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Installer splash screen (was Re: Looking for a brave soul to try a Windows installer)
At 12:02 PM -0700 6/28/02, Bob Jacobsen wrote:
At 10:09 AM -0700 6/28/02, Jerry Drews wrote:Mindvision agreed to let me use the installer tool without charge. I think that's a great thing for them to do. But in return they want to keep that first screen as advertising, which seems fair. They were happy to add a "click to continue line". The new screen is in the installer I just uploaded. Bob -- -------------- Bob Jacobsen (Bob_Jacobsen@..., 510-486-7355, fax 510-495-2957) Am working off a huge email backlog, call if it's urgent. |
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2nd try at Windows installer
I've made a second try at a Windows installer. If all goes well (hah!), this will be the distribution form for Windows from now on.
The installer can be downloaded from: The changes include: New icons from Robin Becker - thanks! It's starting to look like a real program... Fix of the null reference crash located by Alex Shepherd Shortcut and program items now function properly Improved check for Java being present; if it's not found, quit installer and take user to the Java download page Preferences are now stored in "Windows standard location". This is a mixed blessing; it's necessary to get the uninstall and reinstall operations to work reliably, but it means that you'll have to search around if you ever need to find the preferences manually. And if you upgrade your Windows version, you might have to re-enter your DecoderPro preferences (probably the least of your problems then, but still a pain) Thanks in advance for trying this, I appreciate any comments, suggestions, etc. Bob -- -------------- Bob Jacobsen (Bob_Jacobsen@..., 510-486-7355, fax 510-495-2957) Am working off a huge email backlog, call if it's urgent. |
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Re: icons
At 10:34 AM -0700 6/28/02, Robin Becker wrote:
If you send me a .bmp file that is around 32x32 I can try to make a simpleAt 11:28 AM -0700 6/28/02, Robin Becker wrote: Let's see ifIt's so generous of you to think I might have some artistic ability! Unfortunately, I really don't, and I hadn't thought beyond trying to shrink something like one of the logo images that Jim Wellman created: (which is 160x135) (which is 210x152) There's also a small DCC logo (83x75) we could use at: But those are all too large... Bob -- -------------- Bob Jacobsen (Bob_Jacobsen@..., 510-486-7355, fax 510-495-2957) Am working off a huge email backlog, call if it's urgent. |
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Re: Looking for a brave soul to try a Windows install er
At 10:09 AM -0700 6/28/02, Jerry Drews wrote:
I downloaded the file and tried it on Windows 98, 2K and XP Pro. All failedThanks for trying, sorry it didn't work. Yes, that's helpful. Somehow the installer seems to have failed to find the Java version you've got installed. That's the tricky bit, and I've probably not made it robust enough. Would you be willing to do a couple things for me? First, could you look in "C:\Program Files\" to see if there's a "Java" or "JavaSoft" folder in there? And if there is, what does it contain? Second, could you open a DOS window and type "java -version", then tell me what it says? Thanks! As to that first splash screen, I hope it's temporary. The installer is built with a tool from MindVision. I've talked to them about letting us use it for free. So far, they've agreed that use for "occasional tests and demos" is OK, and I'm still hoping that they'll allow me to use it for distributing free software. If they do, that first splash screen goes away. Bob -- -------------- Bob Jacobsen (Bob_Jacobsen@..., 510-486-7355, fax 510-495-2957) Am working off a huge email backlog, call if it's urgent. |
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Re: Looking for a brave soul to try a Windows installer
At 10:32 PM +1200 6/28/02, Alex Shepherd wrote:
Ok, I have installed onto Win2KThanks! Seemed to install ok although I noted that the installer didn't ask whichThe installer currently adds it to the JVM that the "java" command will invoke. It needs to be there because the program is started using "java" or "javaw". The installer gets that info from the registry, using the same keys that the "java" command uses. It's interesting that JBuilder apparently installed its own JVM. I could add a prompt to the user to pick the JVM(s) should get the comm stuff, but I'm concerned that's too confusing. I suspect that J. Average User doesn't really want to worry about Java at all. I had to modify the DecoderPro Menu Shortcut and specify a value for theThese are both the same mistake. I should have set the desktop shortcut and the program menu item to always start in the program directory. Thanks for finding it. We have just got JBuilder7 at work and it has the ability to build a nativeThat's probably a lot better than the .bat files that are used now. Bob -- -------------- Bob Jacobsen (Bob_Jacobsen@..., 510-486-7355, fax 510-495-2957) Am working off a huge email backlog, call if it's urgent. |
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Looking for a brave soul to try a Windows installer
I've created a first version of a Windows installer. I'd like to have somebody try it and tell me how to make it better.
Also, does anybody know how to make a "Windows icon file"? If I can get one of those, the installer can set the various icons to something less generic. The installer can be downloaded from: As you can see from the name, this is a new version. Testing is not complete (the installer is really meant to test the _installer_, not the new version). It has the updated decoder selection GUI of the 9.3 test version, with only a little additional tuning. The Lenz LI100 support seems to be working, though, and there are a couple of other minor improvements. Because this is a test version, it will install "alongside" any existing install you've got. This means that you'll have to set it's preferences, etc, but on the other hand you won't lose your locomotive roster and settings if the installer doesn't work. Thanks in advance, I appreciate the feedback. Bob -- -------------- Bob Jacobsen (Bob_Jacobsen@..., 510-486-7355, fax 510-495-2957) Am working off a huge email backlog, call if it's urgent. |
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Re: new decoder selection list boxes
Sorry for the slow reply, it's been a busy week. Also, I've rearranged the paragraphs below so the reply makes more sense, and coincidentally to put the good news first.
At 3:30 PM -0700 6/19/02, Robin Becker wrote: Bob,No problem. I _like_ getting feedback like this, and wish there was more of it. I shortened the list to just manufacturers that have one or more decoders defined. That does make it cleaner, thanks. A manufacturer will also show up if one of their decoder is seen when doing an identify, just so it's clear what was seen by the programmer; in that case there's still no decoder name shown though. Making it default is a good idea, I'll try to do that. I tried to switch back to a combobox (selection box) for the manufacturer, but with the decoders in a list it looks really ugly. But that got me thinking of another approach, see below. Would it be possible to update the mfr and decoder list selections when theGreat idea! I did that. The mfr name list was scrambled when I first ran the update. AfterRight, that's due to the auto-index-on-update feature that's still missing. I've got to get to that pretty soon... I was able to open more than one programmer setup window at the same time.This is just laziness on my part. I was putting off fixing this until I had ops mode programming working, but it's not yet ready yet. The idea was that you could open as many ops-mode windows as you want, but only one that used the programming track. I'd prefer to not fix it now, as I'd rather fix it as part of reworking the first screen to include an ops-mode button. OK? It looks like the decoder family names show up in the decoder list. I foundAll of these points are correct, and important. When I was working on this interface, I was mostly concentrating on the case of Digitrax and Lenz decoders (which I have). They have a large number of defined decoders in a couple of families. For them, the interface seems to work OK. You select "Digitrax", and get a pretty long list, and just look for your decoder; you can ignore the family names. But people tend to refer to decoders as "FX decoders", so if that's what you think you've got, you can select that family and it also works. And when you push "ident", it shows you a nice list of the possible specific models within the family that was identified by CV7. Unfortunately, it seems that this breaks down for Soundtraxx. They've done a better job of identifying specific _decoders_ with CV7, so there's less of a need for the "family" idea. And the list of all Soundtraxx decoders you get when you select the manufacturer is _really_ hard to read because of that. I started to think of a way to use indenting to make all this clearer, but it soon occurred to me that I was recreating a "tree" structure. So let me ask the accumulated wisdom on the list: Would a tree GUI work better? The idea would be to have a single part of the selection window (probably with scroll bars) that shows a tree ala the various "Explorer" things. The tree would have three levels: Manufacturer, with family below that, and decoder below that. For cases like Soundtraxx DSD Diesel, where there's no clear distinction between family and model, just the model would appear directly under the manfacturer name. At first, just the list of manufacturers would appear. You could click on one to open it, and see all the families and decoders. Selecting a decoder or family would let you push the open-programmer button. Only one could be selected at a time. If you use the ident button, the tree would be closed-up except for the part of it that satisfies the identify results. If that's a specific decoder, that'll be open and selected. If a family was identified (e.g. Digitrax FX), the tree will be open to them, with the general family selected, and all the individual decoders visible. If the model (CV7) wasn't recognized, all the decoders for that manufacturer will be unfolded. Etc. The only thing that I can think of that this would make _more_ difficult is "I've got a DH142 decoder, and I can't remember which manufacturer made it"; in that case, the user would have to open all the manufacturer names to look for it. (I could start with everything open in the tree, but that's really annoying to people who're looking for a specific thing). And in that case, clicking ident will go to the right place anyway. This has the other advantage of being easy to code. What do people think? Should I code it up so people can try it? Bob -- -------------- Bob Jacobsen (Bob_Jacobsen@..., 510-486-7355, fax 510-495-2957) Am working off a huge email backlog, call if it's urgent. |
Bob Jacobsen