[Soc-coordination] Applying for improving Aptitude packages query utilities

[Daniel Burrows]

On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 02:42:16AM +0800, Sha Liu <sandyleo26 at gmail.com> was heard to say:
> >   GTK+ being required means that you should be familiar enough with
> > GTK+ by the time that the project starts to implement a prototype of
> > your dialog box.  Of course, all else being equal, applicants with
> > significant prior GTK+ experience will be preferred, but I don't know
> > yet what sort of applications we get.  Usually all else is not equal. :)
> 
> Thanks for your reply. You mean just add a pop-up dialog box which contain
> some search criteria text entry or completely re-written the whole GUI of
> Aptitude, like using Glade?

  I mean modifying the GTK+ branch of aptitude to add better search UI.
That mainly means a pop-up dialog box to edit search expressions, but
other parts of the UI could be modified too.  e.g., we've considered
adding a fold-out under the search bar to let users quickly add/edit
single-term searches, and maybe changing how the quick filters are
displayed / work.

> And by merging actually, I mean something like making Aptitude more
> newbie-friendly(forgive my poor English). I myself suffer a lot from
> installing and upgrading softwares at first because I didn't dare to try. A
> powerful tool with complicated and hard-to-focus interface often intimidates
> newbie like I was.

  Hm, now I'm not sure what you mean.  "Making aptitude more
user-friendly" is a pretty broad umbrella, and all three of the
projects that are listed fit under it.

  Daniel