Am 09.05.2011 15:52, schrieb Jim Oldfield:
1. the installer doesn't recognize if Ghostscript is already installed
2. the installer doesn't recognize if Python is already installed
3. the installer doesn't recognize if Imagemagick is already installed
For point 3: My fault. It is correct, that we don't detect it! The reason is that Imagemagick
releases very often and very often with bugs. I therefore once switched to ship in every case a
stripped-down Imagemagick version with LyX as also the new installer does. This has the advantage
that we assure a bug-free version of this program which will save us a lot of troubles we had in the
past.
For Python and ghostscript I still think that we should recognize them and use existing (and tested)
versions.
For computers where these are installed, we unnecessarily take 42 MB of
disk space.
Personally, am I happy to sacrifice 40MB of disk space if it means that
uninstalling other programs doesn't suddenly stop LyX from working.
This doesn't happen and never did. LyX will only uninstall things that were installed together with
LyX. So all programs that were installed prior to LyX are kept untouched.
The opposite is technically also not possible, because when LyX should uninstall it, it needs to
detect it first.
4. the installer doesn't recognize if Inkscape is already installed
Because of this, SVG images look broken within LyX.
In contrast to 1-3, of course I agree with this: I don't suggest bundling all of
Inkscape with LyX. (If there were an easy way to bundle a small part of it and
get SVG conversion I would support that, I but presume that there isn't.)
My installer doesn't bundle Inkscape. There are several programs that can be used to process
SVG-files. The installer therefore checks for an installed Inkscape and Adobe illustrator. If one of
them is installed, this will be used for SVG images.
I have a related question, which came up on lyx-users recently. What happens if
you install two copies of LyX (e.g. 2.0.x and 1.6.x)? Presumably the second
installation doesn't "harm" the metafile2eps printer, but when one of them is
uninstalled, is the printer gone forever?
Currently, yes. So a good point. Our uninstaller needs an option not to uninstall the printer. This
can be done easily. I'll put it on the merging list.
10. The last installer page should have an option to start LyX after
installing it, as in my installer. This behaviour is more or less a standard
and many people expect that the program is opened after installing.
Actually, this is an anachronism, and I ask that it is _not_ added.
The problem is, the installation could easily have been "run as" an admin user.
This is increasingly common thanks to UAC in Vista/7, and I think it should be
treated as the default use case.
I prefer to let the user decide what he likes. The default would not to start it. If the user likes
to, he can check the option at the end of the installation. However, you are right, that this
feature is not important, more a nice to have thing.
6. When LyX is uninstalled, the registry key HKCU\Software\LyX\lyx20 is not
deleted. This causes problems when LyX is reinstalled, because there the
toolbar settings etc. are stored.
Presumably when LyX is installed for one user in their profile folder (rather
than for all users in program files) the registry key is in a different location
too. If so, this feature should only be added if this is taken into account.
Sure.
I have mixed feelings about the "delete user settings" option existing at all.
In the situation I discussed in 10, this option has no effect, and worse the
user has no way of knowing this. So I think it should only be present if LyX was
installed in a user profile folder (not the program files directory).
This feature is essential! I had many times the case that I could only help users on the mailing
list, by telling them that they should reinstall LyX. The deletion of the user preferences lead to a
clean registry and registry problems are often the cause why LyX doesn't run correctly.
11. When installing LyX the first time, and therefore also MiKTeX is
installed the first time, the configure.py file should be run in a console
window. This is very important because the first installation will install
more than 50 LaTeX-packages and take approximately half an hour. In the
console window the user can see that there is some progress. Without this
information, many users will kill the install process because they think it
hung up.
An even better idea, if it is possible, is to capture the stdout/stderr of this
and redirect it to a list box in the installer, possibly hidden behind a "more
details" button. Until the "more details" button is clicked, a simple warning
about the length of the process could be shown.
Fine with me. How it is done is not important, important is to give the user a feedback about the
progress. I had cases on older machines or with slow Internet, where installing the LaTeX-packages
took over an hour.
thanks and regards
Uwe
