[Gllug] Debian Matching Machines

[Chris Bell]

On Thu 07 Apr, John Winters wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 2005-04-07 at 09:37 +0100, Chris Bell wrote:
> [snip exposition of dselect]
> > just press return when you are happy with
> > your selection, why do you have a problem?
> 
> Exactly why I find it impossible to drive is hard to pin down, but major
> factors are:
> 
> 1) The lack of a general explanation of how the damn thing works.  Some
> worked examples in the documentation would be good.  As with so many
> programs, the documentation makes the mistake of documenting all the
> detail but leaving out the general briefing about what's going on.
> 
   I have just used telnet from my Acorn to log in to a Woody box and run
dselect. The instructions for navigating around the first page are right in
the middle of the screen.
   Leaving the highlight on the top line and pressing return leads to the
access method selection, which includes using apt as a backend, and moving
the cursor to any of the lines brings up an explanation, (if it flows over
the bottom of page the bottom line says press d for more).

> 2) The need to remember about 14 keypresses - none of which is
> particularly intuitive or prompted on screen - before you can drive it
> at all.
> 
   Update package list just works as long as the access method is correctly
set for your system. I have a local apt-proxy, but each computer can also
download the package list from other sites.

> 3) The lack of indication of the structure of the screens.  It seems to
> have thousands of different displays and no indication of how they all
> hang together.  I'm sure we're all familiar with the "twisty little
> passages, all alike".  Once you've mapped those you find that what
> seemed like an infinite space is actually quite small.  It may be that
> the corresponding space in dselect is also quite small, but it's bigger
> than the "twisty little passages" space and apparently completely
> unmapped.  There's also no clear on-screen indication of where you are
> in the maze.

   The package selection facility is preceeded by the first help screen,
with further instructions on the bottom line, and the help pages can be
accessed at any time.

> 
> 4) The fact that "obvious" key presses don't do anything.  I'd expect
> "q" or Escape to get me out of things but they don't.  Nor does the
> program provide any clues about what I should be pressing instead.
> 
   My memory is such that I may need to do this frequently, but it is easy
to jump back. In aptitude, if you dive into the listings to read full
information about an individual package, you do indeed need to use "q" to
climb back out.

> 5) The fact that the help is an either/or thing.  Either you can be
> driving the program, or you can be looking at the help but not both at
> the same time.  That means you have to memorise a lot of information
> from the help screen (see "14 key presses" above), exit help and try to
> use them from memory.

   The selection screen is cluttered enough without loads of additional help
info, but the main commands are shown on the top line, just above the column
headings. I found at first that I pressed return too soon, and had to go
back to the selection scren, but that is easy to do.

> 
> 6) The fact that it has features like, "just press return when you are
> happy with your selection".   Again, it's an extremely bad choice of key
> to cause the program to go on and do something.  Yes, return is often
> used to mean, "Take the default option", but *only* when there are some
> options being displayed and you're being asked to choose between them.
> This is true for both GUI and text mode programs.
> 
   This has been changed in aptitude, and you have to use g (GO!) instead.

> No doubt it is possible to learn to drive it, and once you've learned it
> may be quick to use, but I suppose the major problem is that the initial
> learning curve is not just steep but vertical (possibly overhanging),
> the height of that initial step is large, and until you've got over the
> step you can't make the program do anything useful at all.
> 
   I would consider that searching for security and other package updates,
then deciding what I wish to install, then listing each manually to instruct
apt-get and apt-install, to be much more like hard work.

> If it were possible to get by with just 2 or 3 key presses, and it was
> documented what those key presses were, then it might be possible to get
> started and learn the other features as you go along.

   There are very few selections that I need to make regularly other than
security updates, and I can run dselect and/or aptitude on several computers
at the same time from the same screen with several text windows, and move
across to any as each task is completed. Each security update is installed
as required, I do not need to check which is needed on any individual box.

> 
> John
> 


-- 
Chris Bell

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