[Opencd-devel] Demo available soon, thoughts on tools to use

[Buchan M. <bg...@ca...>]

Hi All,

Sorry I am joining the list late, but I had some other priorities (ones where the
words  "multiple" "failures" "RAID 1" "simultaneous" "data" "loss" come into play)
.. anyway, I am here.

Firstly, I made a Demoshield demo for myself about 3 years ago, to give to friends
to make it easier for them to get all the good software easily. Note, this was in my
days of freeware/shareware use, before I was too involved in linux/open-source
stuff. I think initially it had things like Netscape, Winzip, up-to-date IE, Paint
Shop Pro etc.

Shortly afterwards I got involved with a company which grew out of our research lab,
and I adjusted the demo for use there. More recently I have added Open Source
software. I currently have two versions of the demo, once for use inside the company
(including site-licensed software) and one which I give away.

I am currently working on an updated demo, which will contain:
-Windows 2000 SP2 (we can try and ensure their machines are at least not a hazard to
the internet)
-OpenOffice.org 1.0 (one for multi-user via the -net switch, one for sinlge user),
with dictionary installer (needs some work to allow it to install dictionaries from
the CD rather than from the net).
-Mozilla 1.0rc1 (hopefully this will be 1.0.0 by tomorrow)
-Netscape 4.7x (it's days are numbered in less than 2 digits, I hope)
-IE6.0
-Adobe Acrobat 5.0
-JRE1.3
-Gimp, Gimp lzw plugin, Gimp GDK-fix, Gimp more plugins (from the gimp win32 site
with the installers). I have also downloaded a smart-print zip file (haven't played
with it yet).
-PowerArchiver (version 6 was free, as opposed to Winzip which is 30-day shareware)

I will make it available as soon as I have finished, I am just updating some of the
graphics, and making more things work. Hopefully you guys can see it in less than 24
hours.

The demo should really (IMO) just be used as a prototyping tool  (although it may be
a quick way to get something out).

Either we must
1)Use the best tool for the job, even if it is closed-source and costs money (such
as Demoshield).
or
2)Use open-source software.
The third option, using other proprietary software (ie VB) doesn't gain us anything.

Also, from a technical point-of-view, I would:
1)Avoid VB. I may be wrong, since have only tried to distribute two arbitrary VB
apps (and that was a while back), getting all the dll's in place is quite a problem.
Delphi or a C++ MFC app would be better.
2)Avoid relying on the installed HTML viewer. Some machines are still stuck in the
ice-age they were bought in, and still run (horror-of-horrors) IE 3.0 or Netscape
<4.5. This will not be fun

>From a philosophical point (we are trying to promote open-source software, aren't
we), we should be using open-source software for this. Also, we might want to try
and make it cross-platform at the same time (meaning Mac's for the most part, linux
users don't need this anyway since we use urpmi or apt).

So, my gut feel would be to go with something like wxWindows.

Final point is that I am not too happy about distributing an ISO image. Most windows
users don't know what an ISO image is. Most ftp mirrors carry a lot of what we are
ditributing (OpenOffice, Mozilla etc). So why not:
1)Standardize on locations for the various pieces
2)Make the installer be able to install from the network, given a file containing
the applicable mirrors. I am thinking, you want people to be able to download one
installer, and have it do the rest for them. In this case I am thinking of a
university scenario (like ours) where the mirrors are accessible for free, and most
students don't have CD-writers.
3)Make the tool be able to build an up-to-date ISO image from the mirrors. Having to
update ISO images because a new version of the print plugin for the Gimp has been
released is a bit over-board.

Anyway, that's probably enough for now, this should probably have been at least 3
seperate mails, 

Regards,
Buchan