[tex-live] Fwd: [tldoc] offer of help with an install guide for the unsophisticated windows user

[Norbert Preining]

Dear Yue,

thanks for your suggestions, they are much appreciated.

I think most of your suggestions make perfect sense but ...

On Di, 13 Jan 2009, Yue Wang wrote:
> So here are my suggestions for our dvd. When autorun is started, it
> should launch a window contained four buttons:
> - use TeX Lively in a command window
> - launch TeX Editing Environment
> - install whole TeXLive distribution into hard drive
> - configure TeXLive installation
> we should also show explanations if they move mouse pointer to each button.

There is one thing missing: Do an Expert Installation with all the
options. Some actually want to do that ;-)

I guess that we can do that. I boils down that someone (who, me?
probably) has to write a perl/Tk script that does the above. Not hard.

The first option would simply call portable-tl.bat with the right
options.

The second option would do something we don't know by now.

The third option would ask for the path, create a .profile and calls
install-tl -profile temp-profile which does the actual installation
Maybe ask for "Expert mode" or something similar.

The last options would be only present if tlmgr can be found in the
path, in which case it is simply launched.

> A software program can be called good if it is robust, and can be
> called awesome only when it is mature and user friendly. I think it is
> possible for the new users to use and install TL without reading the
> manuals, so why don't we implement those features?

Time constraints? I have programmed all the GUI stuff myself without any
prior knowledge of Perl/Tk (only perl, and Tcl/Tk). And I am full time
mathematician and part time mountain guide, soooo there are many things
one *could* do, but the volunteers are lacking.

In fact the above perl/Tk script I consider a very good starting point
for someone who wants to help. It is no overly complex, it does not have
to know all the details of the TeX Live system (only the format of a
.profile). 

So, volunteers, any?

Again thanks a lot Yue for your suggestions, they are much appreciated,
and we will try to implement someting similar for 2009.

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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