Do you agree or disagree that this would be a good improvement?
strongly agree
50%
[ 1 ]
agree
50%
[ 1 ]
don't care
0%
[ 0 ]
disagree
0%
[ 0 ]
strongly disagree
0%
[ 0 ]
Total Votes : 2
Author
Message
djpimley The Anomaly (earlier version)
Joined: Jun 11, 2006 Posts: 481 Location: Great Britain
Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2011 3:50 pm Post subject:
sardisson wrote:
/tmp and the temporary files are cleared once a week
Solution: Don't download the package to tmp. Download the package to a location in ~/Library/Application Support/ which imho is the correct place for such a file.
I don't know where everyone got the idea that the download would go to the /tmp folder as I made several changes to NeoOffice some time ago to force NeoOffice's underlying OpenOffice.org to not use /tmp or the user's private temporary folder if at all possible precisely because of Mac OS X's periodic deletion of files in those folders.
What I was planning on doing was downloading it to the either a new ~/Library/Application Support/NeoOffice folder or to the user's Downloads folder. Does anyone think that the user's Downloads folder is a good place to put these .dmg files? If not, I will use ~/Library/Application Support/NeoOffice.
I don't know where everyone got the idea that the download would go to the /tmp folder as I made several changes to NeoOffice some time ago to force NeoOffice's underlying OpenOffice.org to not use /tmp or the user's private temporary folder if at all possible precisely because of Mac OS X's periodic deletion of files in those folders.
I guess I was confusing "storing the installer/dmg" with "unpacking the patch files during install" (which unpack to /tmp before being moved inside NeoOffice.app)
pluby wrote:
What I was planning on doing was downloading it to the either a new ~/Library/Application Support/NeoOffice folder or to the user's Downloads folder. Does anyone think that the user's Downloads folder is a good place to put these .dmg files? If not, I will use ~/Library/Application Support/NeoOffice.
If the "install process" is going to delete the dmg afterward, then I suppose a hidden location like ~/Library/Application Support/NeoOffice is OK, but if it's not, you don't want a build-up of ~10 MB files over time in a hidden location.
My preference is for the user's Download folder either way, though; I think it's more transparent and is what some self-updating apps (Omni Group apps come to mind) already do. (I'd also prefer the downloaded .dmg not be deleted, so I can archive the patch, but I may be strange like that.)
Smokey _________________ "[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki
Joined: Jun 11, 2006 Posts: 481 Location: Great Britain
Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2011 3:06 am Post subject:
pluby wrote:
Does anyone think that the user's Downloads folder is a good place to put these .dmg files?
I think Smokey's question is the key to that decision. If the package will be deleted after a successful install then I think Application Support is best (I know of users who would get confused at seeing a file suddenly appear in their downloads folder) but if the packages will be left in place then the Downloads folder is better because that location will be visible to the user and allow them to file manage.
I think that initially we should be cautious and leave the downloaded .dmg after installation. Since the current download process drops the .dmg files in the user's Downloads directly, I think leaving the downloaded .dmg there is a safe approach so I'll put the .dmg files there and not deleted them.
BTW, I noticed that our NeoOffice Mobile floating window does not make use of the resumable download functions that Apple's WebView provides. Given that about 1% of our donors report download problems (most likely due to flaky wireless or ISP connnections), adding attempts to resume a download if the download stops before all the bytes have been downloaded would be a very good idea.
Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2012 10:46 pm Post subject: Auto Downloads ... Where and keep or remove?
Personally I think of my "Downloads" folder as the place for stuff that I requested be downloaded ... auto downloads ... not sure: a bit of auto-generated clutter, vs. hidden files ...
I assume that all the Patch files are cumulative from the base version, so I keep the current and previous base version, and the last Patch-file for each ... so I think I would like the patch file to be kept until the patch that supersedes it is installed, but I also fully admit that this request constitutes "Gold Plating"
Since I have not been able to find any time to work on this feature (each new year brings us a huge amount of tax and other regulatory paperwork to do), I was able to make some changes to our patch checking code on our webservers so that when there is a new version or new patch, the Download button in the NeoOffice dialog will go straight to the applicable download page. Previously, a couple of links had to be clicked when upgrading to a newer version.
I have just finished implementing the first part of this new feature request: eliminating the use of your default browser and, instead, performing the .dmg file download completely with NeoOffice.
There is still a lot more code that needs to be written before this new feature request is fully implemented but I wanted to get this first chunk of code out so that all of you can test it out while I am working on implementing the next steps.
To test out this first part of the new feature request, you will need to do the following steps:
2. Down the following "versionrc" file to your Desktop by pasting the following command in a Terminal window and pressing the Return key. This file will be used to fool NeoOffice to act as if you have not installed the latest official patch:
Code:
cd ~/Desktop ; curl -O http://joe.neooffice.org/test/versionrc
3. In the Finder, right-click or Control-click on the NeoOffice application and in the popup menu that appears, select the "Show Package Contents". Then, navigation into NeoOffice's "Contents/MacOS" subfolder. Drag the "versionrc" file that you downloaded into step 2 into this subfolder. You will be prompted to replace the file and then to authenticate that you are a Mac OS X administrator.
4. If step 3 succeeds, select NeoOffice's Help :: Check for Updates menu. the dialog that appears should say that NeoOffice 3.2.1 Patch 3 is available. Press the Download button and you should see the patch download page running in a floating window similar to the NeoOffice Mobile floating window and the patch should be automatically downloaded to your Downloads folder.
Edited by pluby: update versionrc download step
Patrick
Last edited by pluby on Sat Jan 21, 2012 9:54 am; edited 1 time in total
Joined: Jun 11, 2006 Posts: 481 Location: Great Britain
Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2012 5:24 am Post subject:
Tested with success! The updater opened the web view and downloaded the patch, then mounted the dmg.
A gotcha for other testers: Safari is rather keen on renaming "versionrc" to "versionrc.txt" upon download. If you remove the ".txt" directly in the Finder window, that just hides the extension! You'll need to open up the file's "Get Info" window and remove the extension that way.
A gotcha for other testers: Safari is rather keen on renaming "versionrc" to "versionrc.txt" upon download. If you remove the ".txt" directly in the Finder window, that just hides the extension! You'll need to open up the file's "Get Info" window and remove the extension that way.
Good catch. I use Firefox so I didn't notice this gotcha.
I went ahead and changed the versionrc download step in my post to use the curl command in a Terminal to avoid this Safari problem.
A couple of minor and really minor UI notes, some (most?) that are forward-looking than strictly applicable now:
* The "Check for updates" window still says
Quote:
The automatic download of the update is currently not available.
Click 'Download...' to download NeoOffice 3.2.1 Patch 3 manually from the web site.
At some point in the process, that text will need to be updated
* I know at this point you're essentially reusing the NeoMobile window code. Since patches are significantly larger downloads than most NeoMobile documents, I think a progress bar would be more helpful than a spinner and updating text.
* The floating window remains, and shows the same content, after the .dmg is downloaded and mounted. At some point, it would probably be better to either make the window close once the download is complete, or to show new content like "Download succeeded; now do X, Y, and Z to install."
* The .dmg seems to be mounted in the background, and, in my case, the window ends up behind the floating window and the OOo-code's update window, so it's not completely apparent that it's mounted. Long-term this won't matter, and it may not really matter short-term, either, but I wanted to mention it.
At any rate, this is a great step forward
Smokey _________________ "[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki
A couple of minor and really minor UI notes, some (most?) that are forward-looking than strictly applicable now:
All of your points are good ones. I myself think the current state is very unwieldy as all that I have really done is just move the steps that were in a web browser into NeoOffice so the whole flow will need to be tweaked and smoothed out in several places before this is ready for release. In other works, I'm using the "make it work reliably first, then make it look good" approach.
Before I get to that the tweaking and smoothing stage, I want to make sure that the download portion is rock solid. Like Safari, Apple's WebKit code that we use for the floating window does not detect truncated downloads so right now, I only have NeoOffice Mobile's "if truncated, retry new download" which, given the large sizes of the patch and installer files is not adequately.
So, right now I am working on implementing automatic resuming of the download using libcurl which is already included in NeoOffice's underlying OpenOffice.org code. Only if there is an error that indicates resumable downloads are not supported (e.g. you have a proxy or ISP that is messing with web connections), I will pass WebKit's cookies to libcurl and complete download using libcurl. Note: Apple's NSURLDownload class supports resumable downloads, but not after WebKit thinks a truncated download is complete. Hence, the use of libcurl if we detect any download failure.
In other works, I'm using the "make it work reliably first, then make it look good" approach.
I figured as much
pluby wrote:
So, right now I am working on implementing automatic resuming of the download using libcurl which is already included in NeoOffice's underlying OpenOffice.org code.
Yay
pluby wrote:
Note: Apple's NSURLDownload class supports resumable downloads, but not after WebKit thinks a truncated download is complete.
Yay NSURLDownload
Smokey _________________ "[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki
I have added 2 small changes to the new patch download window that I added in the last test patch:
1. Multiple downloads of the same file from different mirrors will no longer create extra files with "-1", "-2", etc. in their names. Instead, my code checks in the target file name is in process of being downloaded or has already been successfully downloaded. If either condition is true, no duplicate bits are downloaded.
2. I added a progress bar that appears when downloading and added the number of megabytes downloaded in the status area at the bottom of the window so that users can see the download progress.
Edit by pluby: Added screen snapshot of the new download progress bar at the end of this post
Like the last test patch, to test out my latest changes you will need to do the following steps:
2. Download the following "versionrc" file to your Desktop by pasting the following command in a Terminal window and pressing the Return key. This file will be used to fool NeoOffice to act as if you have not installed the latest official patch:
Code:
cd ~/Desktop ; curl -O http://joe.neooffice.org/test/versionrc
3. In the Finder, right-click or Control-click on the NeoOffice application and in the popup menu that appears, select the "Show Package Contents". Then, navigation into NeoOffice's "Contents/MacOS" subfolder. Drag the "versionrc" file that you downloaded into step 2 into this subfolder. You will be prompted to replace the file and then to authenticate that you are a Mac OS X administrator.
4. If step 3 succeeds, select NeoOffice's Help :: Check for Updates menu. the dialog that appears should say that NeoOffice 3.2.1 Patch 3 is available. Press the Download button and you should see the patch download page running in a floating window similar to the NeoOffice Mobile floating window and the patch should be automatically downloaded to your Downloads folder.
2. I added a progress bar that appears when downloading and added the number of megabytes downloaded in the status area at the bottom of the window so that users can see the download progress.
Edit by pluby: Added screen snapshot of the new download progress bar at the end of this post
This looks good, although I think the spinner should go away when the progress bar is showing (the spinner's great for indeterminate operations, like connecting to NeoMobile and so forth, but it's busy/redundant when you also have the superior-for-determinate-operations progress bar).
I successfully downloaded the new patch again and opened a document via NeoMobile on 10.5.8
Smokey _________________ "[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki
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Download the package to a location in ~/Library/Application Support/ which imho is the correct place for such a file.
