[tex-live] On Windows, install TL for all users by default

[Siep Kroonenberg]

On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 02:46:36PM +0100, Denis Bitouzé wrote:
> Le mardi 28/01/14 à 13h17,
> Siep Kroonenberg <siepo at cybercomm.nl> a écrit :
> 
> > On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 08:16:45AM +0100, Denis Bitouzé wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > > 
> > > on Windows, when installing with administrator rights (and with
> > > both the default and advanced installers), TL 2013 is not installed
> > > for all users. AFAICS, this is not the case for usual programs (I
> > > just tested it with Mozilla, VLC, TeXstudio).
> > 
> > If you run the advanced installer without admin privileges, you get
> > a popup telling you that you cannot install for all users unless you
> > install as administrator.
> 
> Okay.
>  
> > Note that even if you are logged in as administrator under Vista and
> > later, you still need to explicitly run the installer as
> > administrator.
> 
> Okay.
>   
> > The simple installer does indeed always install for the current
> > user.
> 
> That's what I'm suggesting to change :)
>   
> > With a single-user install, users have all the permissions they
> > might want when they run TeX Live Manager later on. And most pcs are
> > in practice single-user pcs anyway.
> 
> I stumbled upon this trouble with two students, two sisters, who shared
> the same computer: during the LaTeX session, one of them installed TL as
> administrator and later, at home, her sister was very surprised to be
> able to open TeXstudio, but unable to compile any .tex file.
>  
> AFAIK, it would be harmless to make, on Windows, TL install by default
> for all users.

As I wrote in my previous mail: TeX Live Manager is the main reason
for a single-user install as default. We could add a warning about
it, but more text means less simplicity, and people don't read those
texts anyway. No solution is going to be optimal for everybody.

The client scripts at http://www.tug.org/texlive/w32client.html are
written for a different situation, but they do create path settings
and file associations for an already present TeX Live, and could
make TL usable for the second sister.

-- 
Siep Kroonenberg