On 07/24/2012 07:38 AM, James Laska wrote:
On Mon, 2012-07-23 at 15:29 -0700, Jesse Keating wrote:
I spent today thinking through text installs in newui. While I believe
that text installs should have minimalistic configuration options, I
also believe that the little it has should follow the same sort of idea
as the hub/spoke design of newui. Another requirement of text mode is
that the same UI work across all text interfaces (real tty, serial, ssh,
s390 x3270 shell, etc...), targeting the lowest common platform. For
systems like s390x that means no curses, no fancy screen widgets, just
dumb text printed on a somewhat narrow screen with no scrolling capability.
What I've done is a hacky mock up of how a text install would progress.
Some of these config options might go away (like lang/keymap since we
have good command line argument options for these). The idea is the
same as newui. A hub from which configuration can be done in any order,
but also with some items that are required to be completed. Of note, I
brought back the root password selection because with text mode you only
get @minimal, and thus no firstboot. We don't want people to have to
root their machines just to get a password set. This is pretty much the
cmdline UI slightly re-designed.
You'll find a series of screen shots at
http://jkeating.fedorapeople.org/textui/ Walk through them as numbered
(yes I'm missing a 2-...).
I have no idea yet if we can handle many choice screens like lang and
keyboard. Timezone data can be broken down much how tzselect does it.
Feedback would be appreciated!
This is cool stuff, thanks for sharing!
== Text display ==
Not sure if this is helpful, but the only thing that occurs to me is
that it's not instantly clear which configuration sections have been
completed. The screenshots show a "[ ]". I understand that to be a
textual representation of a checkbox, but it seems hidden on the line.
My eye doesn't instantly draw to it.
1) Language [ ]
2) Keyboard Layout [ ]
3) Date and Time [ ]
4) Install Destination* [ ]
5) Install Source [ ]
6) Network Configuration [ ]
7) Root Password* [ ]
Perhaps if it was more in a table format?
Choice Configuration Completed?
1 Language no
2 Keyboard Layout no
3 Date and Time no
4 Install Destination no
5 Install Source no
6 Network Configuration no
7 Root Password no
I agree that the "checkbox" can get kind of lost in the flowed text.
The problem with trying to do any sort of structured table is that
translations will cause the text spacing to get all weird, and we're
working with some pretty constrained sizes, 80x25 (80 chars wide, 25
lines on screen max)
== forced ordering (*) ==
The asterisk (*) denotes sections which need to be completed first. The
text-based hub concept seems to compete with having a required order for
steps. Should the (*) steps that have a discrete order not be included
in the text hub? For example, should the user be prompted for those
steps before presentation of the hub? Or should we have 2 hubs
(Required configuration and Additional Configuration options)?
I'm following the design of newui gui, which has a main hub that does
have some items that must be completed.
http://www.linuxgrrl.com/fedora-ux/Projects/Anaconda/Prototypes/ToPrint/02-preinstall-hub.png
There are so few things to do with text mode that it seems overkill to
me to have multiple hubs.
The ordering of hub choices can change so that the required stuff is on
top, I didn't put any thought to ordering when I slapped together the
mockup.
== Keypress for (Q)uit and (C)ontinue ==
Having quit and continue as numbered selections seems odd. Would it
make more sense to have the keypress for (q)uit be 'q', and (c)ontinue
'c'? This would keep documentation easier since the keypress would
never change. Whereas, if the key for Quit is (9) in F18 ... it might
be (8) or (10) in another release? Also, this aligns with my experience
with other text-base tools (like yum [Y/n]).
q and c might make sense in English, but not so much in other languages.
Do we translate that option to match the language? Perhaps use F12 to
continue, F11 for back, F5 to redraw the screen (might be very important
on x3270 when console refreshes cause half your displayed text to be lost)
--
Jesse Keating
Fedora -- Freedom² is a feature!
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