During an error, "Scroll in the terminal buffer" help text is imperative

[Paul Sladen]

If an error occurs during an update using the Update notifier/manager/Synaptic
front-end the "Installing updates..." dialogue status text changes to:

  Failed to apply all changes! Scroll in the
  terminal buffer to see what went wrong.

This text is imperative and commanding. The user does not /need/ to scroll in
the terminal buffer, nor even know what a terminal buffer is. If they are
interesting, they may wish to do this; however upon any errors and a dialogue
box should be presented.

Perhaps to the titles could be changed something along the lines of:

  Terminal -> Detailed information

  Failed to apply all changes! Scroll in the
  terminal buffer to see what went wrong.
  ->
  A temporary issue was encountered while upgrading your system.

After the first "Error" dialogue is acknowledged a new dialogue pops up called
"Information" and giving details such as ''It is not possible to upgrade all
packages [..list of packages..]'' so the user will be correctly informed at this
stage.

That dialogue says "Please use Synaptic Smart Upgrade or 'apt-get
dist-upgrade'". The option to launch "Synaptic Smart Upgrade" should probably
be available as a direct action from that dialogue box. The "apt-get
dist-upgrade" suggestion maybe confusing to new/GUI users.

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

Thanks for your bugreport.

This is really a unfriendly message that needs to be reworded for breezy+1. I
don't want to change it now because we are in string freeze and I wouldn't want
to break translations at this point.

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

What do you think about this new text?

"""
Failed to apply all changes! If you are interessted in the details of the failure, please scroll in the terminal buffer to see what went wrong.
"""

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

Sounds better. I'm tempted to suggest s/!/./ Also, the "please scroll" bit doesn't sound quite right.

"""
Not all changes and updates succeeded. If you are interested, please expand the Detailed Information panel. It is safe to continue.
"""

This takes aware the "Failure!" tone and avoids assuming that the user knows what a "Terminal" is.

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

Thanks for this suggestion :)

I think we can't remove "terminal" complettely because the expander is labeld terminal. I also don't think we should say it's safe to continue because it may not be (well, the user dosn't have a chance, but I think we shouldn't tell him that this is something to ignore).

My current version looks like this:

"""
Not all changes and updates succeeded. If you are interessted in the details of the failure, please expand the the 'terminal' panel."
"""

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

On Wed, 8 Feb 2006, Michael Vogt wrote:
> I think we can't remove "terminal" complettely because the expander is
> labelled terminal.

I'd like to see 'Terminal' relabelled to 'Detailed information' if possible,
it doesn't sound quite so much like a end-down and if a user clicks it they
should end up with 'Detailed information' rather than scary black box.

> I also don't think we should say it's safe to continue because it may
> not be (well, the user dosn't have a chance,

Yup, this is a problem. Could we offer them a better suggestion (eg. add a
button to load Synaptic). If the user is powerless to do anything it's
probably not worth offering them the dialogue at all?

 -Paul
--
Britain is just cold, in a pesky way. London, GB