Re: lynx-dev help for real novices

[Leonid Pauzner]

21-Jan-99 10:30 Philip Webb wrote:
> 990121 Leonid Pauzner wrote:
>> No! It's not for README, it should probably fit for INSTALLATION,
>> drop something like this near the top:
>> "if you are MS Windows user and want just to install "lynx.exe"
>> try "precompiled binaries"... from http://...";
>> and a more direct wording near the top of "release" page:
>> "for Windows and DOS users <a href="#dos">lynx.exe here</a>"

> No too!! any novice is going to read README first: that's the idea!

any novice may read few lines of text on the page he downloading from...

> we want to alert him/her straight away that it may not be his/her ideal;
> we could put something in INSTALLATION too, but it seems excessive.

README can be shipped along with precompiled binaries without the changes now,
but INSTALLATION definitely not, that is the difference.

> README has all the other basic stuff:
> how to subscribe to lynx-dev, licensing, Y2K.
> also NB: there are many more binaries than just for Windows/DOS.

Nethertheless, all queries we got about "binaries" are from win95+
"plag-and-play" users. This is a therminologie problem, the word "install" in
MS WIN world is never associated with compilation, people just never have a
compilation environment at average, they "install the package ready-to-use"
by clicking a mouse.

And for autoconf-covered platforms, IMHO, it is much easier
to built from sources (./configure and make) than fall into
all possible incompatibilities with libraries version etc.

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