Am 28.06.2012 00:20, schrieb Liviu Andronic:
made about 50 times a decision. The installer is the first thing a new user
sees and he cannot know anything at this state.
I concur...
If such users need to choose
(or actually choose) something other than 'Install packages on the
fly', LyX is effectively broken for them.
Yes, that is the problem. I held about 20 talks about LyX, how to use it, and its benefits. The
people then try to test it our and of course they were baffled about all the question of the current
installer. Then they called me and I had to explain it again and again. This is not frustrating for
me but as a new user you expect not to be bothered with things you cannot know.
Moreover when people are able to work with LyX they try out more special features and are then
annoyed that they got LaTeX errors about missing packages. Thus I we should by default install all
packages LyX needs/supports.
Another point is that in a company and also in most of the universities you don't have admin
privileges. If you ask your admin to install a program he will do this, but you cannot install
things later. If MiKTeX was once installed by your admin you can install additional packages also
without admin privileges but if the admin updates MiKTeX later your personal packages might not work
anymore.
An example: No matter what your profession is you get the task to determine the bonding length of a
molecule. You google a bit and find the program Avogadro:
http://avogadro.openmolecules.net/wiki/Main_Page
You install it and then can work through the tutorial. But what would you do if the installer asks
you several times to install plugins like the "GAMESS", "POV-ray" etc.? At installation time you
cannot know what these plugins are about and if you will later need them so the safest is to install
them all silently and that is what also the new LyX installer does.
The installer should be as
simple as possible for the average user, not necessarily convenient
enough for expert users. Perhaps to accommodate both the option should
be placed in an Advanced tab, with a stern warning.
This is not necessary because as advanced user you know how to change the settings of MiKTeX at any
time to whatever you like. (Btw. my experience is that about 90% of the users (if not more) never
had a look at MikTeX settings nor ever installed a package. I had users who wrote their Ph.D. and
some scientific papers and still don't know what a package is.)
Developers of LyX don't need an installer as they can simply copy the files they compiled to an
appropriate place so the installer is not made to please us developers.
Personally I still find the Windows installation of LyX confusing and
complicated, with UI freezes and lots of waiting time. Each time I
have to do it for a friend, it's pretty much an ordeal. (This is less
a critic of the Windows installer than a praise of the ease of
installation in Linux.)
I'm also not happy that MiKTeX's package installation takes that long but it cannot be sped up
according to the MiKTeX developer.
But as the new installer is now ready, we have a framework to improve it further. For example I will
try to implement full support for TeXLive when the new TeXLive 2012 version is released in July.
Maybe then the package installation is much faster and we can switch to TeXLive for new installations.
regards Uwe
