usability

Even though I had some private issues this week, all is going well with the PackageInstall. In its current form it is able to properly install all 3 test BeOS packages I tried on it, creating files and directories along with their data and attributes without flaw. So, what's left to do right now?

A couple of articles I just read (here and its rebuttal) are written by Linux users about why Linux is the best and how to get a regular person (hereafter referred to as Joe User) to start using Linux. To save you the time of reading the two articles, the first is entitled "Understanding the Common User: Everything should be as simple as it is, " by Keyto. The article is partly about how a Common User thinks, but primarily that quite a lot of the problem with Linux is the current users -- geeks who have trouble relating to Joe at Joe's level of expertise instead of the geek's level.

Finally back with a proper development environment.

Seizing the opportunity of having some free time, I finished implementing the user interface and prepared everything for package file parsing. Since I have yet to analyze the .pkg format throughout, I'd rather have everything prepared for this to come. From what I see from the materials sent by Ryan, the format itself doesn't seem to be as complicated, but there are still quite some unknowns. I will have to do some tests on a BeOS platform to see how a few other things work. For instance - unknown various bytes between the package description and the package author and name. Probably unessential though...
I will look into this more as soon as possible.

Who would have thought that something like me being chosen as a student for GSoC would actually happen. But it did. Blissfully indeed.