inconsistent xconfig menu for "Wirless LAN (non-hamradio)"

inconsistent xconfig menu for "Wirless LAN (non-hamradio)"

[Robert P. J. Day]

  the menu layout under "Wireless LAN (non-hamradio)" is confusing.
i have a LinkSys WPC-11 PCMCIA card, and it took a couple reads to 
figure out what i needed to select in that submenu.

  since that card uses the hermes chipset, i naturally selected
"Hermes chipset 802.11b ...".  but wait -- a few lines down, there's
a comment, "Wireless Pcmcia/Cardbus cards support."  strange, i
could have sworn i selected something like that a few lines up
already.

  worse, even further down, there's "Hermes PCMCIA card support,"
for which the original selection has help that tells me that it was
necessary for me to select this later feature.  in that case,
if it's *required*, i shouldn't have any freedom -- the config
should select it for me.

  anyway, you the idea -- for my poor, little LinkSys WFC-11 card,
there are too many selections in that menu that seem to apply to me,
some of which should be more tightly related, or subsumed in a 
submenu.

rday

Re: inconsistent xconfig menu for "Wirless LAN (non-hamradio)"

[John Bradford]

>   since that card uses the hermes chipset, i naturally selected
> "Hermes chipset 802.11b ...".  but wait -- a few lines down, there's
> a comment, "Wireless Pcmcia/Cardbus cards support."  strange, i
> could have sworn i selected something like that a few lines up
> already.

In my opinion, options like that should be called "Generic Hermes
chipset 802.11b support".

>   worse, even further down, there's "Hermes PCMCIA card support,"
> for which the original selection has help that tells me that it was
> necessary for me to select this later feature.  in that case,
> if it's *required*, i shouldn't have any freedom -- the config
> should select it for me.

No, there might be a reason not to have options selected which are
"required", and that needs to be possible whichever kernel
configurator is being used.

>   anyway, you the idea -- for my poor, little LinkSys WFC-11 card,
> there are too many selections in that menu that seem to apply to me,
> some of which should be more tightly related, or subsumed in a 
> submenu.

The *best* thing to do is to make the help text more helpful, because
that way it explains the configuration to the user, instead of just
doing it for them.

John.

Re: inconsistent xconfig menu for "Wirless LAN (non-hamradio)"

[Robert P. J. Day]

On Sun, 5 Jan 2003, John Bradford wrote:

> >   anyway, you the idea -- for my poor, little LinkSys WFC-11 card,
> > there are too many selections in that menu that seem to apply to me,
> > some of which should be more tightly related, or subsumed in a 
> > submenu.
> 
> The *best* thing to do is to make the help text more helpful, because
> that way it explains the configuration to the user, instead of just
> doing it for them.

i'll certainly agree about the help text being more helpful, but that
doesn't completely obviate the need for making the options more clear.
and in particular, regarding the example i gave for my linksys --
it's hard to justify one option which implies that another option
*must* be selected in conjunction with it, but forcing the user to
do that manually, anyway.

rday

p.s.  i'm starting to feel a little awkward here, being a kernel
newbie and never having contributed any real code or patches, 
amongst this many people who hack kernel internals in their
sleep.

but having built a kernel or two (or a couple hundred, actually),
i'm really obsessed with a friendly user interface and intuitive
layout of the config process.

if there is somewhere else i should take this, by all means, 
i don't want to take up any more time on this topic than i already
have, since i'm sure it's boring lots of people to tears.