from larger list, allow to create more filters that will give you shorter lists. IMHO, general overhaul of package management user interface, or even whole YaST, that will use experience collected with web browsers may show as the best option. It will allow user to select options, search criteria, filters, and have them collected in one tab that will be loaded on module start. Few predefined tabs could be displayed at the begin, or selected from drop down menu at the top of the screen. The only problem is how to organize YaST to be able to remember preferences. -- Regards, Rajko -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org