[maemo-developers] [maemo-developers] The future of the Application installer

[From: Guillem Jover]

On Mon, Nov 07, 2005 at 02:15:06PM +0000, ext Tomas Frydrych wrote:
> The big issue is the screen realestate: even in the File Manager it is 
> difficult to get to your files in a folder if  you have more than 3 or 4 
> in there. The same goes for the installer: I am not sure what kind of UI 
> would make it possible to trace a large number of dependencies without 
> it being major pain, which is why I actually quite like the applet only 
> keeping track of applications, not the system. If you want the installer 
> to be fullblown dpkg frontend, there should be a 'normal user mode', 
> that would be similar to how the intaller works just now, and some kind 
> of an 'experienced user mode', and make the 'normal user' mode the default.

That's pretty easy to filter, given that debtags is being integrated in the
main package installer frontends (like aptitude in sid).

  <http://debtags.alioth.debian.org/>

> Synaptic-like view of the system can be overwhelming even on a big 
> screen with mouse and keyboard -- whatever you do, design it first of 
> all to work for the ordinary user; just because the hackers find it not 
> powerful enough does not mean it is bad.

There used to be a debtags enabled synaptic, don't know of the current
state though.

regards,
guillem