installer user interface glitch ?

[rurpy at yahoo.com]

On 11/01/2015 09:43 AM, Chris Angelico wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 2, 2015 at 3:24 AM, rurpy--- via Python-list <python-list at python.org> wrote:
>> I dont recall seeing anyone posting asking why they could not get
>> Python to install on Windows 95 recently.  I only read this group
>> intermittently but I have seen *many* posts asking why they couldnt
>> install on XP.
>>
>> You acknowledge yourself: "there are a lot more XP boxes out there."
> 
> Yes, there are. This is not a customer base; they are not paying me,
> nor (as far as I know) the PSF, to support them.

I wasn't asking *you* to do anything. And I wasn't asking for python
to support XP. I'm not sure how you have possibly got that idea.
In fact I wasn't *asking* anyone to do anything.

I was pointing out (the obvious) that there was a problem with people
not understanding that Python-3.5 will not run on XP and suggesting a
low-cost way to reduce that problem.

>>> There *is* a plan to have the installer give a better error message
>>> for this situation.
>>
>> A better message from the installer is necessary but not sufficient.
>> Don't make people go through the effort to download the whole thing,
>> do their planning and preparations for using or upgrading Python
>> only to discover at the last moment it wont work.
> 
> The largest installer [1] is 30MB, which might have been considered
> large a decade ago, but on today's connections, that's probably going
> to download in less time than it takes people to search for "python",
> find python.org, and decide to click the download link. The web
> installer is less than one megabyte. If you can't afford to download a
> single meg of executable to find out whether something works on your
> system, you probably can't afford to download the page with the info
> telling you not to bother downloading the binary.

As I said it is not solely the number of minutes needed to download
something.

And not everyone in the world has high-speed reliable connection.
It wasn't that long ago my internet connection was a modem. And
even today with screaming fast 100KB/s (sometimes) connection I often
have to babysit a download to get it to complete or deal with long
outages. There are plenty of places much less connected than I am.
And of course those are the same places where people are more likely
to still be using XP.

>> That is really shitty customer relations.
> 
> See above, and define 'customer'.

customer: the people to whom you are providing a product or service.

Of course, unless the PSF has a charter that imposes some legal
requirements, PSF/Python development community has no legal
obligation to do anything for anyone. They could add spam-ware
to the installer, make backward incompatible changes on a whim,
release software that crashes when started.

Now could we return to reality please?

>> The reality is that people trying install Python-3.5 on XP *is* a
>> problem.  Telling them they should have read some obscure release
>> notes is not a solution.
> 
> Nor is telling them they should have read the web site that they
> downloaded it from. Remember, people can click a direct download link
> *on the python.org front page* and be immediately downloading Python 2
> or 3 for the OS that the browser announces. 

Where is that? I didn't see anything that wasn't accompanied with text
that could accommodate a windows xp warning. But then I was looking
at it from a Linux machine. And even if it is impossibly awkward to
provide in one case (though I doubt that's the case), there certainly
should be a warning on the windows specific pages.

AFAIK, the only place where dropping XP support is mentioned in the
docs is way down the bottom of What's New. PEP-11 doesn't count --
it unrealistic in the extreme to expect a Windows user who wants to
try Python to read (or even know about) the PEPs, or that one of
them describes supported OSes.

> Where would you put the
> big fat noisy warning?

I would not put a "big fat noisy warning" anywhere. I would put a
minimally sized but clear notice where the windows version of python-3.5
can be downloaded.
 
>>> But I don't think the web site necessarily has to
>>> have noise about old versions of OSes. Where would you draw the line?

What noise? Providing basic useful information to a significant
number of customers/clients/users, information that is not provided
elsewhere in the normal course of their actions, is not "noise".

If you want to get rid of noise, how about ditching corporate-style
PR like "Success Stories", or a big graphic of fibonacci numbers in
python?

It's really sad to see open source projects taken over by marketing
wanna-bees who think PR fluff is more important that actual actionable
information.

>> I think my responses above answer that.
> 
> Not really, no. There are currently a large number of XP boxes out
> there, for some definition of 'large'. Presumably that number is
> dropping. At what point will it be appropriate to ditch the warning?
> And what about older versions of non-Windows OSes - if there are a
> large number of people still running an old Mac OS, should we include
> something on the front page that warns everyone about a lack of
> support? 

Why don't you try answering that question yourself? Start by asking
how many posts to this list asking why the poster couldn't install
Python-3.5 on an old MacOS system you've seen.

> How large is large? I say again: Where would you draw the
> line?

If you insist on a concrete number (I presume so you can pick nits
with it rather than the general proposition), 5 years. Then reevaluate.
Once someone has actually adds a note dispute about whether it should
be there will fade into nothingness and removing it after xp truly
is insignificant will be contentious.