Re: Another try to get a response

[Adrian Custer <acuster gmail com>]

George Dell wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I am instructor who regularly starts people on the Gnumeric path.  But there is a recurring problem which 
> strikes at the very growth potential of this wonderful open-source product.
>
> I want to thank all those who are so dedicated to this project.  It has been a boon to my students,  My 
> request here is only my small attempt to make Gnumeric more successful!
>
> The problem --
>     In going to the web page "Getting Gnumeric" the new, excited, but unknowledgeable potential user is confronted with an immediate technospeak problem.  Pushing the "Get Gnumeric Now" produces nothing now.  It produces a confusing explanation of possible sources, but nowhere to just Get Gnumeric.  
The difficulty appears to arise when we consider *what* a user should 
obtain after clicking the button.

Clearly this would need to be specific to the desktop of each user doing 
the clicking. Ideally, for the two dominant closed desktop environments, 
we would have installable artifacts since those users have been trained 
to look for such bundles. For the open desktop systems, user 
expectations are different---most get their software from their 
installer systems, which of course differ greatly from system to system, 
with no common "install gnumeric" command.

Unfortunately, for the closed systems, gnumeric does not have any mac 
bundle and the windows bundle is not yet official but does have a link 
which is perhaps not prominent enough. (Official support for the windows 
port leads to lots of complications, e.g. release specific dependencies 
and systematic handling of the gtk stack.)

For the open systems, we start needing system specific responses.

So yeah, freedom is messy and we may loose the impatient---that's may be 
all right in the long run if you believe, as I do, that freedom is 
contagious,

all the best,
 adrian