[Synaptic-devel] About userfriendly sources.list editor

[Mantas Kriaučiūnas]

Hi again,

> Thanks for this bugreport. The problem is the line:

Thank you for good package maintaining - you are good debian developer ;)

> #deb http://apt-proxy.sourceforge.net/openoffice/
>
> it's not a valid source.list entry. That's why the parser doesn't
> understand it. I'll improve the error reporting capabilities of the
> repository window, so that it displays the bad line in the error
> window. Please file a bug against synaptic, so that I don't forget to
> fix it. 
>
> But beside this, I'm not quite sure what to do with this kind of
> problem. It looks a disabled sources.list entry, but it is not
> valid. The parser could just treat it as a comment and ignore it. OTOH
> if it's a disabled sources.list entry, the user might wonder why it is
> not displayed. I actually prefer to show him a error explaining that a
> disabled sources.list entry is not valid. What do you think?

I think not valid sources.list entry should have status 'incorrect' and
should be displayed in other color, for example brown gray (I'm not very
good in english :( ). Also I think user should have ability simply add a
sources line in "Setup Repositories" dialog like in Xandros update:

http://www.distrowatch.com/images/screenshots/xandros-update-large.png

(many deb package providers simply puts instructions like "add this line to
sources.list", see for example http://people.debian.org/~blade/woody/i386/)

I noticed, that user can simply put in URI sources line without deb, maybe
you can rename labels "Distribution" to "Distribution (optional)" and
"Section(s)" to "Section(s) (optional)" in bottom of "Setup Repositories"
dialog ?

Also I noticed, that stormpkg has more user friendly sources list editor
layout. Maybe you can make synaptic "Setup Repositories" dialog like
stormpkg "Sources list" editor ?

If we want really good and user friendly package manager, then we shoud make
a posibility to add cdrom and other sources with wizard. Pretty good wizard
is apt-setup command (if debconf is configured work with gnome interface
apt-setup displays user friendly graphical gtk dialogs - you can change
debconf frontend with "dpkg-reconfigure debconf" command). Also pretty good
lists editor with add from debian mirror wizard is gtk-sources tool.

About 5 hours later I will send a lettter to address@hidden with
suggestions about improwing synaptic (or other user friendly package
manager) and about collaborating with other developer of apt frontends (for
example gnome-apt)