Re: .desktop -> bugzilla

[Ali Akcaagac <ali akcaagac stud fh-wilhelmshaven de>]

On Thu, 2002-08-15 at 07:50, James Henstridge wrote:
> >- their users don't need to deal with an horrible interface.

> Which interface are you talking about?  Bug-buddy or the web based bug
> submission interface.  Do you have any ideas for improvement?

the web based one.

yes i have ideas howto improve it but this requires to make it similar
to the way KDE handles things.

e.g. prefilled forms with information like compiler, version of the app
that crashed. no overhelming forms with 230495290465239 buttons. i wish
the usability stuff you put into gnome (by removing prefs, by hiding
things would also effect bgo.

kde's way right now is. no dealing with logins which requires some
people to enable cookies, to search for their username and password, to
login. to handle the overhelming report form. to logout, to disable
cookies, to clear the cookies field. at least thats the way i use MY
system. i know about the password manager and cookie manager stuff but i
don't rate them secure so i don't use them.

here some valid examples that recently happened to me:

reporting bug for galeon HEAD (pointing to galeon 2) i selected CVS as
version number from the list, got and reply where it was changed to
1.2.99 such things are obsolete i mean. ok the version number is
important no doubt but its not necessary to have to change it. if it was
my fault then because of the 'trivia' i had to enter the bugreport.

another scenario:

not long ago i reported bugs for gnome 2.0.0 i got a reply where someone
pointed me to select the gnome 2.0 toggle button in the form. then a
couple of days ago i reported another bug where someone else told me
that only the maintainer of the app should use that toggle button to
mark it a valid gnome 2.0.0 bug or if it should be considered to get
fixed with gnome 2.0.1.

> >- you can report bugs right from the app.

> When a gnome app crashes, you can report a bug right away with bug 
> buddy.  For non crasher bugs, you can start bug-buddy from the 
> applications menu, or use your web browser.

i know this. but the problems with bug-buddy is to not sent the bugs on
it's own to bgo. you need to have either sendmail running or need to
save the bug as a texfile to sent it later...

sent it later ? ... how ? where ? ..... in this case it may be easier
again to use bgo directly.

> >- no crappy login which requires another password.

> There is a very good reason for wanting confirmation of the email 
> address.  Many reported bugs are not very useful at face value, but if
> the maintainer has a way to get additional information from the 
> reporter, then it can be much more useful.

yes but the same effect can be reached without the need of an user
account.

a) if the bugreport was junk, close it.
b) if the bugreport was unclear reply to the user if no response come
   for over one week. close it.
c) after all you get junk bugreports on bgo the same way so it basically
   doesn't matter but generally it's a cool idea to have the posibillity
   to report bugs and for gnome it would be necessary to get these
   bugreports. even with bgo account you cant tell if the user is a real
   one or some fake account made on some freemailer to spam you.

> >- it does what it has to do. simply reporting bugs.

> As a maintainer, I want a system that helps manage and track bugs.
> From this point of view, debbugs is horrible.  If the bug tracking
> system is unusable to the maintainers, then it doesn't matter how good
> the reporting interface is.

as a user, i want a system that helps me reporting bugs easily. from
this point of view, bgo is horrible..... good for maintainer, bad for
reporter.

> Debbugs may work okay for the Debian project, but most software
> projects have quite different needs.

oh wonder... the kde people seem to live really healthy with it. looks
like it works... better crappy bugreports (sometimes) than no bugreport
at all because there are some requirements needed to do before comming
to the report itself.

> >it may for sure have issues that i haven't seen yet but from an users
> >point of view it can't go easier. how many bugs did you people missed
> >for gnome because the user doesn't want to create yet another account
> >for reporting some stuff. even bug-buddy isn't that comfortable after
> >all.

> I don't know the answer to that.  I know that I have received many 
> useless bug reports from unreachable reporters in the past 
> (root localhost localdomain, for instance).  I have had a fairly small
> number of really useful bug reports from anonymous sources in the
> past. I would be even happier if bug-buddy required people to have a
> valid bugzilla account (it could help them create it, of course).

mkay, this scenario:

"hello i am root localhost localdomain i would like to report a bug to
you for jhbuild :) the module glib use the wrong tag for a stable build.
i have checked out jhbuild on 15/08/2002 from anoncvs. could you please
look at it and have it fixed ?"

"hello i am lucy lucys-cool-domain com i would like to report a bug to
you for jhbuild :) the module glib use the wrong tag for a stable build.
i have checked out jhbuild on 15/08/2002 from anoncvs. could you please
look at it and have it fixed ?"

doesn't make much difference for me.

but well. i have some serious understanding problems. on the one side
your usability team (hehehe) likes to make gnome as easy that even
chimps can use it but on the otherhand one of the most important things
ever for gnome 'the bug reporting system' should be kept as complicated
and userunfriendly as possible. it's like killing a fire by using
petrol.

cheers.

-- 
Name....: Ali Akcaagac
Status..: Student Of Computer & Economic Science
E-Mail..: mailto:ali akcaagac stud fh-wilhelmshaven de
WWW.....: http://www.fh-wilhelmshaven.de/~akcaagaa