[sword-devel] Win Sword Module

[Jonathan Hughes]

Chris,

    Point understood and not worth changing right now. Maybe something that
could be looked at in the future. Now my question is how to make it simple
for someone that is downloading the Windows zip files to be able to unzip
them and install them. The problem lies in all of the files that are zipped
in that one zip file, where does the average user unzip all of those files
to? It will make a mess of their hard drive real quick with downloading and
installing all the modules they want. How can we creatively tell them how to
over come this problem so they don't get confused?

In Christ,
Jonathan
jhughes@crosswire.org

----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris Little" <chrislit@chiasma.org>
To: <sword-devel@crosswire.org>
Sent: Saturday, July 07, 2001 5:30 PM
Subject: RE: [sword-devel] Win Sword Module


> >     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