Timothy Reaves wrote: > A lot of the responders are missing the point, and are holding to their > 'if I can figures it out, so should anyone else' mentality.
I don't think that anybody has missed the point. For example, the suggestion to grey out the glossary entry if the package is not available makes sense. I don't remember anybody writing that it is not needed, and hopefully somebody (Abdel?) will implement that. There are reasons not to go much further, see below. > Many people > have mentioned relying on their OS'es package management system. Oh, > wait, only the UNIX variants have them. Windows and OS X do not. So, > LaTeX and LyX are only for Linux users. Gotcha! > > There are things that try and act like package management systems on > both Windows and Mac, and none of them work very well. I won't argue > that point here (just see above is this thread for the comment on > MiKTeX, and the various issues with the several different Mac systems on > offer). > > If there were some 'official' TeX package management system, ported to > the different platforms, I'd see some of the detractors points. And I'm > not saying LyX users should be forced to use a LyX package management > system. I'm saying it's needed for more wide-spread adoption. Perhaps > that's no ones goal, and I understand that too. A LyX package management system will create far too much support and maintenance work, so we can't afford it. We have seen that the automatic miktex stuff does not work, since it interferes with firewalls, adds long delays when nobody expects them or even stalls LyX completely because of a strict firewall. We don't have the resources to create and maintain a package manager, so the only thing we can do is to document what is needed and give good error messages. In your case, if you try to typeset a document with glossaries an error message should tell that the nomencl package is needed, but not avvailable. > Mac's have a wonderful setup of ~/Library/Application Support where > such files could be downloaded. On Windows, there is the users (seldom > used for much) home directory. On UNIX, there is the ubiquitous '.' > directories in ~. Most LyX users are just going to want these files > installed, and wouldn't be using them outside of LyX. > > Again, perhaps wide spread adoption isn't a goal; but if it is, why do > you think so many people would try LyX, and give it up after a few hours > to go back to OpenOffice? People want to USE their computers, not play > with them configuring them correctly for use (which is why it's one of > the most important usability guidelines). Try not to forget that. Sure. But please don't forget that there are not enough developer resources available to implement everything that would be useful. Georg
