On Wed, Aug 06, 2008 at 20:01:46 -0700, Daniel Burrows wrote: [ snip: a bit of goofing off ]
> I actually am curious to hear what people like about the program, > because I'm (slowly) working out ideas for redesigning the interface > and I don't want to accidentally break useful features. Any breakage > should be fully intentional, that's my motto. > > Hence my oh-so-subtle prodding... Here is a list of my favorite aptitude-interactive-UI features (I run Sid; many of them are probably less relevant for "stable" users): - browsing the list of new packages, then clearing it - the quick way to evaluate aptitude's proposals for resolving dependency conflicts during an upgrade - the summary of the scheduled actions, especially the sorting in categories (upgraded, installed as a dependency, removed since no longer needed, etc.) - Fine-grained control of installation of recommended and suggested packages: Before any scheduled action is carried out, I can look at the relevant list of recommended and suggested packages and decide which ones I want to install and if I want to mark any given one as automatic. - quickly put a hold or a forbid-version on a package - looking at changelogs before I let aptitude do something - consulting apt-listbugs and apt-listchanges before things actually happen (I think that this one is the same in command-line use, though.) - the "limit view" function combined with the powerful search patterns when I don't yet know which packages I need for $FEATURE - quick traversal of dependency chains, forward and reverse, for the rare cases in which aptitude cannot figure out what to do by itself Some very subjective ideas for possible improvements (not necessarily simplifications of the UI, though): - Sometimes it would be handy if I could fine-tune the aggressiveness of aptitude's conflict resolution behavior, i.e. when I notice that the normal "U" behavior leads to undesirable actions then I would like to be able to gradually move from "safe-upgrade" to "full-upgrade" behavior while I can see what is going to happen in the interactive interface. I could stop at the optimal point and would only have to fix a few things manually. - I would like to be able to declare "favorites" among packages, to guide conflict resolution. - It would be nice to have "apt-cache policy"-equivalent information in the versions display of packages. Right now I find it difficult to figure out in which archive a given version can be found. (As a matter of fact, that is the only reason I still use apt-cache, aside from very simple searches for which apt-cache's dumber-but-faster search function is sufficient.) I am also looking forward to seeing how the summer-of-code GTK+ interface will turn out; maybe that will help to bring the remaining benighted souls towards the light... -- Regards, | http://users.icfo.es/Florian.Kulzer Florian | -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
