UX aspects of RetroWave tools

[Thanatermesis]

@TheTechRobo

That is terrible UX, rename the cancel button to "Skip" and make the "cancel" button actually exit the script.

I cannot see the difference for this configurator to having a Skip or a Cancel button to me they sounds like they will be doing exactly the same (don't want to configure? -> skip, don't want to configure? -> cancel). The problem is that everybody knows what is a Cancel button so they always have read them this way: CancelOk, but having them with a skip will make the people read it two or three times in order to understand what these buttons are going to proceed with since they are not used of these options: SkipOk

@Franc

A suggestion, just for the browser: why not Brave Browser? Core on Chome, ad-less, track-less, TOR option..?

have you see that Brave is not even in the debian repos? in this website you can find the reasons of why a package is not included in debian (sometimes, just lack of love / investing time): Debian Packages that Need Lovin' - its a pretty useful website, I think @triantares will love to see the details of the brave example in the previous link

@triantares

Well the disk formatting was the default 'use the whole disk' formatting the previous Retro-beta did (not upgrade mode) so:

1. It's fully unclear why there's no swap.

wait, are you saying that the "automated partitioning mode" didn't added a swap by default? because it should always add a swap (unless there's a reason for not need a swap, like maybe not included in virtual machines), remember that the automated partitioning does the best picks automatically (thats its purpose in fact)

@triantares

3. It's not that hard to inform the user of that swap file option and either point to a howto or an app/script that does it later.

that's the job of the (first) installation to do it correctly in a first time, if the first installation requires a swap or to suggest it that's the moment to do it, not in an upgrade mode, like is not also the moment on the installed system a month later. You are also confirming this with your next point:

4. Leaving a user on his own (or forcing a total restart of the installation) is blatant disregard of any UX rule.

(a bigger pain to reinstall, or to resize partitions to add a swap, so again is the first install which should be done correctly or otherwise just reinstall the whole system or do things manually because nothing stops them if they know how to do it)

now we should talk about the real issues instead of debate colateral things: why the swap partition was not included (or suggested) in the first installation? if im not wrong you said that on the first point

@triantares

5. There already is as popup about a missing swap partition son no extra pop-up needed.

ok so... not in upgrade mode (as you corrected me later), but a normal install instead with the partitions already partitioned, where the user says "my disks is already parted" and just select the partitions to use for what... so before that there is a howto pointing to this forum that explains to the user everything he needs to know about how to partition his hard disk and what is every partition for

@triantares

If you never want to change anything, fine by me but don't ask for testing.
You simply put way too much time in assuming that you are always absolutely right and looking for arguments, over and over, to overrule any criticism.

I think I do implement many things talked in the forums, but remember also that:

• it is not possible to make everybody happy, some people likes green and some purple
• there's things that cannot be changed for a specific reason, but for understand that I would need to explain the details of -how- some things work or -why- they are made in specific ways, and this:
  1. takes time to explain
  2. needs to be well explained in order to be well understood and also not bad interpreted
  3. requires others to understand all the points in the same way
  4. from a user point of view which on a first moment doesn't know how something works specifically inside is normal to assume "it works on a specific way" or "it can be changed easily to something else", that's why then we go back to the point 1 where I need to explain the why's and the details of some specific things (or, to like the idea and implement it, which happened many times)

This is a very common case on which has been debated many times about different topics, for example there's specific reasons of why the installer is made on this way and why we cannot simply use "calamares" as how many people suggested, or why it should be not rewritten in other languages, similar things of why the pagers are positioned on that side of the window (it bugged when changed screen sizes), or why different versions of elive used different browsers (bugs on virtual machines, bugs on specific cards, etc)

@triantares

Because you just cannot get it into your head that your script is complete garbage to REconfigure an existing keymap and leave the system language alone.

1. I don't think is a garbage, it think it does its work and it does it pretty good and easy to use
2. the other option is to not include a "helper tool" and just leave the "good debian system" as-is on the hands of the user, without this helper, and letting them use the traditional dpkg-reconfigure locales and dpkg-reconfigure keyboard like in any other debian system, so this tool was made to make things easier for the user and correctly configured
3. this tool is used in both Live and Installed system, they uses the same code and so when one is improved the other is too, the one in the Live tool is needed to configure the system correctly and cannot be removed
4. these tools are dynamic which means if your system adds or remove languages, or keyboards, they will appear or not appear in the list
5. answering your question, I still (after this long debate) understand where is the part of that the language is not touched if the user don't wants to touch it (unless i'm missing a bug because we are debating mostly about things like the names of the buttons instead of say what is working or what is not, why or how
6. answering again the previous point, pressing cancel do not change anything

@triantares

There is no way, really NO WAY that is acceptable to use 'cancel' to get a good keymap reconfiguration and ..... there's no way anybody can even know that, that is the only way to get a 'us altgr-intl' keymap. Total bollocks.

I have tried the tool 2-3 times and this is what I see:

1. the tool opens and asks if you want to change the language and/or the keyboard
2. if the user don't want to change anything, nothing is changed
3. if wants to change the language, it selects one and is changed
4. the altgr worked on my tests, where specifically:
   1. if you select the US keyboard, another window will ask you if you want a specific variant
   2. if you select "altgr", altgr will be set, if you select another, another will be set, if you don't select anything, altgr will be set (because is considered a better default than no altgr)

this is what I see, and for me it worked correctly, you should tell me more exactly (steps, better) where is the issue otherwise I cannot understand it and cannot solve it, for example I don't understand this sentence:

@triantares

There is no way, really NO WAY that is acceptable to use 'cancel' to get a good keymap reconfiguration and ..... there's no way anybody can even know that, that is the only way to get a 'us altgr-intl' keymap. Total bollocks.

im reading it many times and I don't understand what you mean, "is not possible to use cancel to get a good keymap configuration" (of course? ), "there's no way anybody can know that" (knowing what?), "that is the only way to get a us-altgr keymap" (ok this part makes more sense, you are saying that you cannot set the keyboard in altgr mode, but in my tests it worked, so tell me exactly the steps on which the altgr is not correctly set so I can reproduce it and see where is the bug)

@triantares

chromium is lacking but firefox is fine, so why force 'Google-Chrome' or 'Edge' (both privacy nightmares) on a new user?
It's total disrespect of your user's privacy well being.

why you are saying that? I said I have no problem to switch to chromium instead of chrome if:

1. we can verify that is working correctly without bugs (that was the reason of why chrome was selected as default for the live system, again: live system, installed mode users picks which wants)
2. chromium (not chrome) is a preferred choice against firefox because of many reasons detailed in other threads, like resources, performance, speed, used-to, less bugs, etc.
3. I also said that I can't change the browser NOW for the release of eliveretro, we had 2 years waiting for making this release and it was not mentioned before when things could have tested, I cannot change things in last moments because is then when the new bugs are discovered, the testings are meant only for remove bugs and not for change things or implement new features, is always dangerous to do in the last moment and it leads to broken released versions

@triantares

I said it (even with pictures in a previous post: post 58) and it's easily reproducible .... you just don't want to see that it's garbage as a REconfigurator.

people are free to use the default tools provided by debian to configure them too (dpkg-reconfigure), elive was always meant to be fully compatible with its original debian base system, this is just a helper tool to make things more easy (let's say: anybody can understand how to use / configure that)

@triantares

The keymap and the language shouldn't be related to each other .... just another assumption of yours that they are.

ok let me try to explain some details...

1. yes they are very related each other, and they depends in a code sense too, for example when your language is ES (spanish) it suggest you / preselect the keymap that is related to that country, making things easier and preselected for the user
2. when the user normally wants to configure one it wants to configure the other (russian country has a russian keyboard, italian country has an italian keyboard, etc), if don't wants to reconfigure both it doesn't hurt ignoring one of the two (which means, left untouched)
3. alright, the tool is called "languages and keyboards", not languages nor keyboards alone
4. the user should just use this configurator once for all, user's don't wants to change their system's language every day, in fact they will never need to run this tool again, another topic is people that wants to switch the keyboard layout from time to time and this is the job of a widget on desktop, not a system's-wide configurator (where most of the user's just needs a single language and a single keyboard forever)

@triantares

so what you suggest for this third question in the configurator?

It needs to offer up 'variants' that come with the keymap-language-choice (NOT the system language) like my script does.

ok, now I can understand that there's a bug and what it does exactly, fixed on: show only the variants for the specific language instead of all the s… · Elive/elive-tools@5384d56 · GitHub