[tex-live] minor problems with install-tl

[Norbert Preining]

Hi Werner,

On Di, 28 Okt 2008, Werner LEMBERG wrote:
> During a train ride (with a slow internet connection which often
> stalled because the mobile connection was changed again and again) I

On an Austrian train by chance? I hate Austrian trains, the connection
are sooooo bad or better practically impossible.

>   . The script searched for a CTAN host and downloaded the database
>     before anything else.  This is bad, since later on it continued
>     with text-only mode because perl-tk wasn't installed.  Any reason
>     why the availability of perl-tk can't be checked immediately after
>     the start?

There is absolutely *no* relation between these two things. Even if you
immediately go into text mode it downloads the tlpdb first. 

I don't see your problem?
- Is it that the immediate downloading, or
- is it the switch from gui to text mode
?

>   . Neither CTAN host searching nor downloading the database gets
>     announced in advance.  With a bad connection it appears as if the

Well, if you want to install, then this database is needed, otherwise
the installer *simply* cannot proceed, because all the information on
what is available etc is in the database. There is *no* information
whatsoever stored in the installer itself.

>     program hangs.  So please tell the user in advance what the script
>     is doing.

Aehmm, why? The installer already tries first all possible to avoid a
network connection. It checks for presence of the CD content (in
archive/), then it checks for uncompressed files, and only if everything
local did not succeed, it continues with the network installation.

Yes, that is documented and explained, I don't see any need to announce
that.

>   . Please add a status bar which shows how much of the database has
>     been downloaded.  Ideally, with -gui, this should already happen
>     with a small GUI window.

Impossible. Downloading is down by wget, so we cannot easily provide a
statusbar.

Ok, on Unix we could, forking another thread (problematic with Perl/Tk
because it is not completely thread safe) and permanently reading the
file size, but still we don't know the final file size. Aehmmmm....

So sorry, no. Unless someone brave steps forward and rewrites the
installer.

Best wishes

Norbert

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Dr. Norbert Preining <preining at logic.at>        Vienna University of Technology
Debian Developer <preining at debian.org>                         Debian TeX Group
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