On 10/05/2011 10:27 PM, Uwe Stöhr wrote:
Am 10.05.2011 21:01, schrieb Joost Verburg:
"Uwe Stöhr" <uwesto...@web.de> wrote in message
news:4dc9150a.9060...@web.de...
Am 10.05.2011 02:08, schrieb Uwe Stöhr:
Seems to be a problem of the MiKTeX repositories: LyX's first run of
configure.py runs through
without installing any LaTeX-package. That's why I couldn't see in
this case no feedback from the
installer. I'll investigate further.
Yes I noticed this too now when doing a fresh installation on XP 64-bit.
Let me know if you can find out what's going on with MiKTeX here.
OK, there was indeed a problem with my MiKTeX installation residues in
the registry. now the installation runs through as expected, but there
are thing we should improve:
a. When LyX is installed together with MiKTeX we need to set an
installation location and hide MiKTeX's window that asks for every
LaTeX-package. New users don't understand what a LaTeX-package is - they
will learn it in the LyX tutorial but thus after the installation. I
therefore set in my installer MiKTeX without showing the asking windows
and just start installing the packages. (Once the MiKTeX developer
especially built in the feature for LyX.)
b. the installer has a button "Details", but this button should be
pressed by default when MiKTeX is installed together with LyX. This only
affects new users and they might not expect that the installation
process can take many minutes. I therefore also state this in my
installer because I once got several complaints.
About the installation of miktex packages, in my mind ideally it should
happen like this:
Tell the user what is going to happen. The user decides whether they
want it to happen or not. By default, the packages should be installed.
But it is toggleable. It should be clear what is going to happen, in
particular which packages will be installed (if they care to know). Once
it happens, it should happen all in one go.
And here is a proposal to do this:
1) keep a list of packages required by LyX: say packages.txt
2) query the miktex package manager about the already installed packages:
mpm --admin --list-package-names > installed.txt
3) determine which packages in packages.txt are missing in installed.txt
4) have an option in the installer to install these missing packages
5) call the miktex package manager directly with a call
mpm --admin --install-some=packages.txt
(yes, it's extra work but I would volunteer to help on this)
This in my opinion is better than the configure/install-on-the-fly
setup. This proposal
- is installing packages all at once instead of one at a time
- is clear about how many packages it needs to install
- is a little bit more clear how long is it going to take
One could even imagine parsing the output of mpm to show some progress
bar. Extra points to let the user cherry-pick the packages in step 4 :)
Regards,
Julien
