SEUL: The near future :O)

[Kai Wetzel <k.wetzel@welfen-netz.com>]

Hi,

I'm sorry that I havn't had much time lately.  This will
probably be the case for yet another week until I finally
moved the hardware to where I live now.

I think the SEUL project is a very good idea and I think
it's needed.  I'm very impressed by the thoughtful way
some people of the team express themselves via email.

I have some comments, so let me re-iterate some of the
areas interesting to SEUL:

---

1) Installation
   - preparing for installation (partitioning, etc.)
   - hardware detection
   - selecting initial packages
   - ...

2) Configuring base components
   - X server, etc.
   - printer
   - modem
   - ...

3) The GUI Desktop
   - window manager (default; auto configuration of)
   - application launching (e.g. "panel" applications)
   - file manager
   - help system
   - common control panels (user preferences management)

4) GUI Applications

5) Administration
   - user accounts
   - X11: fonts
   - ....

6) Documentation
   - docs intended for a printed manual (e.g. early phase)
   - docs mainly intended for the help system

---

1. Installation:

I think it's a good idea to continue investigation of the
issues involved.  It is good for our project that Debian
is making significant progress in this area.  I agree,
however, that installation isn't something the rest of us
has to wait for, we can step ahead in some other areas while
the installation process is beeing worked on.

2. Configuring base components:

Another important area, I don't know how well this is handled
already as I don't use a very recent system.

3. The GUI Dektop:

The desktop projects (GNOME, fOX, LIP, eXode, etc.) will
hopefully provide us with some good components to use here.
The help system is making progress it seems.  I think we
should eventually discuss what components can constitute
our control panels (and investigate the state of this aspect)

4. GUI applications:

IMHO we should soon start to review and collect info about
applications, particularly GUI end-user apps.

- collect sites with info about apps
- collect apps for each kind ("irc clients", "word processors", etc.)
- determine info which should be listed for each app, e.g. things
  from the LSM entry, availability of packages (so we can find
  what packages are needed as pointed out by Jean Francois more
  easily, etc.  Of course reviewing may start before this is finished
  but I think it will save us quite some work later on.
- Put the stuff in a database excessible from the web.  I'm afraid I
  can't help on this one :(
- Write a short guide for reviewers (what should be mentioned
  apart from the facts, especially what is important for end-users)

Maybe at some point of time:

- Allow users to add short comments to individual apps on the
  web-site in addition to large "reviews".
- List common features of certain app kinds, such as news readers
  to make reviewing easier and to have a data set as full as possible
  to ease retrieval of information.

The actual work should take place on dev-app and I hope everybody
interested in this kind of stuff joins that list :O)

6. Documentation:

I think having some printable documentation (especially a guide
to installation) is a good idea.  Listing what's there already
would be good as well as working together with Debian doc,
internationalization, localization efforts.
Is there a list this should be dicussed on or do we need
dev-doc ?

---

Since we have to find new leaders for dev-install and
dev-distrib I think it would be a good idea to find
"step-in"-leaders for all groups who can take over a
group temporarily in case the leader leaves or isn't
available for a certain period of time so things can
go on as smooth as possible.  I also got the impression
that the cooperation between install and distrib could
be better and I don't think this should rely on the
assumption that the two leaders will agree most of the
time in the future.

I hope we can make some even faster progress in the future,

kai