On Apr 10, 1:19 am, "Yi Qiang" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> William forgot to CC sage-devel.
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: William Stein <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Date: Wed, Apr 9, 2008 at 4:18 PM
> Subject: Re: use zip instead of 7zip for distributing the sage binary
> To: Yi Qiang <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
> On Wed, Apr 9, 2008 at 1:57 PM, Yi Qiang <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > Hi all,
> > When creating binary releases for Sage in the future, could we please
> > put out a release in the 'zip' format as well as '7z'?
>
> > The success rate of installing Sage in my algebraic geometry class is
> > incredibly low. Today 2 students told me they couldn't get Sage
> > working on their Windows machines so they gave up and used Maple
> > instead.
>
> > Both of them were stuck at trying to _decompress_ Sage. They had no
> > idea what 7zip was and asked why we use 7zip, instead of WinZip, which
> > everyone knows and for which Windows has support built-in. I told them
> > about how the compression ratio is better for 7zip. Their comment was
> > "it's already such a big download anyways, what's the difference?"
>
> > I think using zip instead of 7z removes one of the many hoops users
> > have to jump through to get Sage working on their Windows box.
>
> +1
>
> I very strongly agree with this. I've completely *replaced* the 7z file with
> a zip file, updated the readme, etc.
<rant>
Sigh. To put it mildly this borders on the insane. I am all for user
friendliness, but if you are attending college and you are not capable
following simple instructions to install a piece of software than
maybe you aren't ready to use computer algebra software. Sage itself
isn't some program that my virtual aunt Tilly uses to do some basic
computer task, but a full fledged CAS where RTFM is required to use it
beyond the "1+1" stage. Having done my fair share of work as an admin
I can understand that software can be hard to use and/or intimidating,
but this reminds me of a user friendly carton a while back where
instead of a sign at an amusement ride where it said "You must be this
tall to ride this ride" it said "You must be this smart to use the
Internet". The little hand did point above chimp, but below cave man I
will spare you the rest of this rant, but the initial version in my
head did feature a couple choice words I prefer not to write in a
public forum.
</rant>
Instead of switching to to Winzip I would much rather use the "Self-
extracting capability for 7z format" of 7zip. Bandwidth is a finite
resource and I am not convinced that using some crappy old compression
technology is the answer. And people who are unaware of the existence
of any compression format beyond zip out there will still click on an
executable.
> -- William
Oh well,
Michael "kids, get off my lawn" Abshoff
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