On Fri, 2009-10-02 at 10:43 +0200, Pascal wrote:
Hello,
this is my first mail in this list, so first thanks to Canonical and to
the community for the cool launchpad service :)
I noticed that the design of the launchpad ppas changed newly. This mail
is only for a suggestion to change the title of the "technical details
about this ppa" dropdown. It is not intuitive at all. A title like
"instructions for adding this ppa to your sources" would be better. I
link to my personal ppa page for the installation instructions of my
program, and I am afraid that some users will not have the idea to open
this dropdown. Normal users do not care about "technical details", but
they care about "instructions".
I also wonder what is the purpose of the "Not using Ubuntu 9.10
(karmic)?" link. It suggests that it would be the normal case to already
use karmic. In my opinion, users shouldn't install a new version of a
distribution before its final release...
Hi Pascal,
Yes, it was difficult to come up with something that suited all users
and wouldn't require updating once Karmic was released.
So the decision for 'Technical details about this PPA' was really
influenced by the fact that users of the PPA should not need to see
those details at all - unless they are interested in the technical
details - and this is still the case for users looking at a PPA with the
question "What's this PPA about". But, as you've said, this is not the
case for all non-karmic users looking at a PPA thinking 'How can I add
this PPA to my system'.
That is the reason for the other link "Not using Ubuntu 9.10 (karmic)"
link - which opens those technical details. This link was not intended
to suggest that users should upgrade to Karmic pre-release (but you're
right, the hint is there), but rather to (1) help people get the right
information, and (2) provide a way to hide the technical details by
default. We did think about other options - such as "Manual installation
instructions" but that doesn't work either. (If you've got other
suggestions, let me know!)
The good news is, I've just chatted with the person who made it easy to
add PPAs in Karmic - and we might be able to get that functionality
backported to Jaunty and Hardy - which would mean the 'Technical details
about this PPA' would be only that (ie. not required at all for
installation), and we could get rid of the 'Not using Ubuntu 9.10
(karmic)' link altogether :) It's apparently easy to do, but requires
approval.
I've created:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/software-properties/+bug/440512
to track that.
