[sword-devel] Win Sword Module

[Chris Little]

>     Well I was thinking as I was writing up the installation instructions
> for installing Sword Module Add-ins for the new website that it would be
> easier and faster for the end user to simply unzip the module files into
> the
> local directory.

Windows users don't always know where things should go.  An installer takes that responsibility away from them.  It would definitely simplify things if the zips only needed to be double-clicked to initiate decompression & installation, but I think the installer itself is useful.

Making the zips self-extracting might be difficult because they're created by java.util.zip and I haven't found anyone who has subclassed this to make win32 self-extracting zips that can run a contained file.

> Why do we have a setup program that then launches a Dos
> program to unzip everything? Does this work in WinME?

I don't know why it wouldn't work in ME.  I don't think it's actually running DOS.  Besides, maybe we could use ourselves as a tool for encouraging people to use any operating system other than this abomination. :)

> How much manual work
> would there be to convert everything into self-extracting zip files?

We have 195 modules right now.  Every one of them would need to be repackaged.  Plus, every time a module is added or updated, that would have to be manually packaged.  It's not a job for which I will ever volunteer.

On top of that, all the servlets and jsps would need to be modified to handle this.

As a side note, if anyone is really considering redoing the ModDisp.jsp stuff in another language, I would recommend against it.  The jsp uses portions of Sword ported to Java, so it's actually using the API to figure out which modules are available and their various properties.  It would be better to extend ModDisp.jsp to have additional functionality, IMO.

--Chris