[tex-live] Comment on Re: TeXLive-CD/DVD (Installation)

[David Kastrup]

"George N. White III" <gnwiii at gmail.com> writes:

> On 5/22/07, Nelson H. F. Beebe <beebe at math.utah.edu> wrote:
>
>> If a simple, freely-distributable, standalone POSIX shell for Windows
>> (NT, ME, 2000, XP, VISTA, ...) could be found, along with the set of
>
> It might be possible to use the same install scripts if you allow
> some preliminary setup on Windows, but there would likely be some
> annoying constraints on the way the *x scripts must be written.
> Even with the best intentions, it is hard to be disciplined if you
> don't actually use the installer on Windows (or anywhere else).
> Testing would be impractical if the Windows install ties up a
> machine for half a day.

Part of my experiences in that respect are that a large part of the
workload for getting a Windows-usable installer is to write a correct
one for *x which is surprisingly hard to do.  No sane person will
under *x use filenames with spaces and other special characters in
them.

Under Windows, a _default_ location for many things is "Documents and
Settings".  Uh.  Or "My Programs".

And the directory separator under Windows needs to get escaped to
shells.  Ugh.

Now if your installation scripts have no problems dealing with
backslashes and spaces in file names, you are almost there.  The
problem is the same under *x and Windows, but under *x you just don't
get to see the effects.

This is slowly changing with the spread of GUIs and file managers and
desktop environments (instead of command line interfaces) where people
can create terrible file names effortlessly.

-- 
David Kastrup