Re: [Synaptic-devel] Synaptic .5

[Sebastian Heinlein]

> On Thu, Jun 17, 2004 at 06:39:14PM +0200, Patrick Cornelißen wrote:
> > | Please help me to exactly understand what you are missing. What
> > | information that used to be in the tabs are you looking for and in
> > | what way did it help you?
> > I used it for example to browse through the dependencies of broken
> > packages. I just activated the dependencies tab (or the common tab) and
> > browsed through the packages. So I got a pretty quick impression what's
> > wrong.
> > Now I have to click on each package and select the property menu item,
> > ... - not very good for quick browsing.

Am Fr, den 18.06.2004 um 1:04 Uhr +0200 schrieb Michael Vogt:
> I attached a patch that makes the properties window non-modal and that
> adds searching in the packagelist by pressing a key (a small window in
> the scrollbar area). The properties window will always display the
> last selected package and updates the status according the action
> performed. Is this what you miss? 

I am OK with this. Additionally you should consider to implement your idea to 
present 
the dependencies in the tab as links to the package in the list. This would
allow to quickly descend the dependency tree.

The only issue that I am unsure about is the handling of the properties dialog
during the application of the changes. Closing the dialog seems to be too 
invasive to me.
And I don't know if we clutter the screen with too many windows if we keep it 
open
in a disabled state.

> > I think it's the best for the usability, if you reintegrate the
> > properties dialog in the description area with it's tabs.
> > (As it was in the last .4x versions)

The notebook had some bad effects. Many users felt that they should
always know how to handle centrally presented data. And if they are not
able to, they would feel confused. So taking out the "expert" stuff into
its own dialog makes the main window more relaxing.

I moved the description tab in the dialog to the end of the notebook,
since it is a duplication of the main window. I don't know if we should
keep this tab in the properties dialog: it would be faster to click on
the tab than to move or close the whole properties dialog to read the
description again.

If we think about offering an option to put the notebook back into the
main window, we will have to re-implement the "common" tab and revert it
to a gtktextview widget. Otherwise we would have again the bad situation
in which native widgets are scrollable, since all the text labels would
not completely fit into the tab.

> ...
> adds searching in the packagelist by pressing a key (a small window in
> the scrollbar area). 

I am against integrating this hack like search function in such a common
place. I think that the most user even don't know this GTK feature. I
remember a lot of emails and complains about the old quick search that
confused a lot of users, since it either was not self explainable nor
provided a good feedback to the user.

So I would like to see that pressing a key would jump to the first
package starting with the same initial letter as the pressed key.
Perhaps we should talk to the GTK guys what theirs plans for this
feature are. This function should not be in opposition to the maybe
"radical" GTK solution in version 2.6.

I still think that an instant search with an entry box at the top of the
package list would be the best solution. But it is too slow on a huge
list of packages (Debian contains 14000 packages making the list »All«
really a hard task). Perhaps we can get some optimization by the GTK
guys.

Finally I would favor the status quo on the search entry box issue as
long as we cannot find a clear solution. GTK already provides a hack
like search function for advanced users.

Regards,

Sebastian

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