Re: Come back and graphical installer

[Mathieu Othacehe]

Hi Thorsten,

> I know what's there right now didn't fall from the sky and there's
> effort to every little change. If any of the following reads like a
> demand or demanding to you, please be assured that I just tried to get
> straight to the point in what essentially are just suggestions.

Thanks a lot taking the time to test the installer and writting down all
those suggestions. Most of them are reasonable, some are made difficult
by technical limitations, but I'll discuss them one by one below.

> There is "Cancel", but no "Select"/"OK"/"Forward", not even a hint
> like "Press Enter to select". "Cancel Installation" would be clearer,
> but maybe a bit long. Maybe "Exit"?

The newt API offers one "help-line" at the bottom of the screen for a
help text. It might be the place to indicate that <Enter> selects.

>
> There should be a "Back" button (bound to left-arrow and maybe also
> Escape). Having a "Back" button would also emphasize that "Cancel" is
> not just that.

Ok adding a "Back" button and turning "Cancel" into "Exit" seams like a
good idea.

> Lists like this are so much nicer to use if you know that you can type
> a letter to jump to the first item that starts with it. In this sense,
> a hint about this feature would be great, though it's tricky to
> explain this short and clear enough.
>
> Would it be feasible to change this to a completion-list instead of
> working on initials only?

You're right, the "initial jump" feature has to be advertised. About the
"completion-list" it would be great but it requires a patch to newt
library that is not trivial.

>
> "English" should probably be preselected. As odd as the list scrolled
> down a good bit right from the start may look, this is the one choice
> that may speed things up for the largest group of users. Unlike
> "Afar".

Sure!

> Is it possible to detect the BIOS language settings? Any other way to
> make an informed guess?

I'm not aware of such a possibility I agree it would be nice.

>
> Language names should be localized, e.g. "Deutsch" instead of
> "German". There may be issues regarding character set and list
> navigation, though.

I took the language name from the ISO639 standard where it is not
localized. However, I see that Wikipedia has an ISO language <-> Native
name (endonym) correspondance. Maybe we could copy this table somewhere
and display language endonyms (or both like the Debian installer)?

> "Location selection":
>
> A shortlist based on language selection is not acceptable. You just
> made me relocate to the United Kingdom as nearest choice ;)

Aha sadly, the glibc only has a small subset of supported locales. If
you speak Dutch, only those locales are supported:

nl_AW UTF-8
nl_BE.UTF-8 UTF-8
nl_BE ISO-8859-1
address@hidden ISO-8859-15
nl_NL.UTF-8 UTF-8
nl_NL ISO-8859-1
address@hidden ISO-8859-15

Which means you can not select a "territory" different from Aruba,
Belgium or Nederlands. I'm not sure how to overcome this, maybe an
explicative text, what do you think?

> "Code selection":
>
> A few more words what this is about should help, assuming Guix is
> meant to reach less technical users (at some point).
>

Ok!

> "Timezone selection":
>
> This should happen after Location selection. The text should explain
> that selection happens in 2 steps, via a region, then a city. Along
> the lines of: "First select a region, then a city (next page), to set
> a timezone".
>
> It may be better to use one list of timezones, each with the UTC
> offset, followed by a list of major cities.

Even though it is harder to implement, it would be better I agree. The
tricky part is to gather a list of cities representing the timezone.

>
> "Keyboard model selection":
>
> Hmm, Ubuntu's graphical installer gets away with just layout and
> variant, no mention of model. Some graphical installers have a test
> box and/or a detection scheme (asking the user to press certain keys).

Well now "pc105" is the standard and other models are mostly relics from
the past. I think I'll just assume the model to be pc105 and let user
select a layout and variant then.

>
>
> "Technology selection":
>
> Should be "Internet access". It seems like with "technology" a bit of
> the implementation language slipped through?

You're right ;) I'll rename it.

> "User selection":
>
> This could start right in "User creation" for the first, required
> user. Actually, I wonder if the installer should even offer creation
> of several users? In general, don't do what can easily be done after
> installation.

Well I was hesitating too as multiple user adds complexity to the
form. What do other people think, one or multiple users selection :)?

>
>
> Consider to leave "selection" out of all page titles.

Ok.

Thanks again for your suggestions, it is really appreciated!

Mathieu