Make "Go Back" always go back
Bug #20595 reported by
Matthew Paul Thomas
| Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| cdebconf (Ubuntu) |
Confirmed
|
Wishlist
|
Unassigned | ||
Bug Description
There are several places in the installer where "Go Back" does not go back to the previous step. One is in the very first screen, "Choose Language", where "Go Back" does not take you back to the initial installer prompt, but instead shows a menu you haven't seen before, listing possible steps (including checking the integrity of the installer CD). Another is in the
"Select a keyboard layout" screen, where "Go Back" does not take you back to the "Choose your location" screen, but instead takes you to the "Choose a language" screen. (Indeed it seems impossible to return to the "Choose your location" screen after seeing it once.)
Revision history for this message
| Colin Watson (cjwatson) wrote | #1 |
Revision history for this message
| Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt) wrote | #2 |
| Changed in cdebconf: | |
| assignee: | kamion → nobody |
| status: | Unconfirmed → Confirmed |
| description: | updated |
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Aside from the pressing issue (at this point in the release cycle) that renaming
this button would trash a lot of translations, "Other Steps" would be wrong too;
the "Go Back" button really does trigger a backup operation as far as the
underlying cdebconf framework is concerned, and in many cases it will take you
linearly backwards rather than displaying anything that might make sense to
describe as "other steps". It's just that the installer somewhat abuses backup
to display the main menu if you back up off the start of a menu item.
I realise the UI is poor, but it's hard to do better in the newt interface while
still preserving properties such as (a) must actually be implementable within
the interface framework we have available, (b) must ensure that the main menu is
accessible for corner cases while avoiding displaying it under normal
circumstances, (c) must avoid infinite loops in case a menu item fails, (d) must
retain the modular separation of installer components which is critical to the
development process, and probably others too. So I don't want to hack around the
problem with simple button renamings because that wouldn't really solve the
issue, but we will try to make things flow more smoothly. One thought along
those lines is to invent a way to go back to the end of a menu item's state
machine rather than to the beginning, and make all components support that,
although that's not a short-term project. Another would be to come up with a way
for a component to declare via the debconf protocol that going back at this
point will return to the main menu rather than backing up as usual, as a hint to
the frontend to display different button text; that's probably marginally more
achieveable.
All this would be much, much easier if we had a working GTK frontend, where the
main menu can remain visible and accessible at the side of the screen at all
times, rather than working within the constraints (technical and visual) of newt.
The bit about the non-returnable "choose your location" screen is probably just
a localechooser bug.