Re: Why are you on a *nix desktop?

"Is this a good use for a savefile? You copy it in, and unpack it?"

Yes. That is what I have been thinking about. Really, all the heavy lifting is done on the i and the desktop side is just "Window dressing" (pun intended).

The biggest challenge is error feedback that makes it's way back to the user on the desktop: Firewall issues. Authority issues. Compiler and component (prerequisites) failures. The progress in the installation process. All that needs to be communicated back to the user in an intelligible manner.

Also, the installer needs to be something easy to script so that after the work is done to package it on the i there is just a minimum amount of stuff that needs to be scripted at the installer end to make it all work. IzPack seems pretty flexible and there might be some way to write some generic scripts that call the same routines on the i with the instructions being packaged and run at the i (in CL, probably).

I have just been musing about it today as I ran the ant scripts to build, jar and create the installer for tn5250j. Something I hope to look at soon.

Pete

Thorbjoern Ravn Andersen wrote:

Pete Helgren skrev:

It's the graphical UI that I want. Having someone with little i experience have to start a 5250 session and run a bunch of commands (or even to figure out what a command line is) is getting harder and harder to sell. Basically I want the user to click a link on my web site, download the installer, double click it to start it (so far no typing....) and then be prompted for a valid i user ID and password and then just watch the pretty screen with the progress bar moving until it's done with a "Success!" splash screen. That is what they expect for a Windows installer and they really shouldn't get anything different for the i.

I develop web apps so a command line is an anathema to my target customers. Doing it all under the covers while they are "entertained" by a progress UI is what I am looking for.

Ah. Makes much more sense.

Is this a good use for a savefile? You copy it in, and unpack it?