Re: LilyPond 1.3.148

[Mats Bengtsson]

address@hidden said:
> ``Lily Wins on Windows

I tried the new Windows installation procedure and have some
comments.

- (main objection): The installation gives you a cygwin shell
  and an environment that looks like a UNIX shell. 
  One motivation for this choice is that it gives something
  that's familiar to us UNIX addicts on the list which should
  simplify the support, since we recognize the environment. 
  I'm not at all convinced that it will simplify the support, 
  rather the opposite, since we give the Windows users something
  they do not recognize at all, meaning that we have to answer
  all kind of ``trivial'' questions. 
  Also, the cygwin environment is very primitive compared to 
  an ordinary UNIX shell (the installation didn't even include
  a `more' command) and seems to be well-known for its lack of 
  documentation, which makes it clumsy to use also for people
  used to UNIX.

  The previous installation scripts, by Jeff Reed and 
  James Hammons provided an environment more familiar to 
  Windows users, where you could at least run from an 
  ordinary DOS shell.

  Of course, the incentive for us to provide a Windows version
  at all, is to get a user group large enough to be able to 
  support themselves, also with installation procedures. Then,
  an alternative motivation for the current setup is that that's
  what we have the competence to do.

- Several paths in the setup files are hard-coded. `Program Files', 
  for example, is only called so in the English Windows versions.
  The installer should really try to find the correct path for
  Python and MikTeX (by looking in the registry).

- convert-ly and the other Python scripts require a wrapper
  similar to the one for ly2dvi.

- There's definitely a need for some documentation of the installer.
  I answered most of these mysterious questions at random and was
  lucky enough to succed (maybe it works no matter what you click on).
  Also, when I started the cygwin window, it wrote some complaints
  about problems to find Python and MikTeX but I needed quite some
  UNIX competence to track down how and where to fix it. 

- Would it be difficult to include automatic downloading of Python
  and MikTeX if they're not installed?

   /Mats