BSDInstaller snapshot

[Robert Watson]

Before adding some of my own user interface critiques, I wanted to mention at 
the top of the e-mail that I'm very pleased the BSD installer work is going 
on, it's well overdue!  Onto a few minor criticisms :-).

On Mon, 15 May 2006, Rostislav Krasny wrote:

> http://people.freebsd.org/~julian/bsdinstaller_install/16.png

I'd like to see the partition type here simply be "FreeBSD".  "Drago" is 
likely to confuse, and Dragonfly actually uses the FreeBSD type, rather than 
it being the Dragonfly type.  See further comments below on slices and 
partitions.

> http://people.freebsd.org/~julian/bsdinstaller_install/24.png
> http://people.freebsd.org/~julian/bsdinstaller_install/25.png
>
> I think the word "formatted" on the second screenshot should be changed to 
> "created", because fdisk doesn't format partitions/slices.

I tend to agree.  While there is some benefit in using the DOS/Windows 
vocabulary, I think it's better to use the same vocabulary as found in 
existing FreeBSD documentation, including the handbook, man pages, printed 
books, etc.  In these dialogs, the device names should also be specifically 
mentioned.  Note that "Primary partition" is a confusing term -- I'm not sure 
what it means, actually :-).

>
> http://people.freebsd.org/~julian/bsdinstaller_install/22.png
> http://people.freebsd.org/~julian/bsdinstaller_install/26.png
>
> Does BSDInstaller support installtion on multiple slices or multiple 
> physical disks? Sysinstall supports it.

While I recognize the goal of providing a useful mapping to user-aware 
notions, such as "partitions", I find the message in this dialog confusing 
even as someone who in theory knows something about the topic.  Despite the 
limitations of calling fdisk partitions slices in sysinstall, at least it was 
done mostly sort of consistently :-).  I'd like to see the installe 
consistently refer to "fdisk slices" and "bsd partitions", and avoid using the 
words "slice" or "partition" in isolation.  A dialog to explain slices and 
partitions before the editor might be appropriate.

Robert N M Watson