simon@hpspwr.enet.dec.com (Curiosier and curiosier...) (12/01/90)
I just got in the mail a demo of CyrWin software from the developers in the USSR. It is a collection of foreign fonts for the Windows -- Russian, German, Finnish, Danish, Math, etc. The demo looks like a real things except you cannot type more then fifty characters on the alternate keyboard. After I installed it, it looks nice. And it may work very well. I am saying "may" because it turned out to be a big hassle. As the author of the package wrote in a message to me, it is hard to write software for the West while sitting in Moscow. I am sorry to say this, but the program has a real problem with the installation procedure. 1. To install the program I ran INSTALL.EXE which started an Install window. The only option of this window is "Go!". You click on Go! and it off it goes... Without asking a single question of what I wanted to do, where I wanted to install it, it copied all the necessary files right into Windows directory! The Windows directory already has a million files there, the inclusion of a dozen more files belonging to a specific application is not a right thing to do. 2. Continuing without asking questions, the installation process changed my .INI files, "forgetting" to create back-ups. 3. I re-started Windows, tried the Cyrillic keyboard (looked nice), then deleted CyrWin files, since the package is just a demo without any practical use. 4. Windows did not start any more! I see its logo, then it throws me back to the DOS prompt. 6. I spent two hours trying to figure out what the changes were so that I could re-start Windows. General impression -- very user un-friendly and arrogant. Of course I deleted it from the disk. I believe that nobody would want to have this package as it is now, until the situation is corrected. Too bad, I liked the software itself. I sent this message directly to the author with the hope that he will take it as constructive criticism, not just simple bashing. I myself lived in the USSR for thirty years, and I know how difficult it is for the guys there to catch up with the West. --------- Leo Simon simon@pwrvax.enet.dec.com Who is not liberal when young, does not have a heart. Who is not conservative when old, does not have a brain. -- W. Churchill