inx-devel team mailing list archive

[Peter Garrett <inx-one@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

You will be aware of a few bugs that have surfaced in 1.0.

Usabilty:
*********
* People with non-US style keyboards have to run 
  dpkg-reconfigure console-setup (the fix for the problem involves
  making this a menu item in "Tools", and is already on Launchpad).

* If you hang out on #inx IRC you will have seen new users doing 
   something like this:

   exit
   quit
   q
   wtf?
   :q
   :q!
    ^q
    ^x^c

  and so on .... ;-) Reminiscent of the well known mail post re: "ed
  is the editor"  ....

  I'm thinking perhaps on first run there should be
  a bit of "compulsory" help - like explaining /quit /part /join and so
  forth. David Symons gave me a kick in this direction on IRC *g*

Updates etc.:
*************
  Several people have asked about ways to update inx-specific things,
  for example, getting the equivalent of a new "buildinx" tarball
  without having to run the buildinx script. David Symons already
  suggested using bzr for this, which is a great idea, but would need
  some changes and work to make it include everything.

Refinements, Additions:
*********************** 
*  Shelagh and I have played a bit with "directvnc" - David has also had
  a go. It's rather impressive over a LAN connection, but very laggy
  over the Internet - it wants to use rather a lot of bandwidth...

  The mind-blowing aspect of it is that it displays a remote X desktop
  using directfb - so you get something like remote X, but running from
  INX. It's quite impressive. It will also of course run a non-X system
  remotely, which sounds like a waste of time until you realise that,
  unlike straight ssh, it keeps all the frame buffer aspects working
  remotely. Now of course there are probably only 3 or 4 INX instances
  in the world running openssh-server, but remote INX over directvnc
  tunneled through ssh is kind of... well, fun...

*  With regard to frame buffers, video and vnc etc., it occurs to me
  that the current default resolution of 800x600 is perhaps too
  conservative. Most people will have monitors capable of 1024x768
  these days. What do you think about making the default vga=791,
  which is 1024x768 at 16 bit? This should still work well in a virtual
  machine, and also has the advantage that mplayer can handle larger
  videos.

*  A few of us have been playing with "bitlbee" as a possible IM method.
  Advantages: it's tiny, and it works quite well.
  Disadvantages: tricky to configure etc. 
  Also very geeky, in that it uses an IRC client.

  A couple of us tried centerim and were... *cough* underwhelmed by its
  almost totally unintuitive methods for adding people to "buddy" lists
  and so on. Thumbs down.

*  I'm currently working on some possible improvements for the "Radio"
  menu, but I haven't pushed anything to LP yet. Amongst other things I
  have worked out a way to get some of the stream "metadata" to work
  better by using "sed" instead of "grep". Streams that identify the
  track content now show it, and the track description changes when the
  next one starts. I'm thinking of clearing the screen for the fixed
  radio streams, so that a list of played tracks will gradually be
  appended as you listen. An attractive alternative for mp3|ogg streams
  is to run them in mocp - but most of the fixed streams are in the more
  evil formats like *shudder* Real (.ram) and WMA (.asf|.asx). This does
  demonstrate the versatility of mplayer, so I don't plan to get rid of
  "non-free" streaming formats. After all, the fact that we can use Free
  Software to play them is impressive.

*  In other news, the tutorials need a rethink from the indexing and
   navigation viewpoint.

Scary Stuff:
************
 I have been approached by a guy who runs a forum,
 and he is keen to start an INX section. I am shying away from this for
 several reasons:
 - He wants me to organise content, which I really don't want to do
   since there is plenty that already needs attention in the code, and I
   foresee a giant time sink.
- The forum concerned is currently populated mainly by Windows users.
   While it would be *noble* to introduce them to the wonders of
   GNU/Linux on the console, I fear for my blood pressure and general
   well-being :) Anyone want to volunteer? I told him I would run it by
   the mailing lists, so this is mail #1. 

 There are no doubt other things that need attention, and anything
 that you have noticed, or think I have missed, would be welcome fodder.

 I'm posting this first to inx-devel@ as a "RFC" ;-)
 Put on your thinking hats and reply with brilliant ideas, please.

 Well, just *ideas* will do....

 Peter 

 [aka paintinx, and yes, I /have/ managed to produce a few paintings
 since inx-1.0 :)  ]

-- 
"INX Is Not X" Live CD based on Ubuntu 8.04 : http://inx.maincontent.net
Screenshots slideshow: http://inx.maincontent.net/album/1.png.html

Attachment: pgpoOwMLUwImk.pgp
Description: PGP signature