> I think the main question is: Do people like > installers? Most people don't. The installer is > simply a means to get the software that you > *really* want onto your computer. As such, I > think the best way to write a good installer is > to write one that minimizes the time you spend > using it. > > NeXT's installer falls flat on the face in this > regard: It has so many settings and windows and > different "pages" that it looks like someone had > way too much fun playing with packages. > > Apple's installer doesn't do that, by dropping a > lot of functionality, which is a way to solve it, > I guess, but not really ideal. In addition, its > rigid structure forces users to go through three > or four pages for most applications, when leading > them right to the "choose disk" page and then > having them click "install" would have sufficed > for half of them.
I'll try to give some more feedback on this issue either tonight or tomorrow, but in the mean time, here is a step by step of the Mac OS X install process: http://www.jesseross.com/clients/gnustep/resources/macosx_installer/ If someone has a NeXT box and has the ability to do similar for that system's installer, we could do a side by side comparison, and find out what would be worth keeping and what seems extraneous. I personally love the idea of drag and drop to install (or even trigger an installer) -- it means we have a single, logical method of installation and it allows our users the "luxury of ignorance", as ESR says < http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cups-horror.html >. Office X 2004's installer is really nice too, in that you drag the apps off the disk and drop them on your hard drive, like a regular app. Once you launch the any of the apps, it determines whether you have installed any of the shared libs, and if not, goes through an installation process. J. _______________________________________________ Discuss-gnustep mailing list Discuss-gnustep@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnustep
