On Sat, Mar 02, 2002 at 09:00:26PM -0600, Mark S. Reglewski wrote: > On Sat, Mar 02, 2002 at 08:02:39PM -0500, Joey Hess wrote: > > dman wrote: > > > Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold > > > | Status=Not/Installed/Config-files/Unpacked/Failed-config/Half-installed > > > |/ Err?=(none)/Hold/Reinst-required/X=both-problems (Status,Err: > > > uppercase=bad) > > > ||/ Name Version Description > > > +++-==============-==============-============================================ > > > ii vim 6.0.226-1 Vi IMproved - enhanced vi editor > > > > I wonder if this minor change would make the ascii art vaguely more > > understandable: > > Yes, with emphasis on *vaguely*. See below. > > > > > [ snip other version ] > > > > Here is another version: > > > > [ snip yet another version ] > > > > I prefer this last one. Comments? > > Disagree. I vote for the first fix. The slight spacing and offset > caused by using the slash as opposed to the pipe characters are more > likely to draw the viewer's eye to the arrows, and convey to him that > all that ascii mess is actually pointing to the status columns. The > second version just looks a bit more like hacker gibberish to novice > eyes. Take it from a Debian novice who had to scratch his head for > quite a while to decode this screen for the first time not so long ago. > > Note that I don't think the improvement is great. This is likely to > be a forbiddingly confusing screen to the novice even with the > improvement you have suggested. But any improvement is welcome.
How about not using ascii art at all, but just use something along the lines of: Status flag explanations: 1) Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold 2) Status=Not/Installed/Config-files/Unpacked/Failed-config/Half-installed 3) Err?=(none)/Hold/Reinst-required/X=both-problems (Status,Err: uppercase=bad) 123 Name Version Description ===-==============-==============-============================================ ii vim 6.0.226-1 Vi IMproved - enhanced vi editor I think that would *really* clear things up a lot. Maybe the explanations could even contain some more spaces. -- Note that I use Debian version 3.0 Linux mus 2.4.17mvz2 #1 Wed Feb 27 17:41:43 CET 2002 i686 unknown Matijs
