Help me design GUI frontend for pacman

essence-of-foo · 2011-02-13 18:58:37

Include a RSS reader for this feed: http://www.archlinux.org/feeds/news/

anonymous_user · 2011-02-13 19:03:59

fogobogo wrote:

It just dawned me but I'd assume most people want to either install, update or remove a package with a package manager and Synaptic does not have a single button that would be named like that or indicate its meant for that. In that regard Synaptic is more of a package explorer rather than a frontend for package management.

With that in mind, should a Pacman front-end include searching and filtering or should that be split into another front-end?

oupsemma · 2011-02-13 19:17:11

essence-of-foo wrote:

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fogobogo · 2011-02-13 19:50:29

anonymous_user wrote:

With that in mind, should a Pacman front-end include searching and filtering or should that be split into another front-end?

Tricky question but I would integrate it. Install, remove, update already are just the cherry topping on what is basically a search and select interface. Splitting it up wouldnt really make sense here in my opinion. Although I would probably try to hide the filtering from the occasional user and integrate that functionality into the search field (tags? regex maybe?). Those who RTFM get the benefits

Edit: clarification

Last edited by fogobogo (2011-02-13 20:40:50)

flamelab · 2011-02-13 20:07:59

And the GUI should have an obvious option for full verbose output, the users must always see what's going on.

Allan, I think you have some serious work to do

mhertz · 2011-02-14 09:42:10

When I have to use a gui, then I really like that thought have gone into minimizing clicks as much as possible and just getting quickly to the point.

I remember Zenwalk's xnetpkg, which in newer redesigned versions got alot of whining for being non-userfriendly, as it didn't functioned exactly as all the other standard ones, but the author had spent alot of time thinking about how a gui should be made as effeciently as possible, and once it was being getting used to, then it was also really nice IMHO...

Other screens: http://wiki.zenwalk.org/index.php?title … use_netpkg

RobertMe · 2011-02-14 12:12:00

I think YaST (openSUSE) has a pretty neat implementation for selecting the "task" and displaying the current status. In front of every gridline/package they have a checkbox, blank when not installed, checked when installed, trash bin for "marked for removal", and an icon for "marked for update" and "marked for installation" (don't know the icons exactly for those). This removes a lot of needed mouse movement when you need to remove/update/install a lot of packages. Looking for example at mhertz' xnetpkg screenshot you first have to select the package, then you need to click the install/remove button, select another package, again click the install/remove button, while in YaST you only have to click the checkboxes in front of each package (may be needed to click more than once, but you con't have to mouse that much)

mhertz · 2011-02-14 12:36:05

RobertMe wrote:

[...] Looking for example at mhertz' xnetpkg screenshot you first have to select the package, then you need to click the install/remove button, select another package, again click the install/remove button, while in YaST you only have to click the checkboxes in front of each package (may be needed to click more than once, but you con't have to mouse that much)

Ehh, no! Of course you can select multiple items with checkboxes also...

JokerBoy · 2011-02-14 12:52:41

something between sulfur from sabayon and this from pardus..

oupsemma · 2011-02-14 13:17:03

JokerBoy wrote:

something between sulfur from sabayon and this from pardus..

+1
PiSi, Pardus package manager, is nice too.
(Pardus, which is actually not well known, is a extremely interesting distro; only not enough Gnome-oriented)

toad · 2011-02-14 14:29:38

oupsemma wrote:

JokerBoy wrote:
something between sulfur from sabayon and this from pardus..
+1
PiSi, Pardus package manager, is nice too.
(Pardus, which is actually not well known, is a extremely interesting distro; only not enough Gnome-oriented)

Mmh, qt makes me all warm and fuzzy inside...

kachelaqa · 2011-02-14 19:02:15

here's my gui package browser written with pyqt and libalpm (still unfinished, though):

essence-of-foo · 2011-02-21 09:04:44

oupsemma wrote:

essence-of-foo wrote:
Include a RSS reader for this feed: http://www.archlinux.org/feeds/news/
At the bottom of this topic's page, there's an icon to suscribe to this very topic atom feed; otherwise, the direct link is:
https://bbs.archlinux.org/extern.php?ac … &type=atom

You probably misunderstood me. I would like the Arch news feed to be integrated in the GUI frontend. The reason for that is that there are sometimes package upgrades that require further user interaction. And the Arch news feed was the place where these user interactions were announced in the past.

Allan · 2011-02-21 09:09:16

I just realised that I have not posted here for a while...

There are some great ideas in this thread and I'm going to pull a few together and see what comes out of it. Hopefully I will post an initial version with package browsing support in the next few weeks.

schuay · 2011-02-21 11:41:00

fogobogo wrote:

oh a good bunch of people use grep to filter and recently someone made that query tool (pacinfo I think) that has some nifty options.

/offtopic
pcurses also allows regexp chained regexp filtering, sorting and color coding. Sorry for the selfpromotion but I had to mention it since you were talking about package filtering.

Oh and @kachelaqa, looks nice!

Last edited by schuay (2011-02-21 11:44:48)

oupsemma · 2011-02-27 06:35:21

essence-of-foo wrote:

oupsemma wrote:
essence-of-foo wrote:
Include a RSS reader for this feed: http://www.archlinux.org/feeds/news/
At the bottom of this topic's page, there's an icon to suscribe to this very topic atom feed; otherwise, the direct link is:
https://bbs.archlinux.org/extern.php?ac … &type=atom
You probably misunderstood me. I would like the Arch news feed to be integrated in the GUI frontend. The reason for that is that there are sometimes package upgrades that require further user interaction. And the Arch news feed was the place where these user interactions were announced in the past.

Oh, sorry, I've misunderstood you.
Something like that Arch News RSS feed pacmactic is providing is what you're talking about?
http://kmkeen.com/pacmatic/

pablokal · 2011-02-27 12:45:36

kachelaqa wrote:

here's my gui package browser written with pyqt and libalpm (still unfinished, though):
http://img543.imageshack.us/img543/9743/pkgbrowser.th.png

Woow, this looks really good!!
Hope you will finish it soon.
Did you give it a name yet?

essence-of-foo · 2011-02-27 19:36:12

oupsemma wrote:

Something like that Arch News RSS feed pacmactic is providing is what you're talking about?
http://kmkeen.com/pacmatic/

Yes, exactly!

Arch Linux

#26 2011-02-13 18:58:37

Re: Help me design GUI frontend for pacman

#27 2011-02-13 19:03:59

Re: Help me design GUI frontend for pacman

#28 2011-02-13 19:17:11

Re: Help me design GUI frontend for pacman

#29 2011-02-13 19:50:29

Re: Help me design GUI frontend for pacman

#30 2011-02-13 20:07:59

Re: Help me design GUI frontend for pacman

#31 2011-02-14 09:42:10

Re: Help me design GUI frontend for pacman

#32 2011-02-14 12:12:00

Re: Help me design GUI frontend for pacman

#33 2011-02-14 12:36:05

Re: Help me design GUI frontend for pacman

#34 2011-02-14 12:52:41

Re: Help me design GUI frontend for pacman

#35 2011-02-14 13:17:03

Re: Help me design GUI frontend for pacman

#36 2011-02-14 14:29:38

Re: Help me design GUI frontend for pacman

#37 2011-02-14 19:02:15

Re: Help me design GUI frontend for pacman

#38 2011-02-21 09:04:44

Re: Help me design GUI frontend for pacman

#39 2011-02-21 09:09:16

Re: Help me design GUI frontend for pacman

#40 2011-02-21 11:41:00

Re: Help me design GUI frontend for pacman

#41 2011-02-27 06:35:21

Re: Help me design GUI frontend for pacman

#42 2011-02-27 12:45:36

Re: Help me design GUI frontend for pacman

#43 2011-02-27 19:36:12

Re: Help me design GUI frontend for pacman

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