On Tuesday 10 January 2006 08:42 am, Mathias Bauer wrote: > Hal Vaughan wrote: > > On Monday 09 January 2006 01:42 pm, Mathias Bauer wrote: > >> I think you are wrong here. Especially on Windows the new installer is a > >> big step into the right direction. And AFAIK it *is* possible to create > >> response files. > > > > I asked about that about a week ago on the install list and am still > > waiting for an answer. While I admit that is not proof, a lot of > > Googling turned up nothing. Other than your statement and one other > > reference, I have yet to find anything to tell me how to do this without > > using Orca to edit the .msi file. I tried all the command options I > > could find for the setup program (/r, /saveinf, and a few others I found) > > and all any options ever did was cause the help window to open -- with no > > information in it on creating response files. I did find I could at lest > > specify a parameter to set in the command line, which lets me specify > > what directory to install to. For now I'm using that. > > I must confess that I mixed a few things up. Indeed the only way to > create response files out-of-the-box is Orca. We have a "Customization > Wizard" on the *StarOffice* Enterprise CD that allows to do that in an > easier way. > > Nevertheless the new Windows installation *is* a step into the right > direction. We didn't want to maintain our own installer anymore (that > BTW looked like an alien on *all* platforms) and we decided to be nice > players on all platforms and on Windows this includes using MSI. > > There are some drawbacks, yes, but losing the simple way to create > response files and network installations is something that will not > bother the majority of OOo users. It is still possible to do both but > this either requires to do some own work or to buy the complete solution > from Sun with StarOffice (where both features are available on the > Enterprise CD).
From what I can gather, though, it seems the reason for the inability to create response files is, in large part, due to the specific version of the MSI used. I don't know if it's a stripped down version, but there are other versions of the program that allow people to create response files easily. A small point: My application is not something that matters, on a big scale, to OOo overall, but here's my situation: my clients are small businesses, originally in just the state of Virginia, but soon I'll be working with small businesses in other states as well. The people in these businesses, for the most part, have never heard of OOo. One of my former clients is the best known bankruptcy lawyer in Northern Viriginia, which is near Washington, D.C., in other words, in a major area. In other words, he's a business person people in a large area listen to and he started switching his offices over to OOo due to his exposure to it from my app. I'm aware of other clients of mine that became aware of OOo through me and my application that have either switched over to OOo from Word or are starting to use it. Now, as I said, I'm not so big that I really matter to the overall project, but dealing with the install situation was so frustrating, I spent a few days considering actually switching back to Abiword instead -- all because of the install situation (and, again, using a different version of the installer would have made creating response files possible and easy). This was something I previously would have considered completely out of the question before. I'm sure if I considered moving to another platform over this, I'm not the only one. I know that I, and others who need response files, are a minority, but it is a minority that didn't have to be left out by installer version choices and those of us who need response files are USUALLY those of us who are packing OOo as part of something else or who are installing OOo on a number of business computers in offices where people see OOo, learn about it, and often decide to change over at home as well. Again, while not a huge segment of the population of OOo users, it is still needless to pick the version of MSI that makes it difficult for them to distribute OOo. All the work the API team did to create a smooth transition from 1.x to 2.x was, in my case, almost nullified by this one choice by one group. I know they are aware of the need to create response files, they just ignored it. Hal --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
