Re: Daemon's Advocate article

[Chris Pressey <cpressey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 01 Mar 2004 23:32:07 -0600
Robert Garrett <rg70@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> James Frazer was noted as saying:
> > 
> > But if someone wants a 'storyboard' representation as to how an 
> > installer should look then I'd be happy to comply.
> > 
> > That's my huge rant on that,
> > 
> > --James
> 
> Any Ideas or suggestions you have for the UI for the installer
> would be greatly appreciated. As I am fully aware that I suck
> at designing graphical interfaces.

Here's a few, off the top of my head (not really UI related - well, not
on the level you're probably thinking anyway :)

<extremely_contentious>

* Let's call a spade a spade - or rather, a partition a partition.
i.e.

*BSD		The Rest of the World		DFly
----		---------------------		----
slice		partition			partition
partition	N/A				subpartition

</extremely_contentious>

* Don't even bother mentioning the words "disk geometry" to the user
unless we detect that we need to get into such distasteful topics.
Ways that we might detect this: detect the drive model and compare
against a database; make a guess at the geometry and try writing to the
disk and seeing if we can read back from it (not a good idea if the user
has some other OS installed on another partition, though;) or simply ask
the user what year their drive was manufactured (generally an easy
question to answer as it's usually printed on the drive itself.)

* Don't even include an "Advanced" install option.  Well, maybe.  But
basically, don't cater to it overmuch - if the user is so advanced,
chances are they'll *want* to do a "raw" install like we currently have
(manually cpdup from the livecd) - this gives them greater control, etc.
Also on this topic - don't have an option for Dangerously Dedicated mode
in the installer.  If the user is so advanced that they know what D.D.
is, and that they want it, they can do it themselves the "raw" way.

* More on the "hard" UI side of things... probably a good idea to avoid
libdialog.  It has acquired a certain... infamy... during its lifetime. 
More specifically, it might be nice to let the user change the
foreground & background colours on the fly - yellow on blue can be hard
on the eyes, and I don't know how it looks to colour-blind users -
or simply an option to use black and white would be nice.

* Internationalize the install process in at least a few languages. 
This is one thing I was slightly impressed by, by Debian - last time I
installed FreeBSD I don't remember it asking me what language I wanted
to proceed in.  Perhaps there are internationalized FreeBSD install
CD's, but AFAICT there's only English on the "official" ISO.

* Yes, delete sysinstall from the tree!  do it do it do it  !!!  :)

Hmmm... there might have been one or two other things on my mind, but I
can't recall them ATM.

You may now commence the flaming as tradition and honour demands.  :)

-Chris