Unable to toggle "Format?" flag with keyboard at the install wizard's manual partitioning page

Triage to Incomplete pending more information. What version of Ubuntu? Can you post /var/log/syslog?

How I could miss a piece of information so essential, I have no idea. I posted this while I was installing 7.10 final on a desktop. I was referring to the "Format" checkbox not being reachable by pressing Tab, like every other widget in the installer. (text entries, buttons etc.) Will check tomorrow whether it's been fixed already in Hardy Alpha 5.

Thanks for your quick response. If Hardy Alpha 5 behaves the same way, then I will mark as Confirmed to move along. I agree, it should behave the same way, but other than a fancy python script, I'm not sure how ubiquity handles the graphical interface.

Checked today, there's still no tab stop for the Format checkbox. If there's no way to make it selectable, it should probably at least be added to the dialog that pops up when you double-click a partition.

Yes, I see the irony of the double-clickable partition on a can't-reach-with-keyboard bug. ;) To be fair there's a button to bring that dialog up, and on most keyboards, the Menu key.

Marked as Confirmed. I presume that if you are performing an install without a mouse then this could be a problem.

Seems like this should be easy and valuable; targetting to hardy.

This is already possible. Tab to the TreeView, then use the arrow keys to move from one column to the next. Press spacebar or enter when the format box is selected.

Granted, the outline of the selected part of the row is hard to make out, but that's not a bug in the installer.

Thanks for your clearing that up! I don't think it's too intuitive though. Not saying Tab is intuitive, but if someone has been using graphical interfaces since some time, it's the first thing that comes to mind when navigating without a mouse. If it's not possible to add tabbing support for that checkbox, maybe it can at least get an "underline shortcut?" I.e. "Format?" with an underlined "F", and pressing Alt-F would cycle through the partitions, pressing space would toggle the appropriate checkbox.

Also any hints about which package handles the outline? The dashed outline should be clear and visible like for any other tabbing-enabled widget.

It seems very difficult to change the behaviour of the GtkTreeView widget in this regard. It's in the gtk+2.0 source package if you want to pursue anything there.

However, I think keyboard navigation within this tree is going to be pretty strange almost whatever we do, so I have a (possibly) better idea. In general, you can edit a partition by activating its row (pressing Enter with the cursor on it). It seems that it would help if the Format checkbox were accessible there, and then we don't have to worry about the complications of GtkTreeView keyboard navigation.

Fix committed as described in my previous comment. Hopefully this will make things easier for people, even if it isn't perfect.

This will do the trick for now, and I will file a bug for GTK+ with regards to the GtkTreeView problem. Thank you for the fix, Colin!

This bug was fixed in the package ubiquity - 1.8.2

---------------
ubiquity (1.8.2) hardy; urgency=low

  [ Evan Dandrea ]
  * Treat the dbfilter returning nonzero as a fatal error in the
    noninteractive frontend.
  * Clean up the reboot message in the noninteractive frontend.
  * Optimize the md5 check on file copy (LP: #198019).
  * Copy the locale over to the target system when using oem-config.
    This was previously fixed for the alternate CD in LP 181291.
  * Use + instead of : for a replacement character for m-a as it is
    explicitly allowed by debconf policy.
  * Break out of resizing the partition in cases where partman fed us bad
    boundary values (LP: #197838).
  * Don't miscalculate with nested partitions in 03partition_too_small (LP:
    #198039).
  * Automatic update of included source packages: apt-setup
    1:0.31ubuntu7, choose-mirror 2.19ubuntu5, clock-setup 0.92ubuntu3,
    console-setup 1.21ubuntu6, localechooser 1.42ubuntu4, migration-
    assistant 0.6.1, partman-auto 73ubuntu7, tzsetup 1:0.20.

  [ Mario Limonciello ]
  * Don't unnecessarily hardcode the return of get_hostname()
    in the noninteractive frontend.
  * Turn off console blanking in Ubiquity init script to prevent
    confusion on the noninteractive frontend.
  * Update mythbuntu ubiquity icon.

  [ Colin Watson ]
  * Fix crash if partitioning failed when partitioning was automated (see LP
    #206113).
  * Remove packages in the restricted section from the installed system if
    apt-setup/restricted is false.
  * Fix crash with the "don't use" partitioning option (LP: #132611).
  * Use localised, human-readable names for partitioning methods.
  * Reorganise the wrapper script to cope with kdesu's broken argument
    handling.
  * Add a "Format the partition?" checkbox to the partition edit dialog
    (LP: #184838).
  * Give reconfigured packages access to our X display, so that
    usplash.postinst can check its dimensions (LP: #188764).

 -- Evan Dandrea <email address hidden> Tue, 08 Apr 2008 02:02:23 -0400