Kotlin SI-GUI – Incompatible changes

Hi,

From now on you need the newest updater JAR. I hate that this happened… Updater download

Bottom line: The main application is no longer a ZIP, which needs to be extracted. From now one it is a JAR file, which can be started by a double click…. Therefore the updater procedure had to be changed.

I am sorry for this change, but I am quite sure that should not happen too often ( I do not want to say “should not happen again”, but I would not know a reason to change that again…)

Kotlin SI-GUI – A quick update

It’s about time for a quick update 🙂

Firstly, as the initial issues are resolved there won’t be any updates for the traditional SI-GUI anymore (I may add a hint to the new version after some time)

Regarding my questions in Kotlin re-implementaion of SI-GUI:

1. Changing the root folder should not be needed, therefore I hid it. It was not easy as either one used this feature a lot or not at all….
2. Default folders in Java are very difficult. I tried to guess the Desktop folder – but that honestly is not more than a guess…. For downloading and installing temp folders are used. This will work, however, this might be unexpected. Have a look at the options
3. Hardcoding anything is a bad idea. Therefore the current implementation fetches the list of available languages from here. 6.0.4.1 at the moment. So new helppack languages are sadly only included, if they are found here. I hope that this a good limitation.
4. The Bootstrap.ini file will always be modified
5. Linux version IS possible, but not supported at the moment
6. There is a early version of an Android build: CLICK ME

There are 2 things I want to task about in the rest of this post, the desktop UI and the Linux support.

I made an update to the desktop UI (and speed improvements on certain operations). Please give it a try DOWNLOAD. I do not know if the new color scheme causes eye cancer….

Linux support

I do not have a Linux VM at the moment. Therefore I cannot test / validate if what I wrote is correct (and besides of that I would have extreme problems to troubleshoot everything.

There does exist an instruction here. I hope I find a volunteer, which helps me out and creates a script which does the following:

• Defines 2-4 variables: 1-3 files (MAIN, HP, SDK) and the target folder
  • For the script one of those files e.g. only MAIN would be enough as the rest is just copy and paste
• Implement the instructions, so that the file(s) will be installed in the folder. The target folder should be created if it does not exist yet.
• If possible absolute paths should be used
• Temporary files should be deleted afterwards
• If possible there should be a short console output (“Starting installation”, “Extracting files”,”Cleanup”,”Done!” or similar), so that the user gets an idea about the process
• LibreOffice should be installed in a way that the “program” folder within LibreOffice is a direct child of the defined install location in the first step

That’s about what’s missing for Linux support. Startup / downloading files should work by now. Especially Linux users: Please keep in mind that the desktop app uses JavaFX, which is bundled in Oracle JDKs, but has to be installed seperatly for openjdk. (Soon that will be also true for Oracle JDKs…). “OpenJfx” should be the package name you are looking for,

PS: The icons are temporary, Andreas Kainz might create a better looking icon soon.

Please say hello to the new SI-GUI

Hello everyone,

With this post the original C# version is being deprecated. In this post “Kotlin SI-GUI” (Separate Installation GUI in Kotlin) will be introduced.

For Windows the basic functionality should work.

This excludes:

• Bering able to start *.exe files
• A good error message when trying to parallel install *.exe files
• Window icons are missing ATM

Without further ado I present the new GUI (which not necessarily means that it is better looking)

Biggest features compared to the old version:

• List of thinderboxes does not need to be maintained
• Downloads are grouped by architecture
  • In a future Linux version:
    • DEB 32
    • DEB 64
    • RPM 32
    • RPM 64

Additionally after clicking “start download” you get a nice Window where you can select which files you want to download. I chose “bo” as my helppack language and a 64 bit build.

Settings is also improved.

The list of helppack languages is not hard coded either (looking at /latest build from archive BTW).

Download types for Windows are: EXE, 32-bit and 64-bit. If you are only interested in a subset of these types, you can choose it. This will be considered for the next update.

And by the way, shortcuts can not only be created on the desktop 😉 By default the download and installation folder are temporary locations, the desktop folder is only guessed. So please review these settings!

Some minor functionalities are still missing, but it is pretty usable for testing MSI builds.

You can download Kotlin SI GUI here. (You download an updater app. This updater app will download the latest version of Kotlin SI-GUI. The current version of the updater does not display the download progress, so please be patient on first installation). Java 8 required!

If you have feedback regarding the UI, please comment!