gpk-log improvements

Compared to the old log viewer, I think this one is much better:

Further feedback appreciated. Does anyone know how to make the text automatically wrap to the next line in the treeview?

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hughsie

Richard has over 10 years of experience developing open source software. He is the maintainer of GNOME Software, PackageKit, GNOME Packagekit, GNOME Power Manager, GNOME Color Manager, colord, and UPower and also contributes to many other projects and opensource standards. Richard has three main areas of interest on the free desktop, color management, package management, and power management. Richard graduated a few years ago from the University of Surrey with a Masters in Electronics Engineering. He now works for Red Hat in the desktop group, and also manages a company selling open source calibration equipment. Richard's outside interests include taking photos and eating good food.

21 thoughts on “gpk-log improvements”

  1. Not too bad, but…

    Why not use smaller icons (16×16) and put everything on 1 line together? Look at how much space is wasted by \n * 4 and the big pretty icons. Too much.

  2. Much prettier. It would be nice to show the time as well.. maybe in a non-bold small grey font just after the date.

  3. This is better than before, yes…

    But, one thing I don’t really understand about most of the packagekit UIs is the HUGE icons and HUGE fonts. I’m using Fedora9Pre on a virtual machine that runs in 1024×768 and packagekit seems to waste a lot of screen space.

    About those icons: what if a transaction includes installing new, updating installed and removing some packages? I know that the package manager UI does not really support preparing many changes and then apply all in one (I hope this will change in the future) but think about this: you install palckage A which conflicts with package B (installed) so B has to be removed. Also, A requires a new version of C (installed), so C needs to be updated. One click, three different things happen. Which icon would be used?

  4. GtkCellRendererText doesn’t support word wrap; you would have to use a different cell renderer. Maybe write it yourself.

    (It would be nice if GTK+ included such a cell renderer.)

  7. I agree with Jeff and Michael.
    Too much spaces used. I don’t know if the icon is really needed, I didn’t get their meaning until I read Michael’s comment…

    Also you could use only one cell per day maybe.
    Like:

    Friday, 18 of April
    10:00 am : Intalled foo, bar ; Updated whatever
    01:15 pm : Updated foo
    06:37 pm : Installed another, thing ; Removed bar

    Friday, 17 of April
    ….

  8. some kind of filtering would be nice to have, in order to look for update / install only; and based also on date (last day, laste week, last month / custom)

  9. Have you ever used synaptic? It’s certainly not the nicest UI ever invented but the the history viewer is simple yet powerful. It looks similar to other log viewes (system logs, IM logs), allows search and (which is very useful) allows copying the package names.

  11. A “details…” button beside the “close” button for viewing of changelogs, perhaps?

    a “revert to (this date)”-button would be an advanced feature.

    A filter? (installed, updated, removed )

    Just brainstorming here :)

  13. A “revert” button would be very much appreciated along with the possibility to expand a group of changes so that you can uninstall, say, one program that you installed at that time. If the GUI doesn’t include the ability to point-and-click to uninstall, it is no more useful than nano /var/log/yum.log

  14. Nice to see progress on this dialog! IMHO:

    1. you need to keep the old details pane (except to the right not under) because this summary display will never be sufficient in case of a mass-upgrade with hundreds of changes (such as when updating from one distro release to the next one)

    2. Ideally this details pane would present a graphical-diff like view :
    sorted list of packages before transaction to the left, sorted list of packages after transaction to the right, with nice colours to show what was added/removed/updated. Perhaps something as simple as passing text versioned package lists to meld would do it
    (so it would really be a three-column view: update list, before, after, which would render fine on modern widescreens)

    3. And then the obvious enhancement : allow selecting a range of transactions in the history column, and present a consolidated diff view (from the oldest selected transaction to the most recent one) in the details pane

    4. It would be nice if a long mouse-over a package name could bring up a tooltip showing the info on this package. Some package names are really obscure, users do not remember what’s behind at first sight

    That is not to say the current history is not nice, but your average history user first concern is going to be “what changed exactly between X and Y” and a coloured text-only diff view will communicate this better than pretty icons.

  15. Further feedback appreciated. Does anyone know how to make the text automatically wrap to the next line in the treeview?

    Instead of word wrap why don’t you use the ellipsise property and cut the long lines to the width of the window and display a dialog with a full list when you double click the row?

  16. You should check out the synaptic history UI – Combine your iconic main pane with synaptic’s treeview date navigator and you have a winner

  17. The date is really prominent, even when collapsing by date. You want to emphasize what happened to what packages, not the exact date. My suggestion: move the date over to the right top corner in each row. Better yet, show it only if one clicks to see details.

  20. packagekit deals with packages, and user knows it. In my humble opinion, there is no need to show package icon and plus, minus, refresh sign nearby. Plus and minus will do just fine.

    Also i agree with the idea not to show all packages in this window because horizontal scrolling is inconvenient. Tree view might be better.

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