On Sun, 28 Jan 2007, Edwin Leuven wrote:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I think we probably should supply a minimal installer for LyX, i.e.
something that installs the LyX application and nothing else.
note that joost's installer basically works like this by skipping the
download of the components...
Yes (I thought that was obvious, sorry).
Experts might use it for this reason, but not many other Windows users.
Under these assumptions, I'd say the minimal installer will not be used
very often,
i would say that this would happen very often since people will update lyx
more often than they install it for the 1st time.
I'd say it depends a lot on how often there are new releases of LyX... The
major releases aren't exactly frequent :-)
If there are frequent releases of LyX, I certainly agree that the minimal
installer would be used frequently. However, if the releases are more
rarely used, a bundling installer might be better *assuming* it also lets
you upgrade the other packages. This is especially interesting if a new
bundled installer comes with a new version of say ImageMagick that fixes a
problem that occurs when using LyX and ImageMagic together.
Q:... Can either of the installers be used to upgrade a LyX installation?
In other words, what happens if there already is a LyX installation?
(If none of the installers is useful for upgrading LyX, we should be
discussing that instead)
The kind of installer I expect almost everyone would use is a bundle
installer that installs the LyX application as well as a bunch of other
useful applications.
not so sure, i think that many (most?) people who install (try out) lyx for
the 1st time will be latex users and will have miktex already installed, for
them there is no point in downloading it again...
I've never used LaTeX directly. I used LyX on *nix where LaTeX is already
installed. If I were to use LyX on Windows I wouldn't even know how to
install LaTeX. So, speaking as a *nix user that must now use Windows at
work, I don't have an existing LaTeX installation. I'd certainly use the
bundle installer.
When I used LyX regularly, I used to show it to my PhD colleagues (not
LaTeX users) and they were usually impressed. If there had been a bundle
installer at the time I think it would have been quite easy to get them to
try it. It might even have been possible to get my supervisor to use
it...
So I think that Uwe has a goal in aiming for an installer with a "simple"
installation mode that installs a working system.
Having said that, I think we should provide for the advanced users as
well. I don't see why the installer couldn't start with a question asking
about installation mode. Perhaps:
(*) Quick installation - few questions asked, a default set
of applications will be installed. [list of apps.]
( ) Custom installation - detailed questions asked. Possible
to set manual paths to tools etc.
what is wrong with having a dowloading and bundled installer from the
same source (ie joost's)?
Absolutely nothing. I think any/all installers should be from the same
source. I don't care which source. (Asking which source is sort of silly
as Joost sort of forked off (rewrote?) Uwe's code to begin with).
I did however find joost's downloading installer annoying/frustrating to
use. I agree it is technically elegant to download the extra applications
as needed, but unfortunately all the pauses in between while downloading
are very frustrating. This could probably be fixed - just using a single
download pause would be perceived as less annoying. It would be even
better if the rest of the applications could be downloaded while the first
application is being installed.
In fact, if it was up to me I'd add a recommendation to the Windows wiki
page saying that people without a previous LaTeX installation in general
should use the 'network installation bundle'.
/C
--
Christian Ridderström, +46-8-768 39 44 http://www.md.kth.se/~chr
