Re: User Experience Engineering

[Ian Hawthorn]

The biggest improvement to initial usability on the windows platform would be quite simple. If lilypond is invoked without arguments (i.e. by clicking the icon on the desktop) do something ... anything ... at minimum display some documentation as to usage.  Else ...

... hmmm ... lilypond looks like it could do exactly what I want.
<download/install>
ahah ... new lilypond icon on desktop ... cute
<click> ... nothing happens
<click> <click> <click>
blasted thing isn't working ... looks like I'll have to buy finale after all.

Who these days reads the documentation first. Most people expect to download and run, and then have the software itself explain how it should be used. Lilyponds silent exit when invoked for the first time without arguments is extremely unfriendly given these expectations.

Best Wishes
Ian H


Joshua Koo wrote:

I see, didnt noticed that eariler.

Installers could detect if any JRE is available, then download/install them if needed. (commerial installers like http://www.advancedinstaller.com/ or http://www.denova.com/  does that), if not make a notice to download it from sun's page.

As for whether installer can uninstall other applications, its yes (esp if you have admin privillages in windows). An example is Google pack - http://pack.google.com

A batch file can be very written quickly eg..
:: LilypondPackageInstaller.bat
start /wait "ftp://blabla.org/java5.exe"
start /wait "http://blabla.org/lilypond.exe"
start /wait "http://blabla.org/jedit.exe"
start /wait "http://blabla.org/lilytool.exe"

But can the user might be confused after installers after another installer popups is a question. Maybe setting up a webpage like "Ultimate guide to lilypond on windows" with links to all the installers can be as easy but I thought the flash tutorials http://web.interware.hu/fodber/lilytut/ was quite good already. 

Joshua

  

As for free open source installers, maybe IzPack Java Software http://www.izforge.com/ could be used,.
      

-- begin quote from website --
IzPack is an installers generator for the Java platform. It produces
lightweight installers that can be run on any operating system 

_where a Java virtual machine_ is available.
-- end quote --
No it can't.. :-) But it shouldn't be hard to find another one.. 

Anoter question.. Can one deinstaller automatically dinstall other
packages (this one should deinstall JRE (is this a good idea?), jedit
and lilypond).. Perhaps it's easier to write a JS or bat or whatever
script which downloads the installer and launches them in order..
(with them hopefully not asking "restart computer" before having
finished..) *g*

Marc
    

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