2c considerations about win installer

[andrea valle <valle@di.unito.it>]

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@unito.it