Proposal for an XP Working Group

[Christina Thiele]

In the absence (at present) of a formal development component, it
seems to me that the best way to proceed is to deal with the XP issue
ourselves.

Forum members have the most seat-time with various combinations of XP
+/- ATM + Y&YTeX ... we'd probably end up covering more testing
situations and combinations than a single developer could test ;-)

So, if we accept this statement of the present situation, I'd like to
propose that it might best be handled by forming an `XP Working Group'
to gather techsupport members' diverse experiences and try to channel
that information into the following points. If the points I'm just
tossing out here aren't quite pertinent or complete, then the XP
Working Group should feel free to make better ones.

What needs doing, in some form or other:

   a. Troll through all techsupport mail related to XP and list the
      specific details people have posted
or
   a. Build a grid of various combinations of Y&YTeX + XP + ATM +
      fonts (and their versions), and then ask for members to supply
      their details, in the hopes of covering most all combinations.

      The first method means trying to figure out if a message has
      sufficient info and it may just take too long. The second method
      might be a better way to start -- start from scratch and get
      all the details at once.

   b. Specifically ask Forum members who have installed a font
      AFTER having had Y&YTeX set up and running for their details.

   c. Explicitly identify ATM actions as being of v 4.0 or 4.1 (and
      attach `Lite' and `Deluxe' to each, to make things very
      clear!). I think it's possible that some e-mail makes this
      distinction but I myself don't have a firm sense of which one is
      involved in either installation or subsequent management.

   d. Nasty as it probably is -- we simply _must_ have some kind
      of advice vis-a-vis recovering from having made a goof:

        i. installing Y&YTeX before fonts (with no ATM involvement)
       ii. installing font first, but having left ATM active/on
      iii. installing a new font to an existing Y&YTeX installation,
           but having left ATM active
       iv. <add to the list of mis-steps ;-) >

For this last point (item d.), some Forum members may already have
found solutions. For others, perhaps the information gleaned by this
exercise will make it easier for the original developer, Berthold
Horn, to make suggestions. And maybe some of the solutions will turn
out not to be Y&Y in origin but directly related to XP -- for example,
I often see references to `get the latest patches to XP' ... does this
help the situation? Which versions are useful? Or irrelevant? There
are just so many variables ...

Does this sound like a reasonable way of bringing some documented
clarity to this XP situation? Let's see if we can't get this sorted
out, based on real experiences.


With respect to the XP Working Group:
   a. would three people be enough to populate it? Four?
   b. should we ask for an initial report/description to be ready a
      month from now? 6 weeks? 2 weeks?!

If interested, post a message to techsupport, so we know when the
group's been populated.

Ch.

P.S. Of course, I'm a good one to talk, eh?! I'm still on NT4 ;-)) I
     can blather and organise ... but I'm not an XP person. Not
     yet. So my self-interest is quite clear: I want to know what to
     do when the time comes to upgrade ;-))