[NTG-context] 2c considerations about win installer

[olivier]

On Fri, 21 Apr 2006 01:33:04 +0200, andrea valle wrote:

> Dear all,
> I'm using conTeXt to create automatic documentation about sound 
> classification. The idea is that starting from an html file collecting 
> infos about sounds my program can generate some schematic images using 
> R and POV-Ray and to create a conTeXt file including both images  and 
> textual information.
> 
> Now, I'd like to share this work with my students. I'm on macosx, 
> they're typically on win. My program is in python so it's 
> cross-platform, so no problem. Obviously they can annotate sounds,  
> generate images and include them manually in a MS word file. But I'd 
> prefer that they compile the conTeXt file.
> 
> On two win machines I tried to install conTeXt using the complete 
> package (shipped with Scite: nice). I had always (different) troubles 
> (on each machine) with environment variable (e.g. for Perl): actually 
> I'm not able to run conTeXt.
> 
> Hacking a bit, eventually asking the list, I think I will solve the 
> problem. But I don't think that my students can do, as I suspect that 
> they probably not even know what is PATH. And I cannot help them on 
> each installation.
> 
> So, more generally, I was asking myself if it would not be possible 
> (and better) to have an .exe installer as usual happens in win, 
> including Perl, maybe Ruby (+ or- 20 Mb doesn't change too much). 
> Double click, and it set ups all the installation parameters. A 
> completely autonomous installer would allow many people to try, use  
> and  get fond conTeXt (and maybe to leave Word) without having to 
> struggle with problems which typically lead people to leave out.
> 
> It seems to me that a similar installer would be a refinement in the 
> spirit of the actual mswincontext distro.
> At the end, it's not that far form Gerben's distro on macosx. It does 
> everything for me...
> Or maybe am I missing something?
> 
> Just my 2 c
> 
> Best
> 
> -a-
> 
> 
> 
> Andrea Valle
> DAMS - Facoltà di Scienze della Formazione
> Università degli Studi di Torino
> http://www.semiotiche.it/andrea
> andrea.valle at unito.it

If I'm not wrong,

If you go on http://www.pragma-ade.com/dir/context/install/ (click
documents > directory view > context > install), you will find that the
bigger *.zip (cdwincontext.zip) contains Perl & Ruby, while
mswincontext.zip no. So you can run Context out of the box with
cdwincontext. (untested, because I got Perl & Ruby already)

Your students can also install Ruby (single click .exe
 : Rubyinstaller from
 : http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/9417/ruby184-16_rc1.exe) 
and Perl (single click .exe : activePerl
:http://www.activestate.com/Products/ActivePerl/) whithout any pb's of
adding new executables to the path, since it's done while installation. 

Cheers

-- 
olivier Turlier