[packagekit] multi-package suggestions

[Tom Horsley]

The http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageKitFaq says you want
input on the multi-package user interface. I'll try sending this
to the mailing list and give up if it bounces because I have
to subscribe first :-).

Porting our tools to run on a slew of different linux distributions,
I've gotten a chance to use multiple package updater tools, and
far and away the best user interface I've encountered is
synaptic on debian and ubuntu.

In particular, the one multi-package thing synaptic gets right
that every other tool seems to get wrong is the package selection.

Most tools (perhaps the worst offender is the yast2 software
manager in opensuse) tend to let you click on packages you want
in a big list, then cycle between obscure and meaningless icons
marking those packages.

I don't know what the icons mean, I don't want to know what the
icons mean, but I do know what I want to do to the individual
packages I'm selecting.

In synaptic, I do indeed get obscure and meaningless icons showing
up, but only because clicking on the item pops up a menu with
meaningful descriptions of actions I can take. I can click on
the description of the action I want, and the fact that an obscure
icon shows up as well is something I can ignore because I
was also able to see a decent descriptive phrase.

The search dialog in synaptic is also excellent, allowing me to
search just the name (when I know the search string will be in the name,
and I want to get a smaller list to sort through), or the name and
description (when I have no idea what the package is named,
but have a good idea of something that probably shows up in the
description). A search for files I want to get installed would
be really nice as well (not sure if synaptic can do that).