Hi all,
Today I've looked at some of the upcoming features for LyX 2.0. It looks
really impressive and I think it creates an opportunity to improve the
Windows releases. Let me explain.
Currently in LyX 1.6, the language features are provided using
Aspell/Aiksaurus, which is a bit of a dead end. With the introduction of
Enchant/MyThes support we can start using OpenOffice dictionaries and
thesaurus lists, which are much better and more up-to-date. We won't
have to worry anymore about maintaining our own language packs.
The OpenOffice language files can simply be installed in the LyX directory.
Also, some time ago I figured out a way to create completely
self-contained versions of ImageMagick and Ghostscript, which are in the
LyX program directory and only used by LyX. They don't require any
installation or registry keys to be set and therefore work reliably,
independent of other applications and without administrator privileges.
This has already been included in all recent installers I created.
Combining these two things, it's possible to create a very simple and
portable LyX release. We could put all the binaries in a zip file and
the user can extract this and immediately run LyX with all features. The
only thing that needs to done manually is to run the installer for the
LaTeX system and the Metafile to EPS Converter printer if desired. And
there are the LaTeX classes bundled with LyX that would have to be
copied to the MiKTeX directory.
Of course the user shouldn't have to do this manually; we can also build
a normal installer. But the point is that the installer code would
become much more simple. We could write a script that takes the zip file
release and converts this into a nice NSIS installer. And if you need to
quickly edit a LyX file on somebody else's computer, the zip file itself
is also a nice addition.
For the alpha releases the zip file is probably enough. In the meanwhile
we could work on the script that converts the zip to an installer. This
would include a setting to either generate an installer with or without
MikTeX included. Even the update installer that Uwe currently maintains
manually could be automatically generated by comparing the new zip with
the previous one and excluding unchanged files.
This script can be written from scratch with all the relevant people
involved, so finally we would have a consistent way to release Windows
binaries. This would allow any developer to generate the official builds
and there would be only one set of official installers.
I'm just interested to hear your opinions.
Regards, Joost
