Hi, ; Thanks for the report, most are already on the TODO list... I'll address ; these though. I hope it's OK to CC the apt mailing list, it helps me keep ; track of things and avoid duplicate reports.
Sorry about that. I guess it's been too long since I read that list. ; Unlike most apps, there is actually a good reason why those dialogs are ; modal. Apt maintains a cache of package state and desired package state. ; When you update, the cache is reset. So doing things while you update ; would do you no good, all your settings would be nuked. Also, Gtk is very ; sluggish during the update because the app is not multithreaded. So you ; wouldn't want to use it anyway. Perhaps it's worht separating the update into two steps? The download and the apply? I tis a nuisance not to be able to use the program for half an hour... ; The other major modal dialog series is for Compelete Run; changing things ; during complete run would be very bad, there would be all sorts of race ; conditions. That's why those are modal. Similarly here, except that the division already exists --- there's a long download into cache, then a (relatively) short installation which hogs vast amounts of memory. ; Notice that dpkg and apt-get are both "modal" in that you can only run one ; instance of them at a time. This is the same thing. Yeah. I guess it's a general database problem --- whether to go to elaborate lengths to make transactions small (atomic) or not. ; A few more minor dialogs that require interaction are modal, those could ; eventually be fixed but there are only one or two of them I think. ; Actually I can't think of one right now. No, it was just the two big ones I noticed. ; > * Display is confusing. I can't easily guess where a package will ; > be. Alphabetical organization is clear enough, but the status ; > categories are unclear. Things seem to only go into two categories, ; > not held/unheld/uninstalled. I have trouble telling which state a ; > package is in or what to click on to change it. ; > ; ; I'm working on making this more clear. There is no Hold a la dselect; Kept ; is different, reflecting merely the current state rather than a ; restriction on future states. Okay. I have to admit, I never gained any clear idea of what state a package was in. My system is sort of atypical now since almost everything that is installed is held, so that I can stick with frozen while trying a few toys from unstable. I'd really like to be able to pick which distribution to track for each package. So I eagerly await future versions of gnome-apt. I only wish I had ability and time to contribute code. Thanks for your time, Andrew Archibald [EMAIL PROTECTED]
