Luke Small said: > I don't know the best way, but I like how there are "check-boxes", from > what I recall, in lynx webpages.
OpenBSD installer solves the checkbox problem by asking questions with default answer printed in square brackets. > If there are other things, then it may become a little less tedious > for less experienced folks to look at all the options at once, rather > than having to start over. You may want to change your keyboard layout after partitioning disk? Or maybe ability to autostart xdm convinces you that adding non-root user was not a good idea? What exactly are the cases when you needed to start over? > If there are any irreconcilable differences in options, JavaScript can > more easily display that the other changes are incompatible by > changing the other options back. Lynx doesn't support JavaScript. And even if it did, it is not a part of OpenBSD any more. But even if it was, automatic resetting user-configured options to defaults would turn installer into a whack-a-mole game. Not an improvement. FWIW the only incompatible options in installer right now are using whole disk and using dedicated partition, and the choice doesn't require JavaScript. See, in OpenBSD we try to make our "solutions" adequate to problems we are solving. Curses-based interface would do better job of the installer you describe, but even that is an overkill, as simple line-oriented interface is sufficient for the job. I would argue that curses-based interfaces tend to require more user interaction then our installer. > Things like not having softdep mounted file systems by default really > tripped me up for a couple versions. I have virtualbox HDs and I had > to keep backups in case Windows did something funny, because I > sometimes couldn't repair the file systems. It seems like something > that should be an option in the installer, or a default. It would be > nice to do that with noatime and maybe an optional mfs or tmpfs > mounted /tmp folder like I have now. So your issue with installer is not about forms and checkboxes, but rather about the set of options you want to tune. As you may know, there is quite a lot of settings that you may tune in OpenBSD; we put considerable effort into making sane defaults, but user's needs may differ from common scenarios. As you may also know, users' needs may be very different, so the range of potential installer questions is huge. If user needs something we don't do by default, we assume that he got himself familiar with his problem and can solve it after installation is complete. This way we make the installation process really fast for those who don't need to tune anything, and allow users to make detailed configuration when needed, without limiting them to question-answer interface of installer. Switching installer to curses-based interface, or even to lynx+cookies scheme you suggested won't affect the choice of installation options, because the principle of installer's operation - questions and answers - won't be altered. -- Dmitrij D. Czarkoff
