Subject: bug#6509: It's not obvious that landing page is an ordered, paginated list.

From: Glenn Morris <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2010 15:38:14 -0400

Karl Fogel wrote:

> One can't tell that the default Emacs bugs landing page is an ordered,
> paginated list.
>
> To reproduce: go to "Emacs reports" from http://debbugs.gnu.org/, and
> land on this page:
>
> http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/pkgreport.cgi?package=emacs;max-bugs=100;base-order=1;bug-rev=1
>
> Although that page says at the top that it is
>
>   "Showing results 0 - 100 of 2006."
>
> ...there is no indication that the listing is ordered starting from most
> recent.  The individual bug lines do not show their filed dates or
> latest-activity dates, so to the user they have no anchor in time.  I
> did not realize when I went to that page that it was showing me the most
> recently filed bugs.

I don't know what to do about this. I think adding dates to the
display would just clutter things up and not add very much. It seems
to be a common bug tracker convention that bug number implies a
chronological order. If you click the "Toggle all extra information"
button at the bottom (which perhaps should also be at the top), you
get the dates shown.

I took a look at the default Launchpad and Bugzilla outputs. Eg by
searching for bugs in the Bazaar project, I end up at:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/bazaar/+bugs?field.searchtext=&search=Search+Bug+Reports&field.scope=project&field.scope.target=bazaar

* This does not show any dates.

* It shows a paginated result. The indication of this is "x -> y of z
results", together with "next" and "previous" buttons, at the top and
bottom of the page. This is all basically the same as the debbugs
page.

* The bugs are in some kind of order that is not clearly stated
anywhere. By inspection, it is severity, then bug number. This is the
same as the debbugs page; except that:

i) The division by severity in debbugs is done by dividing things into
separate sections. I think this is clearer, not sure.

ii) Debbugs also does some extra sorting, eg by "moreinfo". There is
no way for you to know this, but if you choose "order by" "oldview"
from the options at the end of the page, this sorting is taken out.

iii) I thought it made most sense to show the most recent reports
first, so ours is in reverse order. If you prefer a non-reversed
order, simply visit debbugs.gnu.org/emacs. This is actually the
default debbugs search result page (except broken up into 400 bug
chunks). The links from the main page debbugs.gnu.org are what I
thought made more sense for browsing.

Taking a look at the default "firefox" bug page in Bugzilla:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=emacs

* Again, there is no date information shown.

* The bugs are not paginated (at least with 850 bugs). I think this is
worse than what debbugs does now.

* Again, the bugs are in some kind of order that is not specified.
It looks to be severity, than bug number again; but I think it is lees
clear than the debbugs display.

So I don't see any clear way to make things substantially better.

The "Summary" sections should probably make it clearer they only apply
to the bugs currently being displayed, not the total on all pages. I
don't know how to make them display the overall totals I'm afraid.