[Bug 905754] Re: Israel is not on the installer map

[Colin Watson]

I've done some investigation here.  I think the fix is beyond me, and
I'd appreciate Evan's help here.

There does not appear to be a core problem with the data; the
Asia/Jerusalem timezone is listed in libtimezonemap, if I use the
TimezoneMap widget in isolation I can get it to return Asia/Jerusalem to
me for certain x/y combinations, and instances of ubiquity.tz.Database
know about Asia/Jerusalem.

However, it's no wonder that requiring absolutely pixel-perfect mouse
positioning doesn't always work very well.  Even after setting up a
TimezoneMap widget in isolation that's exactly the same size as the one
rendered by ubiquity (751x277, established visually) and managing to get
it to select Asia/Jerusalem, I can't be certain that that's possible in
ubiquity itself.  I think we need a small rethink of how mouse operation
of the map works with small regions.  We don't have a great deal of
installer development time this cycle, so I'm not proposing anything
large, but this does need some attention.

Jan (comment #2) is correct that we used to have a zoom facility on the
map.  Unfortunately it caused extensive problems of its own and we
eventually removed it a few releases ago.  Jeremy (comment #6) is also
correct that you can simply type in a city name.  That's not too bad as
a workaround, but the mouse-navigation facility is present and should
therefore work well, not just sort-of-well.  As evidenced by this bug,
only working sort-of-well is a liability.

I have some thoughts on how this might be improved, but I'd like Evan's
feedback on those, as they will certainly involve interface extensions
to libtimezonemap.  The current library interface is as follows: you
click on a point and get a signal back telling you about the closest
location to that point.  Inside the library, it sorts all the locations
in the timezone database by their Euclidean distance from that point.
If the library offered some way to get hold of the sorted list, rather
than merely the first element in the sorted list, then we could do a
much better job of the UI in ambiguous cases.

As far as the UI is concerned, there are a few possibilities I can think
of that would be better than the current behaviour.  We could allow you
to click repeatedly on the same point, or close by (not everyone will
have the motor coordination to click on the exact same x/y coordinates
more than once, and it's harder with a mouse than with a trackball or
trackpad), and cycle through the top n nearby locations.  Alternatively,
we could set the closest location but also pop up a drop-down box with
the top n nearby locations, so that it's obvious that you can select
another one without having to enter its name directly.

** Changed in: libtimezonemap (Ubuntu Precise)
       Status: New => Triaged

** Changed in: libtimezonemap (Ubuntu Precise)
   Importance: Undecided => High

** Changed in: libtimezonemap (Ubuntu Precise)
     Assignee: (unassigned) => Evan Dandrea (ev)

** Changed in: libtimezonemap (Ubuntu Precise)
    Milestone: None => precise-alpha-2

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/905754

Title:
  Israel is not on the installer map

Status in “libtimezonemap” package in Ubuntu:
  Triaged
Status in “ubiquity” package in Ubuntu:
  Triaged
Status in “libtimezonemap” source package in Precise:
  Triaged
Status in “ubiquity” source package in Precise:
  Triaged

Bug description:
  during the installation of ubuntu 11.10, on the 'where are you?'
  slide, there is no way of clicking on Israel on the map.

  when clicking on the place where it is supposed to be, only 'Gaza
  (Gaza Strip, Palestinian Territory)' and 'Palestinian Territory,
  Occupied (Hebron)' shows.

  screen prints on - http://www.inbarhovav.com/2011/12/blog-
  post_17.html.

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