Comments on: State of the Aptitude (week 7)

By: Anton Piatek

Anton Piatek — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 07:35:36 +0000

Looks cool, I like the layout – better than synaptic imho.
One thing I find really difficult in synaptic is resolving tricky dependencies (especially ones that apt fails on, but aptitude often offers a solution, but it looks like you already fix that)
Also trying to force newer/older versions of a package is rather trying in synaptic
What is in the first tab? Surely you just need a button to update the cache?
How about an editor to the apt config files and sources list (the ubuntu package thing has something like that, though I found it annoying).
Definitely worth talking to the people mentioned by Sebastian

By: itux

itux — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 13:46:53 +0000

it seems to be cool, maybe useful to people who loves a GUI.
but i prefer the terminal better, anyway, it’s really a great job!

By: Daniel Burrows

Daniel Burrows — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:48:33 +0000

Sebastian,

Arthur has talked about a workflow-oriented interface. At the moment he’s focused on understanding how to implement all the features that he will need, hence the current feature-oriented approach.

By: Sebastian Heinlein

Sebastian Heinlein — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 08:37:00 +0000

Hello,

I worked on the Synaptic user interface some years ago and the redesign of gnome-app-install. Have you been in contact with Michael Vogt (mvo) mvo or Canonical’s usability expert Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)? The later one has got some ideas about a new package manager. It would be sad to see just another package manager that makes all the mistake that we already made twice.

You should try to write a workflow orientied and not feature orientied user interface.

Cheers

By: Obey Arthur Liu

Obey Arthur Liu — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 07:57:15 +0000

@Luca Bruno
1. The original program is nammed Aptitude..
2. The terminal is only for debugging purposes. The final interface will probably have the dpkg run in an embedded terminal like Synaptic.

By: Mikko Rantalainen

Mikko Rantalainen — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 07:20:22 +0000

Re: resolver UI:
The current resolver UI is similar to command line apt; only one solution is displayed at a time and there are prev/next buttons (here named “back” and “forward” which suggests that all these solutions should be applied in a given order) in addition to apply. How about displaying all the solutions on one page one below another with a possibility to choice exactly one solution? For example, the UI could display one solution in a frame/box/fieldset with a radio button in front of the box. Repeat for all the possible solutions. The just put all those radio buttons and boxes in a scrollable viewport. (Not too far from the UI used in Toos – Addons menu selection in Firefox 3 – there is one item for each extension and each item consists of an icon, title, description and possible action buttons. In case of aptitude, the action button could be “Apply this solution”)

Well done otherwise!

By: Luca Bruno

Luca Bruno — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 06:54:59 +0000

Great work! Just some questions:
1. Why have you named it “aptitude”?
2. I see a terminal in the last screenshot, so what’s the difference with synaptic?