Re: Reworking sysinst, 2nd

[David Young <dyoung%pobox.com@localhost>]

On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 07:01:37PM +0200, Jan Danielsson wrote:
> On 03/29/12 18:03, David Young wrote:
> [---]
> > Is <http://www.bsdinstaller.org/screenshots.html> a proper reflection of
> > the bsdinstaller user interface?  This doesn't look like a step forward.
> 
>    bsdinstaller has a separate front-end and back-end. What you see
> there are some front-ends -- we don't need to use of those. In fact, we
> can write one which looks and feels more like systinst.

I see two frontends on their website, one for video teletype and one for
the web, that look improbably similar given the different capabilities
of the two media.

Even when a backend and a frontend are nominally separate, backends
commonly entrain frontends.  Sometimes the programmer takes shortcuts
in the frontend that let the backend bleed through.  Sometimes the
design of the frontend is underspecified, so the backend bleeds through.
Sometimes the backend somehow constrains the possible frontends.  I
suspect that there is something wrong in the backend/frontend separation
in bsdinstaller.

I urge anyone who will work on the NetBSD installer to design the
interaction on TTY and on the web, first, and only when you have a
rigorous design spec to decide how to program it.

Dave

-- 
David Young
dyoung%pobox.com@localhost    Urbana, IL    (217) 721-9981