Re: Windows Installer for CLISP

[Elliott S. <ell...@gm...>]

Sam Steingold <sd...@gn...> wrote:
> what is "nsh"? is it some sort of windows shell interpreter?
> are these two scripts run only during package creation or during
> installation too?
> can the nsh scripts be replaced with lisp scripts?

The nsh files are NSIS header files, containing some code written by
the NSIS community. They are linked at compile time, and are embedded
in the installer. My only reason for moving them to files outside the
main install script was just so they wouldn't clutter the script.
While it would be possible to move some of the install functionality
to external lisp scripts, as a part of the project, I tried to write
all the necessary functionality into the installer, so you wouldn't
have to depend on functionality from CLISP in the middle of its
installation. Also, one of the header files (is_user_admin.nsh)
definitely couldn't be moved to a lisp script, because it needs to
execute before the installer displays the components page.

> why is COPYRIGHT included as RTF and not plain text?
> it would be better to use plain text instead of maintaining two
> essentially identical files.

Just the formatting of the text. If you use the text file directly,
the installer doesn't recognize the unicode characters discussed
earlier. Also, the font used by the installer is not a fixed width
font, which makes all the spacing appear a little off, especially in
sections with many lines padded by variable spacing. The other thing
is the line "Hey Emacs! -*- coding: utf-8 -*-", presumable necessary
for emacs to recognize the UTF-8 characters, but which isn't helpful
in the installer and doesn't particularly look good.

-- 
Elliott Slaughter

"Any road followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere." -
Frank Herbert