Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sun, 5 Jan 2003 07:23:51 -0500 (EST) | From | "Robert P. J. Day" <> | Subject | my take on the 2.5 xconfig screen -- for what it's worth |
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... from someone who is still wet behind the ears when it comes to digging into the kernel ... so be gentle :-)
there's one issue with the new graphical "xconfig" screen in 2.5 that's been nagging quietly at me since i saw it for the first time, so i thought i'd just mention it. it's *incredibly* picky, but what the heck.
i find the *structure* (not the content, mind you) a little awkward in terms of the way hierarchical choices are represented. here's what i mean.
when you run "make xconfig" and if you collapse all of the "-" menu chocies, even the entries with no "+" expansion boxes *still* represent a master choice for sub menu options. as one example, "Processor type and features". in the main list, there's no indication that this represents a truckload of subchoices which will show up in the right nand window when you click on it. this can be said of many of those menus, obviously.
this (admittedly slightly) non-intuitive behavior becomes more confusing, however, when you have main menu entries like "Power management options" or "Networking options". both of these choices have a "+" (expandable) icon, but that's *in addition* to just clicking on the menu entry itself, which apparently shows you what i presume are basic networking options -- expanding on that entry then shows advanced networking settings. (Power management options is a good example of what i consider to be a confusing structure: while the entry is labelled with "(ACPI, APM)", the APM is under the main entry, while ACPI is available only after you expand the entry. confusing.)
this way of representing hierarchical submenus flies in the face of what most people will be used to. as a long-standing practice, consider the way netscape/mozilla bookmarks are set up, or the older tcl/tk(?) xconfig screen from the 2.4 kernel. these were more intuitive -- *everything* at the top level was an expandable menu choice. i realize that the way this is set up is for faster access, but it just feels awkward. (in the case of bookmarks, everything in a bookmark list is clearly a direct bookmark, or a folder for more bookmarks -- what i consider a clear, intuitive design).
more than anything, it reminds me of what you *can't* do with pine mail folders. in pine, while you can set up hierarchical folders, you *can't* use the same folder both for storage and for a parent folder of subfolders. in other words, i'm not allowed to store mail in both the folder "kernel", and in "kernel/2.4", "kernel/2.5" and so on. and this is exactly what this hierarchy is trying to do.
anyway, like i said, this is almost pathologically picky, but it's what i do best. :-)
rday
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