G. Roderick Singleton wrote:
Only with 1.1.x. For beta simply unpack the archive and double-click setup and select whether to install multi-user or single-user.
THere's the start of a SETUP_GUIDE.pdf at http://documentation.openoffice.org/ that has some graphics. What is on- line is not particularly current as there is a new edition in the pipe with more windows graphics but it should get you by.
I have a question for you as I do/will not use Windows willing so I am way out of date and others, such as yourself, are helping to build the guide. So the question is, does the guide have to tell a window user to disable virus scanners, shutdown any previous releases of OOo before installation? Anything else that window users need to know? I do hope that OOo2.x will eventually be packaged as a .exe without the need to unpack as this would certainly save much trouble.
First: I just installed the beta successfully on WinXP (home) with SP2. No glitches at all.
Second: I've never had a problem with virus scanners while installing OOo (or much of anything else for that matter). Disabling scanners makes a lot of Windows users justifiably nervous when dealing with software downloaded off the Net. It *does* speed things up considerably, though.
Third: Now that open-sauce software like OOo is making inroads into the mainstream, the designers would be doing themselves a favor by looking at the practices of commercial software. To whit: don't underestimate the ignorance of the customer. Some of this stuff may seem like no-brainers, but the volume of these kinds of questions on this list is testimony to the contrary.
I guess it depends on how many of these kinds of questions you want to answer day in and day out.
The norm for downloaded Window software is a self-extracting exe file that automatically launches into an installer. You expect to have to agree to some form of EULA and maybe answer a couple of "name and address" kind of questions.
You *don't* expect to be asked whether you want a single-user or multi-user install. The 2.0 installer is much improved over the 1.x in that regard, but to a home user the multiple logins for XP don't equate to "multi-user". That jargon is still a bit foreign to many. It also seems redundant to be presented with the EULA again when you first use the software and may lead many to believe the installation didn't proceed correctly. I can't recall off-hand any other software that makes you do that, although I'm sure there are examples.
Imagine the poor secretary coming to work Monday morning, firing up her workstation, and being presented with that dialog because the IT guys updated OOo over the weekend. Now imagine the poor IT guys fielding calls the rest of the day. Yikes.
It's probably just an issue of heritage. Server/workstation paradigm of *nix vs the solitary machine paradigm of DOS/Win.
In a way, asking what should be in the Setup Guide is the wrong question. The better question is, "Where should this basic information be presented?" I would vote for outlining the basic procedure on the download page of the site. I have to confess that I didn't look at the Setup Guide before I first tried to install. That was a mistake in retrospect, but in my defense, I had no reason to suppose that the installation procedure would be any different than the dozens (hundreds?) of installs I've done over the years. And it *was* different. Fortunately, 2.0 is much *less* different, but still has a couple of odd quirks to it.
Anything that's different from the norm needs to be explained as clearly as possible. Unless you really *like* answering the same questions again and again and again and ...
Rod
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