Debian Bug report logs - #9085
bottom status lines confusing

Toggle useless messages

Message #3 received at quiet@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: <swift@bu.edu>

To: quiet@bugs.debian.org

Subject: dpkg: bottom status lines confusing

Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 23:15:41 -0400

Package: dpkg
Version: 1.4.0.8

Suppose I am looking at the adduser package line.
When paging through the various information types with the `i' key, I get the
following two status lines:

"installed control info for adduser"
"available version of control info for adduser"

First: either of the following wordings are superior to the second line; I
prefer the first below because it is parallel, but it is perhaps harder to
understand anyway:
  "available version control info for adduser"
  "control info for available version of adduser"

Second: when the installed and available versions of adduser are reported to be
identical in the top half of the dselect window, then I ought to see the same
control info on each of the two bottom panels mentioned.  In fact I do not, the
"available version" seems to be a superset with a few more fields.


-- System Information
Debian Release: 1.3
Kernel Version: Linux localhost 2.0.30 #1 Thu Apr 24 13:34:49 EDT 1997 i586 unknown

Versions of the packages dpkg depends on:
libc5	Version: 5.4.23-2
ncurses3.0	Version: 1.9.9e-1

Message #18 received at 9085@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Alfie Costa <agcosta@gmx.net>

To: 9085@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: bottom line status confusing

Date: Mon, 04 Aug 2003 17:15:08 -0400

Wow, this bug is 6 years old...

M. Swift suggested replacing this status line:

    available version of control info for adduser

...for clarity's sake, with one of these two:

    available version control info for adduser	(no "of")
    control info for available version of adduser	(added an "of" and 
reordered.)

Some comments...

If, in 'dselect', I hilite 'adduser' (or any package) the bottom line of 
the screen says:

    description of adduser  -- 52%, press d for more.

...then if I hit the 'i' key, it says:

    installed control info for adduser  -- 34%, press d for more.

...hit 'i' again, it says:

    available version of control info for adduser  -- 33%, press d
for more.

Putting all three together may show the ugliness better:

1	description of adduser  -- 52%, press d for more.
2	installed control info for adduser  -- 34%, press d for more.
3	available version of control info for adduser  -- 33%, press d
for more.

Look how the word 'adduser' moves around.  In line #1 it's the third 
word, in line #2 it's the fifth, in line #3 it's the sixth.  Same 
information, but moving it around tires the user.

(Even the preposition changes needlessly.  Line #1 has "OF adduser", 
lines #2-3 have "FOR adduser".  Is it "of" or "for"? -- pick one or the 
other and be consistent.)

Look how the "%xx, press d for more." moves around too.

Suggestions:

Move the "%xx, press d for more." to one place and keep it there -- such
as the far right of the screen.  Note however, that if the user pages 
down to the bottom, it says:

    description of adduser  -- 100%, press u to go back.

Unfortunately the widths don't quite match...

1	press d for more.
2	press u to go back.

Therefore to keep those strings from jumping around the bottom right of 
the screen, string #1 should be left-justified so it always matches 
string #2.  Or both could be combined into one prompt, such as:

    press d or u for page up/down

Next there's the text itself, here it is again, without the page up/down 
prompts:

1	description of adduser
2	installed control info for adduser
3	available version of control info for adduser

And here's what M. Swift suggested:

    description of adduser
    installed control info for adduser
    available version control info for adduser

Get rid of the string 'adduser', because it's already on the screen 
enough.  First the user sees 'adduser' on the hi-lit package selection line:

     *** Imp base     adduser      3.50        3.50        Add and 
remove users and

...second, 'adduser' is on the blue seperator line:

    adduser      installed ;  install (was: install).  Important

...and third 'adduser' is the first line of the 'info' box, which is 
either of these two lines:

    adduser - Add and remove users and groups

    Package: adduser

That's three 'adduser's -- four is too many.  I suggest:

1	Description
2	Control info of installed version
3	Control info of available version

Now in lines #2-3 the text won't jump around.

Furthermore the strings should be slightly indented, so they aren't 
flush with the info box text.  Example of how the bottom half of the
screen would look...

Before:
---------
adduser      installed ;  install (was: install).  Important
adduser - Add and remove users and groups


This package includes the adduser and deluser commands for creating and
removing users.


o Adduser can create new users and groups and add existing users to
  existing groups.
o Deluser can remove users and groups and remove users from a given
  group.


description of adduser  -- 52%, press d for more.
---------

After:

---------
adduser      installed ;  install (was: install).  Important
adduser - Add and remove users and groups


This package includes the adduser and deluser commands for creating and
removing users.


o Adduser can create new users and groups and add existing users to
  existing groups.
o Deluser can remove users and groups and remove users from a given
  group.

                 	Description		      52%, press d or u for pageup/down
---------


M. Swift's second point was that when the installed and available 
versions are the same, their control info should be the same too -- 
because, he says, the latter is superset of the former.

This is not strictly correct... some of the control info (e.g. "Status: 
install ok installed") is not in the available info, and vice versa 
(e.g. " MD5sum: 0aef8e730deadce4464d368972fd771b").

It might be better if those screens were less redundant though.  Perhaps 
when the installed and available versions where the same then the 
description should only be on the first screen, and the available info 
shouldn't show anything in the control info.  That way the difference 
would leap right out at the user, rather than requiring the user having 
to wade through all that redundant info.

Examples of how the above changes would look:

Description:
---------
adduser - Add and remove users and groups


This package includes the adduser and deluser commands for creating and
removing users.

        [stuff deleted]
---------


Installed info:
---------
Package: adduser
Status: install ok installed
Priority: important
Section: base
Installed-Size: 280
Maintainer: Roland Bauerschmidt <rb@debian.org>
Version: 3.50
Depends: perl-base (>= 5.6.0), passwd (>= 961025), debconf
Suggests: liblocale-gettext-perl, perl-modules
Conffiles:
 /etc/deluser.conf bf73b4e76066381cd3caf80369ce1d0e
Description: Add and remove users and groups
---------

Available info:
---------
Architecture: all
Filename: pool/main/a/adduser/adduser_3.49_all.deb
Size: 77474
MD5sum: 0aef8e730deadce4464d368972fd771b
---------

Of course the above would be all wrong if the installed and available 
versions were different, but that could stay the way it is now.  (Alas, 
I'm too tired to think of more changes.)


Fatigue aside, hope this helps...

Message #23 received at 9085@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Bruce Sass <bmsass@shaw.ca>

To: debian-dpkg@lists.debian.org, 9085@bugs.debian.org

Subject: String freeze for dselect

Date: Thu, 05 Oct 2006 14:53:55 -0600

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

On Wed October 4 2006 23:17, Christian Perrier wrote:
> Considering the very recent discussions in the maling list, I hereby
> consider that translatable strings are now frozen in dpkg.
>
> That means that I urge you fellow developers to please coordinate
> with me in case you plan to introduce changes which change a
> translatable string IN ANY WAY.
>
> I will post a final call for translation updates and I'll open a
> special bug report for that to avoid multiple bug reports, one per
> language.
>
> I will also send a call for updates for dselect in case some crazy
> dudes absolutely insist to be 100% for that old piece noone really
> cares about....:-)

I believe the attached diff can be used to close a long standing dselect 
bug... because some of us do still care.  ;-)

The more verbose descriptions (made possible by removing the redundant 
pkg->name) and capitalization of "Available" and "Installed" should 
result in less confusing status lines.


- Bruce

[pkginfo.diff (text/x-diff, attachment)]

Message #28 received at 9085@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Christian Perrier <bubulle@debian.org>

To: Bruce Sass <bmsass@shaw.ca>, 9085@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#9085: String freeze for dselect

Date: Fri, 6 Oct 2006 07:25:06 +0200

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

> I believe the attached diff can be used to close a long standing dselect 
> bug... because some of us do still care.  ;-)
> 
> The more verbose descriptions (made possible by removing the redundant 
> pkg->name) and capitalization of "Available" and "Installed" should 
> result in less confusing status lines.


Well, I'm really sorry as I already called for translation updates to
dselect. So, it's like we're in string freeze also for dselect.

Bad timing, unfortunately....

But closing a 4-digit bug would be nice, indeed..:)

[signature.asc (application/pgp-signature, inline)]

Message #37 received at 9085-close@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org>

To: 9085-close@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Bug#9085: fixed in dpkg 1.14.0

Date: Tue, 08 May 2007 09:02:06 +0000

Source: dpkg
Source-Version: 1.14.0

We believe that the bug you reported is fixed in the latest version of
dpkg, which is due to be installed in the Debian FTP archive:

dpkg-dev_1.14.0_all.deb
  to pool/main/d/dpkg/dpkg-dev_1.14.0_all.deb
dpkg_1.14.0.dsc
  to pool/main/d/dpkg/dpkg_1.14.0.dsc
dpkg_1.14.0.tar.gz
  to pool/main/d/dpkg/dpkg_1.14.0.tar.gz
dpkg_1.14.0_i386.deb
  to pool/main/d/dpkg/dpkg_1.14.0_i386.deb
dselect_1.14.0_i386.deb
  to pool/main/d/dpkg/dselect_1.14.0_i386.deb



A summary of the changes between this version and the previous one is
attached.

Thank you for reporting the bug, which will now be closed.  If you
have further comments please address them to 9085@bugs.debian.org,
and the maintainer will reopen the bug report if appropriate.

Debian distribution maintenance software
pp.
Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org> (supplier of updated dpkg package)

(This message was generated automatically at their request; if you
believe that there is a problem with it please contact the archive
administrators by mailing ftpmaster@debian.org)


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Format: 1.7
Date: Tue, 08 May 2007 11:11:50 +0300
Source: dpkg
Binary: dpkg dselect dpkg-dev
Architecture: source i386 all
Version: 1.14.0
Distribution: unstable
Urgency: low
Maintainer: Dpkg Developers <team@dpkg.org>
Changed-By: Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org>
Description: 
 dpkg       - package maintenance system for Debian
 dpkg-dev   - package building tools for Debian
 dselect    - user tool to manage Debian packages
Closes: 9085 31634 107449 162348 179913 314462 345594 367712 374645 377855 379320 383438 390914 390916 393069 393924 396884 397479 405668 409566 410605 414087 414794 415230 415320 416167 416810 418154 418528 421290 422404
Changes: 
 dpkg (1.14.0) unstable; urgency=low
 .
   [ Guillem Jover ]
   * Make the copyright information in dpkg-deb.1 and dpkg-split.1 match the
     one in the source. Thanks to Nicolas François. Closes: #379320
   * Allow dpkg-buildpackage to properly override '-b' when passed after '-B'.
     Thanks to Julian Gilbey. Closes: #397479
   * Move retrieval of uid and gid information from controllib.pl into a
     function, so that scripts not needing it do not execute that code.
     Based on a patch by Riku Voipio. Closes: #396884
   * Do not bail out in dpkg when building without start-stop-daemon support,
     by checking if the macro value is true instead of it being defined.
     Thanks to Mark Rosenstand.
   * Make all perl scripts use strict and warnings, to ease catching errors.
   * Add a missing newline to a warning message in dpkg. Closes: #390914
     Thanks to Ian Jackson.
   * Fix typo in variable name in dpkg-source which was causing it to not
     create directories when extracting the diff. Closes: #374645
   * Fix up and down keystrokes in the dselect help message. Closes: #383438
     Thanks to Sven Joachim.
   * Convert 822-date to be a simple wrapper around 'date -R'. 822-date is
     now deprecated and should not be used anymore. It might be removed
     sometime in the future. Closes: #31634, #367712, #314462
     Thanks to Frank Lichtenheld.
   * Add '.gitignore' to the default dpkg-source -i regex. Closes: #409566
     Thanks to Julien Cristau.
   * Add '.hg' to the default dpkg-source -i regex. Closes: #414794
   * Use l10n-friendlier strings to describe dependencies. Closes: #390916
     Thanks to Ian Jackson.
   * Change priority for dpkg-dev from standard to optional to match the
     override.
   * Do not use a build-stamp in debian/rules.
   * Fix confusing bottom status lines in dselect, unifying them by removing
     the method or package name and capitalizing. Closes: #9085
   * Check proper error value returned by BZ2_bzerror. Closes: #410605
   * Exit with an error instead of an assert if a file name is too long when
     building a .deb package. Closes: #393069
   * Exit with an error instead of an assert if the number of conflictors is
     exceeded. Remove bogus comments. Closes: #377855
   * Fix regular expression special-casing Origin, Bugs and Maintainer fields
     which was making X[SBC]- fields containing such strings to propagate into
     the .deb control file unprocessed. Thanks to Colin Watson.
   * Add support for '--admindir' in dpkg-buildpackage, dpkg-checkbuilddeps
     and dpkg-shlibdeps. Closes: #162348
   * Cleaning and format unification of manual pages.
   * Make the override-file argument to dpkg-scanpackages optional.
   * Refactor compression filtering code.
   * Split override file information from dpkg-scanpackages.1 into
     deb-override.5 manual page.
   * Split dpkg-source.1 into independent man pages, namely deb-substvars.5,
     deb-shlibs.5, dpkg-buildpackage.1, dpkg-distaddfile.1, dpkg-genchanges.1,
     dpkg-gencontrol.1, dpkg-parsechangelog.1 and dpkg-shlibdeps.1.
   * Support building binary packages with the member data.tar.lzma compressed
     with lzma.
   * Require gettext 0.16.1.
   * Show the epoch (if present) when displaying package versions.
     Closes: #107449, #179913, #345594, #393924, #405668
     Based on a patch by Jeffrey W. Baker.
   * Switch from pseudo-tags to usertags, and update the documentation.
   * Fix typo in German dpkg man page. Closes: #416167
     Thanks to Martin Weis.
   * Properly sort Uploaders field in generated .dsc files.
   * Reorder a bit the fields in output files.
   * Speed up dpkg-shlibdeps by avoiding doing a dpkg-query for duped
     libraries. Thanks to Aaron M. Ucko. Closes: #421290
   * Generalize source architecture handling by abstracting it through the new
     Debian triplet and the new triplettable.
   * Add armel support to ostable and triplettable. Closes: #414087
 .
   [ Updated dpkg translations ]
   * Dutch (Bart Cornelis).
   * Estonian added (Ivar Smolin). Closes: #422404
   * French (Frédéric Bothamy).
   * Kurdish added (Erdal Ronahi). Closes: #418154
   * Marathi added (Priti Patil). Closes: #416810
   * Polish (Robert Luberda).
   * Romanian (Eddy Petri?or).
   * Simplified Chinese (Anthony Wong). Closes: #415320
   * Traditional Chinese (Anthony Wong). Closes: #415230
 .
   [ Updated man pages translations ]
   * German (German l10n team). Closes: #418528
   * Polish (Robert Luberda).
 .
   [ Updated dselect translations ]
   * Dutch (Bart Cornelis).
   * Polish (Robert Luberda).
Files: 
 f01351b70772613b929cc540d00956e5 851 admin required dpkg_1.14.0.dsc
 01704e19d668058d9db18fcb10a597a1 3846077 admin required dpkg_1.14.0.tar.gz
 8cbffc6e23ad7cedd9405b76f8457740 672350 admin required dpkg_1.14.0_i386.deb
 0e50bfd8016c8692fd036b82f7d08cd1 108632 admin required dselect_1.14.0_i386.deb
 46296b0f78a546c296f53fb10ad9673c 126806 utils optional dpkg-dev_1.14.0_all.deb

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