Connecting plugs and slots in a GUI

[robert.ancell]

@niemeyer

@robert.ancell

The disadvantage is snapd doesn’t have the context of the client so it can’t tell what wording is appropriate for the label and what is advanced for the user.

Quite the opposite: snapd is the only place that has context about what is appropriate or not. It’s the place where interfaces are coded, and assertions evaluated. If we put that in the client tomorrow there will be a new interface and the client will have no clue about what to do.

snapd knows the mechanism of the interfaces but neither the context in which the developer chose to use it or how the client is displaying / controlling it. For the simpler interfaces this is less of a problem but as I have shown the content interfaces is an example where we are lacking information to make good UI.

[zyga-snapd]

@niemeyer

A proper application will just report that the network is off, as that often happens for many other reasons.

Currently this will not work because it will be killed while attempting to determine if network is available. Soon-ish (hopefully) we can start to make that be just an error, not application kill signal.

[jdstrand]

@zyga-snapd

Currently this will not work because it will be killed while attempting to determine if network is available. Soon-ish (hopefully) we can start to make that be just an error, not application kill signal.

Well, it depends on how it is trying to check, but it is certainly possible the application will be killed, which is poor (but as you said, something that is being worked on).

[niemeyer]

@robert.ancell

snapd knows the mechanism of the interfaces but neither the context in which the developer chose to use it or how the client is displaying / controlling it. For the simpler interfaces this is less of a problem but as I have shown the content interfaces is an example where we are lacking information to make good UI.

Whatever interface or detail you pick, snapd will continue to have more information to make a good decision than gnome-software will. If the content interface is hard for snapd, it’s harder for gnome-software.

[jhodapp]

One thing I’d like to see that I didn’t see mentioned (apologies if I just missed it) is a user-friendly description of what the interface does that can be used by a GUI as a label or a tool tip. Many of these interfaces, while they mostly make sense to us by name, don’t make sense to your average user. In addition, we may also want to have one other piece of metadata with each interface: user friendly name.

[niemeyer]

@jhodapp There’s indeed much to be improved in that area, and we’re already starting to walk there. For example, the code currently in master already introduces further details such as summary and a documentation URL. We’re aiming at having topics in the forum to cover particular interfaces, similar to what we’re doing with the content interface.

[jhodapp]

That sounds good. I like what I see in the content interface documentation. However, why is this documentation on the forum and not on our central place for documentation such as this page for interfaces? It’d be less confusing for a user to find in my opinion. But again, well done on writing that documentation page…docs of that level are sorely needed.

[niemeyer]

@jhodapp Please see this topic for more background.

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KDE Discover in Plasma 5.13 (releasing 12th June) will have a GUI for snap permissions (which means it’ll be becoming available in GNU/Linux more widely from 12th June)!