The REALLY bad thing about Python lists ..
Steve Holden
sholden at bellatlantic.net
Wed May 17 18:02:31 EDT 2000
Glyph Lefkowitz wrote:
>
[SNIP]
>
> Me - "I've got some more of the code done. Do you guys want to try it out?"
> Linux User - "Sure. Do I need python installed?"
> Me - "Type 'python'. Does anything happen?"
> Linux User - "Yeah, a >>> prompt comes up."
> Me - "OK, just download the software."
> (5 minutes later)
> Linux User - "Got the file; ... what do I do with it?"
> Me - "On the command line, tar xvzf mysoftware.tar.gz, then cd mysoftware; ./run"
> Linux User - "OK, it's running. Thanks!"
>
> Windows User - "What do I need?"
> Me - "Well, first you'll need WinZip ... download it from www.winzip.com"
> (20 minutes later)
> Windows User - "OK installed. What else do I need?"
> Me - "You need Python: go to www.python.org, download it, and install it."
> (20 minutes later)
> Windows User - "Grr. OK installed. It asked me about tcl/tk but I didn't install that."
> Me - "No, you need that. Uninstall and then reinstall and install that too."
> (5 minutes later)
> Windows User - "Augh! Done. OK now what?"
> Me - "Download mysoftware.zip, and double-click on it. That should open up WinZip...."
>
> (the windows user will almost always become frustrated at this point
> and forget about it, being "just a user" and confused by all this
> high-falutin terminology of "archives" and "virtual machines",
> assuming that WinZip works at all. I need to build a friggin'
> installer soon so this stops happening.)
>
Of course, if YOU have WinZip you can build self-extracting distributions,
which
your users can hopefully just run without installing WinZip first. Or am I
missing something?
Not that I'd discourage you from builing a friggin' installer, but you might
overcome some early resistance with this halfway-house solution.
regards
Steve
--
"Bulding information systems just because it's fun."
Steve Holden sholden at bellatlantic.net 703 716 7275
More information about the Python-list
mailing list