[Reportbug-maint] Bug#652986: reportbug: user can loose bug report due to lack of back and cancel buttons

[josh]

Package: reportbug
Version: 6.3.1
Severity: normal

When using reportbug, if a user mistakenly chooses an option that won't
work, s/he may loose their complete text that they've just typed.

For example, I just tried to report a bug for another package. After
having written my bug report, I chose "report the bug with email"
thinking it would open an icedove compose email window, but instead
tried to use smtp. when this failed I was confronted with a dialog  that
said this had failed and asked if I would like to retry. retrying
doesn't help of course, and answering no puts you on a screen where you
can "press enter to quit report bug", and my bug report was gone.

I tried again, this time choosing the option "choose mailer", thinking I
would get the choice of icedove with that, but only got mutt & co. and
again no "back" button so I could choose something else (grrr...). I
again came to a screen where my only choice was to quit and loose my bug
report for a second time (double grrr...).

On the third try I knew enough so simply save the bug report and copy &
paste in into my icedove compose window myself.

Having "cancel" and "back" buttons would alleviate this and probably
other user unfriendly problems when the user mistakenly chooses the
wrong option. It's usually pretty standard that a user can go "back" if
they see that their previous choice has led them somewhere where they
cannot continue. Data loss is always lame.

-j

-- Package-specific info:
** Environment settings:
INTERFACE="gtk2"

** /home/josh/.reportbugrc:
reportbug_version "2.18"
mode advanced
ui text
realname "josh buhl"
email "jbuhl_nospam at gmx.de"
smtphost "mailin.uni-bonn.de"

-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 3.0.0-1-686-pae (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages reportbug depends on:
ii  apt               0.8.15.9
ii  python            <none>
ii  python-reportbug  6.3.1

reportbug recommends no packages.

Versions of packages reportbug suggests:
ii  debconf-utils                              <none>
ii  debsums                                    <none>
ii  dlocate                                    1.02
ii  emacs23-bin-common                         23.3+1-4
ii  exim4                                      4.77-1
ii  exim4-daemon-light [mail-transport-agent]  4.77-1+b1
ii  file                                       5.09-2
ii  gnupg                                      1.4.11-3
ii  python-gtk2                                2.24.0-2
ii  python-gtkspell                            <none>
ii  python-urwid                               <none>
ii  python-vte                                 1:0.28.2-3
ii  xdg-utils                                  1.1.0~rc1-3

Versions of packages python-reportbug depends on:
ii  apt               0.8.15.9
ii  python            <none>
ii  python-debian     0.1.21
ii  python-debianbts  1.10
ii  python-support    1.0.14

python-reportbug suggests no packages.

-- debconf-show failed