Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2001 20:53:45 -0700 From: Jordan Hubbard <jkh@freebsd.org> To: gjb@gbch.net Cc: eric@freebsd.org, unfurl@dub.net, sheldonh@starjuice.net, hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Recent changes to libdialog are weird Message-ID: <20010918205345P.jkh@freebsd.org> In-Reply-To: <nospam-1000860596.45259@mx1.gbch.net> References: <20010918172757.A97849@dub.net> <20010918174314.A68063@FreeBSD.org> <nospam-1000860596.45259@mx1.gbch.net>
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libdialog(3) is extremely limited, as we've been saying for literally years now, and what I wish is that people would stop telling these lists "what it needs" and simply Do It. We've certainly never lacked for ideas on how to improve it, just the bodies to actually do so. The problem is that dealing with that code is extremely icky, and though I sometimes am mistakenly credited with writing it, I did not. It's a mish-mash of code from Savio Lam, a hacker in Hong Kong, Stuart Herbert in the UK and the project's own Andrey Chernov. I simply added call-back support and a few other tweaks to what was already an expanding ball of furr. Anyway, I've already made my opinion of libdialog(3) plain in other email so I won't repeat all that invective here. What I will say is that time is long overdue for someone to simply start from scratch and write another CUI library which isn't as horrible as libdialog but perhaps not so complex and object-oriented as TurboVision (maybe a higher-level C interface to some canned TV objects?). Then sysinstall could be re-targeted to that UI and people could finally have their nice item traversal and back-buttons and all that good stuff. I also really don't want to hear from Terry that he'd write such a thing if he were allowed to make it a commercial, closed-source component. Replacing a GPL'd library (libdialog) with some black-box binary-only solution wouldn't be a step in the right direction, it would be a side-ways step at best. A step in the *right* direction would be a BSD-licensed, world-buildable interface library of some sort. - Jordan > Eric Melville wrote: > > | > I agree with and like the new behaviour but I think it is still lacking > | > in one aspect. When using a mouse to position your cursor it's very > | > obvious where that cursor is and what it's pointing to. With lidialog > | > it's hard to tell at just a glance where the cursor is because it's only > | > a few characters wide even if the "button" it's on is wider, and it's a > | > drab gray color. If the cursor were something brighter and unique it > | > might make it easier to distinguish as "the cursor" and there for easier > | > to understand. Red maybe? > | > > | > Anyone else think this is a good idea? > | > | That would be excellent. However, according to jkh there is no easy means > | of doing this, which leaves us with the option of changing the grey > | background around. > > What it needs more than anything else is to learn to respond to > Ctrl-L to repaint its screen. When something messes up the > screen, it's a total nightmare to complete an install the way it > is now. > > And it needs a way to go back step by step through the menus. > There are too many ways that you can end up having to completely > restart an install if you get tricked by one of the unintuitive > keystrokes and go forward a level by mistake. > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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