removing the junk.

[Devin Teske]

On Tue, 2010-06-22 at 17:36 +0100, Bruce Cran wrote:
> The traditional Unix people will say "they should learn" and that we
> don't want to encourage the sort of people to FreeBSD who won't.

Agreed...

> However, I think having a UI for some stuff is nice, though we need to
> be careful that it doesn't turn into a full sysadmin tool, since then
> people will start hating how it doesn't edit rc.conf (it only appends),
> and it'll be something like YaST that hides the real functionality and
> just annoys people with its limitations. We should make sure that we
> highlight the rc.conf manual pages etc. It's easy to forget that new
> users may not realise there's this whole load of system configuration
> documentation already installed on their machine.

Doubly-agreed...

In postulating paths that we can take:

a. Remove these options

Pro: sysinstall becomes cleaner (??)
Con: One less place that this feature can be configured

b. Alter the way these options are presented

Pro: sysinstall becomes cleaner
Con: Engendered professionals have to learn a new interface (though,
arguably, engendered professionals either perform the action manually or
are perfectly willing to learn as they've already decided to stay with
FreeBSD.


I'd take the latter over the former (despite the fact that I don't use
sysinstall to configure any services).


I whole-heartedly agree that we should foster an heir of learning in
both the way that the configuration options are presented and the way
that configuration is performed.

Just some food for thought:

- Configuration options should use language similar (if not exactly the
same) to that which is familiar to professionals whom manually configure
the very same options. For example, in configuring the NFS server use
language such as 'nfs_server_flags' -- rc.conf setting -- rather than
something which may later-confuse such as "NFS Daemon Parameters" (which
may be sensible at a high-level discussion but to foster familiarity
with the underlying actions associated with configuration, the former is
better than the latter.

- Pressing F1 should provide a "full-disclosure" type detail about the
configuration, how values are "committed" -- e.g., "options set here are
translated into flags which are saved in the `nfs_server_flags' variable
in the file `/etc/rc.conf'".

- Display in header/footer (say, on the main configurator page for some
feature) a nice high-level man-page string (id este, "NFSD(8)") so the
user -- assuming they know what said string means -- knows where to go
for more info.

- Display some caption alerting the user when there is F1-text available
to be viewed (e.g., "Press F1 for more info").

- Have some semi-verbose progress-output. For example, while settings
are being applied, perhaps have a modal dialog (which requires no
action) simply pop-up to say "doing xyz" where 'xyz' should be some
indicator to bang the user over the head (for example, if the thing that
they are using sysinstall for is really simple, ... like setting the
timezone ... the dialog could say "linking /etc/localtime
to /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Los_Angeles". The dialog should be
visible for some minimum amount of time (such as 2-3 seconds). If the
user uses sysinstall to do this configuration enough, they should
repeatedly see that message and eventually say to themselves "hey, maybe
I could do that by hand!" (which of course, emphasizes the need to have
the messages elate precisely what is being done).

- Lastly, some generic log-file with detailed info could be invented to
subsequently "teach" users how to do things manually by-way-of precise
logging. All we'd have to do is bang them over the head with the
location to the logfile after the configurator is done applying their
desired settings ("A detailed log of recent changes has been appended-to
and can be viewed at `/var/log/sysinstall.log'). Naturally, the code
ought to check that we're able to save a log, just keep in mind that
sysinstall can and is used from the installed/booted system.
-- 
Cheers,
Devin Teske

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