On Mon, 18 Jun 2007, "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" wrote:
I assume you're rather computer savvy. Would you say above average (for a Windows user)?
Yes, I think I could say above average. I'm able to install windows and have already tried ubuntu, puppy linux and some others. I'm using texlive under ubuntu and last tried miktex 2.4 on win98. I find the tex package management in miktex awesome, which allows to just install a basic system and installs on the fly any needed package upon compiling the tex file. That's some long needed feature under linux.
This obviously needs to be clarfied. Did you look at any kind of documentation or description of the installer before chosing the bundled version? If so, would you mind looking again and say if you think there's an obvious place to put this 'caveat'? (I could add such an information, but I'd like to add it in a place where the user actually looks... :-)
I didn't. From the news entry on the website, I went straight to the ftp site (ftp://ftp.devel.lyx.org/pub/lyx/pre/) where the binaries are located. There are just 2 windows installers to pick from for 1.5rc1: LyX-1.5.0rc1-Installer-bundle.exe LyX-1.5.0rc1-Installer.exe I picked the bundle, as I wanted to have one big package to handle everything at once and I assumed that one would do the trick. As for a caveat, one could write a readme file write on the ftp-site explaining the files. I didn't landed on the wiki (http://wiki.lyx.org/Windows/Windows) by means of the download page (http://www.lyx.org/download/), though. Regarding the bundle, the wiki page states: "This version includes all components and is intended to install LyX on multiple computers." Here one could be more explicit, explaining that aspell dictionaries and other miktex packages will still be (automatically) grabbed and installed from the internet during the installation. A few lines explaining why the alternative installer is different from the standard installer would be nice, too.
The reason for why MikTeX wants/needs to go online should probably be added and explained. I don't know why, but others will probably tell us.
I think now I know. I think that *the* basic miktex installation is installed with the standard installer. LyX doesn't need any extra packages to run (in my case, though, because of my choice of german and DINA4, it does need koma script to compile the documents), but LyX comes also with many templates for all sorts of documents (which is great!). For compiling the documents written in those templates some latex document class files are needed. Miktex knew this upon installation and tried to get them right away. For the record, every time I run LyX after a reboot miktex again asks for permission to download and install the missing packages. I also was wrong in my estimate: they are ~50.
All the dictionary installers sum up to around 30-60 MB, so at worst it would almost double the size.
That's a lot of MBs ;-). But still, from my point of view, it does make sense to provide an installer with everything on it, including spellchecking for the officially supported languages and sty-packages for the officially supported templates. Maybe you could not just include the basic miktex installer in your lyx installer, but a modified installer which already has the class packages that lyx will need?
Uwe, does your complete installer contain dictionaries as well? If that's the case, Rafael might simply have been better off using that installer... Perhaps that's even the case with the MikTeX packages, I don't know. Rafael, did you look at the "alternative" installer?
I didn't. See above.
> Why this is needed in order to just run lyx escapes my > understanding. What's not obvious is that these aren't needed. I believe it's ok for MikTeX to fail to install these, and LyX will still run. Please correct me if this wasn't the case for you.
LyX did run. See above. Thanks for answering. Best regards Rafael
