On Mon, Apr 02, 2018 at 03:02:02AM +0000, Andrew Parsloe wrote:
> Dear Scott,
> 
> MiKTeX 2.9 has been available since 2010 and the *only* version available
> since 2014; see https://miktex.org/releases. Hence the message in your
> proposed dialogue
> 
>         LyX requires MiKTeX 2.9 or later. Your version is X.X.
>         Choose "Continue" to automatically update MiKTeX now,
>         or "Cancel" to stop the LyX installation. If you do not
>         understand this message, you should choose "Continue".
> 
>                                         Cancel      Continue
> 
> doesn't make much sense (to me). It is the package repository number that is
> critical, currently at 6664 at time of writing (see https://miktex.org/
> under Package Repository) but I don't know what that was at the time the
> update problem arose and in any case it is likely to be confusing to an
> average user.
> 
> I think it would be better to use a date: "LyX requires MiKTeX 2.9 updated
> later than yyyy/mm/dd" (and that format of date to avoid ambiguity around
> dd/mm/yyyy versus mm/dd/yyyy). Presumably the date can be found from Uwe's
> announcements to lyx-devel.

Thanks for the feedback, Andrew and for pointing out the issue with the
message above. After thinking about this for a bit, I don't think the
average user will actually care what their version number is or what the
required version number is. All they need to know is that MiKTeX needs
to be updated. For advanced users who might be interested in that
information, we can give it in the details on the Wiki page. For
example, on the Wiki page we can list the technical package repository
number that is required, and we can specify the steps to see what
package repository number you're currently at.

So I propose to change the first part to something like:

  Your MiKTeX installation must be updated in order for LyX 2.3.0 to
  work. Choose "Continue" to ...

Then, we will give a link to a Wiki page, as discussed before.

This will allow us to keep the main dialog clear, but at the same time
provide extra details for the power users.

What do you think about that approach? If you and others disagree, I'm
fine with specifying the version number required, and in that case I
agree with you that specifying the dates instead of the repository
number is a good idea.

Scott

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