access documentation from autorun

[mhubel]

If an installer is called by a autorun.ini file on a CD, is there a way to generate a option so the user can view some supplied documentation before doing the installation?

[mihai.petcu]

Hello,

This is usually done by adding the ReadmeDlg from the Dialogs page.

All the best,
Mihai

[mhubel]

Mihai,
In concept, this is what I would like to do. I was trying to get something to show before the "welcome dialog" but this is better than nothing. I did try to put in a readme dialog and got the following message:

Creating MSI database (en)... done.
Writing Summary Information... done.
Creating MSI database (fr)... error.
Failed to read RTF file "E:\usr4.0\install\Control.Text.ReadmeDlg#ReadmeText_2". Make sure you localized correctly the path for "Control.Text.ReadmeDlg#ReadmeText_2".

the actual path shown for the file is E:\usr4.0\install\readme.rtf

I was able to make this error go away by right clicking on the file name in the "readme" diaglog and changing the selection from "using specified localization identifier" to "using default localization identifier".

Now while it does build a installer without error, there does not seem to be any way to make the readme.rtf language dependent. If it was looking for additional files for other languages, I would have expected error messages. What is the rule? Looking in the dictionary, it looks like it expects something like "readme_fi.rtf". Does it allow that missing files default to English? Must the file be called readmexxx.rtf?

[mihai.petcu]

Hello,

I was trying to get something to show before the "welcome dialog" but this is better than nothing.

If you have any prerequisites in your package and don't mind using an .EXE package, you could also look into the "Display Information dialog" from Bootstrapper UI functionality. When setting prerequisites as pre-install, the bootstrapper dialogs will be shown before the main installer dialogs.

here does not seem to be any way to make the readme.rtf language dependent

If you're looking to show the readme text depending on the target machine language, you can follow "How do I localize the EULA and ReadMe text?" article for guidance.

All the best,
Mihai