Hello I think the ide of a simpel istall-tool as a compliment to dselect wery-much-as-it-is is a god ide. Making dselect more a mangement tool then an install tool. Dselect is a good managment tool, but less god first install tool for inexperient users. Most of the problems that comes with dselect comes of less sucessfull atempt to be a install tool for a novice. One is the way dselect treats recomend dependece. The intension, as I understand it, is to give more guidance to novice users. To some extent it do help keeping systems sane, but ther MUST (IMHO) still be a way to tell dselect to treat recomends like it treats sugests. A comand line toggel wold do. Also a experient user gain allot from using dselect, so ponting att dpkg as an alternativ is not the answer her.
This leaves us with to questions o How to inprove dselect further as an mantain-tool. I find most of the previus posters 'smal' sugestions, like inproved searches, less noice, logging e t c being god and construktive ones. o How a simpel install-tool may look. To open a third question, when debian is first run dselect starts automagicaly, then disapers from the startup equaly automagicaly. IMHO it is better to start some 'debian install/maintain menu' from root bashrc (or what ewer). dselect, the new install tool, the basic docs, posably some of the tools from the install disks (module config, kebordsettup, systemname setupp etc) and a shell is nice fings for that menu. That menu shuld not disaper automagicaly! Anny user not noving how to remove it will not want to remowe it! It's great for a novice to have all the basic stuff handy in place. This new esy-install-tool and smal fixes to dselect will fast make debian better an more atractiv without loosing anny old featurs. In the long run i think dselect should work aganst some library that works both from a terminal and from X and svgalib e t c with the same aplication source. Big changes (if neded) can wait untill this rewrite. I am working on one, but the documentation is poor and even worse (for most of You) only in Swedish. In short, it's intended to be som kind of 'Meta library' or wraparound not implementing much self if its alredy availbly. But giving one programming-interface to allot of userinterface. Also making it 'esy' to add new user interface. Anyway, it not in a usefull state yet. If annyone is intrested, mail me and I mail back when i have some desent documentation on my Webpage. At that time, any help will be welcome! Pleace dont expect rapid reply, I do not have all the time i want :( Sorry for my poor english /Lars -- / / _/_ _/_ Lars Hallberg IT-konsult Micro++ /\_/\ / / www.micropp.se/lah www.micropp.se / Micro++ OOP C++ WWW-Design Utbildning LINUX FreeWare -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]