Abort installation dialog button text

Thanks for your report. This is also bug 37605, which is fixed in current daily builds.

This is definitely a different dialog, so I don't think it is a duplicate. I am talking about the dialog that appears when you press cancel during the installation.

Ah, gotcha. Sorry about that.

Hi, I just marked bug #120352 as a duplicate of this bug.
I said I would attach a patch to make the buttons read "yes" and "no", but in a comment to bug #94935 (which is also duplicate, but not marked as such yet) Colin said this is against the Gnome HIG.
The problem is that both labels essentially mean the same (stop a process) and it's just not clear what button cancels the installation, and what button cancels the cancellation (continues the installation). More distinctive labels would be "continue" to continue the installation, and "abort" or "quit" to cancel the installation. A little issue with this labels: there are no stock-buttons in glade with the label "continue" or "abort".

Anyhow, I attached the yes/no patch, as I wrote I would do it. As such...

After a talk with Colin, I created a patch to solve this problem in a way which conforms to the HIG. It changes the question to "Do you really want to abort the installation now, or would you like to continue installing?" and the buttons to "Continue" and "Abort".

Please, never use the word "abort" in a user interface. (This is for the same reason as never using the words "kill" or "execute".) I know it existed in the alert before this patch, but please, try to eliminate it rather than repeating it. :-) Also, the patch seems to exchange one confusion for another: does "Continue" mean continue with the installation, or continue with the process of quitting?

Instead, I suggest primary text of "Are you sure you want to quit the installation?", and secondary text of something like "No changes have been made to the computer yet." (if that's true).

If the "Cancel" button is removed from the installer (as I suggest in bug 186953), the existing button labels of "Cancel" and "Quit" in this alert will be fine, because the word "Cancel" will no longer be associated with quitting the installation. If "Cancel" is retained in the installer, "Cancel" in this alert could be changed to "Don’t Quit".

It occurred to me that the clearest fix for this might just be to rename the main Cancel button to Quit (and also consistently use the verb "quit" in the dialog). Then, as Matthew says, Cancel will no longer be associated with quitting the installation.

I haven't changed Cancel to Don't Quit in the quit dialog. This is partly because I think it shouldn't be necessary, and partly because as usual GTK makes it awkward to use a stock icon with some other text and I'd rather not mess around with this if I don't have to. This could be changed in the future if it still causes confusion, I suppose.

This bug was fixed in the package ubiquity - 1.9.8

---------------
ubiquity (1.9.8) intrepid; urgency=low

  [ Mario Limonciello ]
  * Remove xmltv and dvbutils options, as they will be installed across
    all boxen now.
  * debian/control:
    - Drop depends for guidance on mythbuntu package.
  * Install custom mythbuntu recipe - only applicable for Mythbuntu
    frontend.
  * Add support for additional mythbuntu plugin, apple trailers.

  [ Colin Watson ]
  * When copying files, remove regular files and symlinks if they exist
    already on the target; this can happen legitimately if installing over
    an existing system and /boot wasn't erased.
  * Make the Back button insensitive on the first page rather than hiding it
    (LP: #186953).
  * Rename main Cancel button to Quit, and adjust the quit dialog text
    slightly so that we consistently use "quit" as the action verb and
    "cancel" clearly means to cancel the dialog (LP: #45690).
  * Fix format string substitution error in _abstract method.
  * Allow skipping the unmounting of busy partitions by preseeding
    ubiquity/partman-skip-unmount to true (LP: #252667).
  * Automatic update of included source packages: debian-installer-utils
    1.59ubuntu2, grub-installer 1.32ubuntu2, partman-target 55ubuntu2.

  [ Evan Dandrea ]
  * Also remove the langlevel file if it exists before we start
    localechooser.

 -- Colin Watson <email address hidden> Fri, 08 Aug 2008 16:10:49 +0100