Re: [libreoffice-design] Installer changes for Windows users

Hi all.

I'm just a user too, that follows the LibreOffice project with many 
hopes and that try to contribute with bug filing and comments.

On 11/03/2011 16:17, Jared Meidal wrote:
> When the first step to installing LibreOffice is the prompt to ask
> where to extract the install folder immediate confusion comes to many
> elementary PC users.  I think this is primarily because this step is
> unusual, most Windows-based apps do not contain this step, or hide it
> from the user.  I suggest eliminating this step.  Either the
> installer file is packaged differently to accomplish this, or it
> automatically extracts the MSI, etc. into a "temp" folder in the
> background, which is afterwards deleted upon a successful
> installation.

I completely agree with you.
I've always found strange using the desktop as temporary folder and also 
found strange that the user has to manually delete later this folder.
I concur that this forlder should go to %temp% and that has to be 
deleted after the setup completes (even with error).

I'm unsure if can be useful to make a permanent copy of this folder 
under the LibreOffice folder in %programfiles%, so that the user can 
modify his setup without having to find the original installer.
Tipical use case is, for example, to add Impress if you haven't 
installed it in the first place, or to modify file associations, or to 
restore the program if something got screwed up.
It wastes disk space but can be useful in many cases.

> The second issue is that the install folder "C:\Program
> Files\LibreOffice 3" contains the version number.  This is much
> better than the Start Menu\Programs folder "LibreOffice 3.3" which
> contains the point version also.  I suggest removing both.  Simply
> "LibreOffice" is enough, and is a much more common standard and
> expectation for Windows users.

Like Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird, for example.
It's something i do on every setup: i change the folder name deleting 
the version. It makes upgrades easier (from a user point of view).
For example, when you upgrade from 2.4 to 3.x (as i'm doing now at 
work), many users ends up with a broken quicklaunch program in their 
startup folder: if you use version number in folder, quicklaunch is not 
able to find itself anymore after upgrade and you have to solve the 
problem manually.

Another thing that i've always found strange in OpenOffice/LibreOffice 
Windows configuration is that, under the Start Menu, LibreOffice 
programs are showed with their real name (LibreOffice Writer, 
LibreOffice Calc, etc), while if you right-click on the systray icon you 
can see the localized document type (i translate from italian: Text 
document, Spreadsheet, Presentation).
My workmate believe this is a bug, me just an incoherence.

In my opinion the better solution would be to render identical both 
strings, with something like this:
Writer (Text documents)
Calc (Spreadsheet)
Impress (Presentations)
...

Or reversed:
Text documents (Writer)
Spreadsheet (Calc)
...

All the string should be localized, like the ones in the quicklaunch.
And without the "LibreOffice" prefix (as "LibreOffice Writer"), since 
the word LibreOffice it is already in the folder name.
This has the good effect of teaching the corrispondence between the name 
of the application and what it does. Many employees keeps on calling 
Excel the spreadsheet and Word the word processor and ignoring what are 
Calc and Writer...  ;-)

Hope to help.

Cesare.

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