Hi Guys,
Just a comment on this. I understand and agree with a lot of criticism
of Micro$oft
products, and will not use it for development unless at gun point. BUT I
think
one thing where Unix is still a disaster, and Micro$oft got it right, is
in the way
software is installed. Oh Ok, there are the rpm's that work well for
installing
software, but ... mostly Unix does NOT set high standards for users or
anyone
else (poor sysadmin guys?) so far as installation goes. E.g. I spent an
entire afternoon
trying to install DocBook recently ... it was a mass of packages and
other things ...
in fact it was a needless pain in the arse. Basically I don't want to
know about
config files and environment variables and so on and on and on when all
I want
is a bit of software to do a particular task.
No, the opportunity to put LyX on CD should be part of everyone's game plan,
not least to bag the vast army of M$ users! :)
Just a thought.
Regards
Fred
Andre Poenitz wrote:
>> I am regularly faced with the challenge that Windoze users expect that no
>> installation procedure should be more complicated than the most simplest
>> software. It's odd, as they are happy to reboot two or three times to get IE
>> to work, but refuse to contemplate any non-M$ish software that wants a
>> similar process. The challenge to get these people to use and promote LyX
>> will be to have a working Windoze install requiring minimal configuration.
>>
>> Regarding a bootable linux distribution with LyX, it is may not be necessary.
>> I think that it can be done, using one of the smaller distros, but Linux
>> users generally understand the binary packaging system used by their
>> distribution of choice (rpm, tgz or whatever). I set up a few mandrake boxen
>> recently and was happy to see LyX on the install CD. Regarding Windoze users,
>> I think that the Cygwin path is the one to follow, but not to the point where
>> it begins to impact on the further development of LyX.
>
>
> I am personnally using some installer/wrapper called "InnoSetup" for
> the creation of Windows installers.
>
> You basically name the files that you want to have in the package and say
> which kind of desktop shortcut should be created etc, run the "package
> compiler" and get a single, idiot proof .exe in the end.
>
> In case of LyX this would probably mean installing an X server, LyX, LaTeX
> etc on some machine, find out which files are needed, generate the
> package, and give the end user not much choice where to install the whole
> 150-MB-thingy. But Windows users are used to pain, aren't they?
>
> The package compiler is Windows only, but runs pretty well under wine (as
> do the generated installers) In fact, I use makefile targets 'wdist' that
> compose the packager's setup file and run everything under Linux.
>
> Andre'
>
