[Aptitude-devel] Bug#586989: [aptitude] package state could use same letter than keyboard shortcuts

[Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo]

Control: tags -1 + wontfix


Hi Xavier,

2010-06-24 11:35 Xavier Brochard:
>Package: aptitude
>Version: 0.6.3-2
>Severity: wishlist
>
>--- Please enter the report below this line. ---
>Hello
>forgive me if this was already reported or discuss, but I've browsed the huge
>bug report list without finding this one.
>
>It's just a wish:
>it would help new users if aptitude-curse used same letters for package states
>(left column of packages list) and for keyboard shortcuts.
>May be old users can find this useful too... at least not disturbing.
>This can be made as an option.

Thanks for the suggestion.  By now, I don't think that long time users
would benefit and I don't think that anybody would change (unless this
was set by default), it would probably be of some help for new users.

However, there are some problems to implement this, specially now that
the old behaviour has been like that since forever.

The left-most column (I think that it's the one that you mention) is not
for actions but for current states, and this includes things like "H"
(for half-installed) or "T" (for triggers pending), which rarely happen,
but happen sometimes when there are problems with dpkg or the package
itself.  Also "v" for virtual packages, or "c" for "removed but not
purged (config files)", or "B" for broken dependencies.

The second column, maybe you mean that, is for actions, maps more
closely what you suggest, but again there are problems: can be "B" again
for broken, and marking as manual or automatically installed (m/M, A in
the screen) is independent of those and goes not in the second but in
the third column.  And having 'i' in the first column but '+' in the
second would be odd, and it would break the expectation of users coming
from old times or using dpkg regularly (dpkg -l 'linux-image*' | grep
'^ii'; 'ii' is a common pattern that people search for).

So it is not a simple mapping with any column, for this to be
implemented all of these things have to be taken into account and find a
good and hopefully coherent solution.

In addition, there is the added problem of having to document all of
this in various places (quick help, man page, user's manual -- including
replacing/adding screenshots), and then translating the changes to other
languages.  Having config to choose between them also adds complications
and needs to be documented as well.


So, in summary, I think that it would have been a good idea in general
to implement something like this from the start, and being a long time
user of aptitude I often wondered about this duplicity.  But I think
that it is too late now, and that there is a ton of work for (in my
opinion) relatively simple gain.

I will leave this report open, but I am marking it as + wontfix because
I don't see this being implemented any time soon.


Cheers.
-- 
Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo <manuel.montezelo at gmail.com>