From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20021003 Description of problem: Accessing the package manager graphically has a better design than in 7.x, but needs to communicate better with the naive user. The following ambiguities and unclearnesses exist: 1: Use of unexplained jargon -- Perhaps it's useful to use jargon in menus, but the balloon help should explain it, not repeat it. Jargon Proposed balloon "Packages" "Change programs, tools, and software suites" "Package Management" "Add, Remove, or change software installed" 2: Vagueness -- It's not clear that package management belongs in "System Settings" rather than "System Tools." Isn't it a tool? It doesn't "set" anything in particular, does it? If you're not sure which menu to put it under, why not put it under both? Redundancy can be a virtue... A: If you need to keep the menu title short ("Packages"), then make the balloon help actually descriptive. Instead of "Manage packages installed on the system" -- which doesn't explain the jargon terms "manage" or "package" -- it would be more useful to say "Add, Remove, or change installed software" in the balloon. B: The password dialog box says, generically, "You are attempting to run "redhat-config-packages" which requires administrative privileges, but more information is required to do so." Your attempt to create a generic password dialog box has run aground on vagueness. What is communicated by "but more information is required to do so" that "please type the root password" does not? C: The package name appears ONLY in this string; it does not appear elsewhere in the package-management process. This presents a real challenge to the inexperienced user who is trying diligently to use bugzilla properly to report a bug. Nowhere is it clear which alias is the name of the process! Is it "Package Management" (the name on the final package selection window)? Is it "Packages" (the menu item selected to begin the process)? Is it rpm-config-packages? The user ends up guessing which term actually is the process name and which names are alaises. 3: Ambiguity -- (i.e., unclear alternatives) A: When the "Package Management" window is reached, no clue is offered the user on how installed packages are indicated. Does the open box mean that the package doesn't need to be installed because it's already on the system? Or does the X'd box mean that the particular component was found during the scan? B: And when the user wants to Delete an installed package, is this done by X'ing the box to indicate that it's to be deleted, or by un-X'ing the box? How is the user to understand that un'X'ing a box will actually cause an action be be taken? An open box might just mean "take no action." C: The action-button is labelled "Update." Whoa! How is this different from "up2date"? How is the user to know, given all the aliases that have appeared in the 8.0 menus (presumably to defuse some of the intimidating Linux jargon), whether up2date is run along with package installation or deletion? If the user knows about up2date, he will hope and expect that the process invokes up2date or in any case the latest version will be installed for any package chosen for installation -- but what if the user is without an internet connection, or is stuck with a really slow one, and wants to use his distribution CD's -- if he can remember where he put that darned box? How about "Make Changes" ?? OK, thanks for listening. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): Red Hat 8.0 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: Not applicable Actual Results: Not applicable Expected Results: Clear and unambiguous descriptive English. Additional info: I list "severe memory leak" allegorically...
Jonathan -- I'm going to defer to use on these
on top of all the vagueness...there seems to be huge problems with dependencies. i installed RH9 quick and dirty last week and forgot to include the development packages. when i started RH i logged in and ran all of the updates from the up2date. rebooted...now that i go to install the development packages, it says it can't find openssl and krb5, even though they ARE installed, i think they were just updated from up2date...it doesn't even let me move on without openssl-devel and krb5-libs-devel or whatever, i have no choice. i can only quit. help! PS this is on RH9
We've tried to make improvements in this area for the next-generation tool