1. Friday Progress Report on Installer
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Howdy y'all!
This is mainly just a progress report to let you all know how work is
progressing with the Windows Installer.
The packager (a DOS app) has been built. This packager allows me to place
all the needed files into one eds file, which will be distributed with the
installation program, either as one large file, or cut into three
floppy-disk sized chunks.
I am currently working on the installation program itself now, specifically
the various forms and code needed to get necessary information from the
user, such as where to put the Euphoria folder, which options they want, and
so on. I am hopeful that I'll complete the information gathering section of
the program by the end of the weekend, and begin tackling the act of
installing and adjusting the user's autoexec.bat file next week.
As far as the "optional equipment" is concerned, I have gotten permission
from everyone to include their libraries, with the exception of Mr. White,
and CS:EE. I attempted to reach him at the email address given in the
documentation (cyrek at bigfoot.com) last Friday, but had no luck. If you
happen to be reading the list, Mr. White, please contact me privately.
Although the license says that re-distribution is allowed, I'd like specific
permission as this is going to be a *major* redistribution of your code.
I have not seen him on the list in a while, and I fear that CS:EE might be
orphanware, which would be a Very Sad Thing. 
Some of things which I'd like to have the installer do is ...
1. Associate Euphoria files with ex.exe and exw.exe. There are keys for
this in the Registry, I believe, but messing with the Registry makes me
rather nervous. Well, okay, it gives me shivers.
2. Create shortcuts for the Euphoria documentation and editors. I've
looked in win32.hlp, and found no guidelines for doing this using Windows
API. I'll continue researching this. If someone out there already knows
how, please let me know!
Also, I should say that the creation of shortcuts will be *completely*
optional. Nothing irritates me more than when an application installs a
bajillion shortcuts all over my system. The installer, if allowed, will
install any shortcuts in one folder only.
On the subject of an Internet installation, I've decided that at this point,
I'll make the installer an non-Internet application. **However,**
subsequent versions will have this capability. It was suggested that Mr.
Craig write a CGI "front-end" to the installer, which would allow the user
to pull the optional libraries right off the archive pages. While it is up
to him to agree or not agree to such an arrangement, this would saddle him
with the responsibility of making sure that packages packaged, updating the
code as necessary, and basically making him responsible for half of the
installation program. The way I see it, if that was what he wanted, he'd
have already built a Windows installer himself. Basically, imho, such a
setup would distract him from his work with the translator and Euphoria 2.3,
so I guess we ought to just let him do what he does best: produce and
improve a wonderful programming language!
Finally, please find attached a screenshot of the Installer. I shrank it
down to 3/4 size so that the size of the attachment, hopefully, doesn't make
anyone mad. If it does, tell me *nicely,* and I'll never, ever, do that
again.
-- Travis --
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