Silent Installation
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Claudiu (Softland)
- Posts: 1564
- Joined: Thu May 23, 2013 7:19 am
Hi,
Sorry but it's not possible to install doPDF silently. We decided to remove the silent install parameters after some abuses reported to us. So right now this is only possible with our commercial program, novaPDF.
Sorry but it's not possible to install doPDF silently. We decided to remove the silent install parameters after some abuses reported to us. So right now this is only possible with our commercial program, novaPDF.
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Claudiu (Softland)
- Posts: 1564
- Joined: Thu May 23, 2013 7:19 am
The abuses I'm talking about is installing doPDF without the user knowledge, and also installing doPDF without giving users the option to agree with the EULA.
We had a case where someone set up a page (those sales letters types) that was revealing the big secret behind converting any type of document to PDF by purchasing (for a special price!) an ebook which also silent installed dopdf and the "big secret" in the ebook was practically how to use dopdf to print.
So these are the reasons we don't provide silent installation in doPDF. As mentioned above, our commercial product novaPDF - https://www.novapdf.com/download.html - supports silent installation.
To sum up, sorry but silent installation will not be added to doPDF.
We had a case where someone set up a page (those sales letters types) that was revealing the big secret behind converting any type of document to PDF by purchasing (for a special price!) an ebook which also silent installed dopdf and the "big secret" in the ebook was practically how to use dopdf to print.
So these are the reasons we don't provide silent installation in doPDF. As mentioned above, our commercial product novaPDF - https://www.novapdf.com/download.html - supports silent installation.
To sum up, sorry but silent installation will not be added to doPDF.
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Incroyable HULK
- Posts: 1
- Joined: Tue Jan 06, 2009 2:55 pm
I registered just to express my opinion on this matter.
I work for the I.N.R.S (Institute of National Scientific Research) in Quebec City, Canada and I am in charge of automated deployment. I evaluated many free PDF program a year and a half ago and I have choosen your program for 3 main reasons:
1. Free (and working well!)
2. Easy to use and lightweight (no useless garbage)
3. Automated (silent) deployment supported
Now I regret this choice because you no longer provide silent switch for unattended installation. I'll have to use an older version or go back and select another PDF writer and still support those who already have doPDF installed...
Most users here are teachers, students and support personel and we wanted to provide an easy alternative to the full version of Adobe Acrobat and we can't just tell them to install manually.
About the EULA, you could just show at first use and beleive me, nobody read this.
I can no longer recommend your software on our MSFN Forum (I am moderator) as well just for the lack of automated switch.
Patrick - [Incroyable HULK]
I work for the I.N.R.S (Institute of National Scientific Research) in Quebec City, Canada and I am in charge of automated deployment. I evaluated many free PDF program a year and a half ago and I have choosen your program for 3 main reasons:
1. Free (and working well!)
2. Easy to use and lightweight (no useless garbage)
3. Automated (silent) deployment supported
Now I regret this choice because you no longer provide silent switch for unattended installation. I'll have to use an older version or go back and select another PDF writer and still support those who already have doPDF installed...
Most users here are teachers, students and support personel and we wanted to provide an easy alternative to the full version of Adobe Acrobat and we can't just tell them to install manually.
About the EULA, you could just show at first use and beleive me, nobody read this.
I can no longer recommend your software on our MSFN Forum (I am moderator) as well just for the lack of automated switch.
Patrick - [Incroyable HULK]
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Claudiu (Softland)
- Posts: 1564
- Joined: Thu May 23, 2013 7:19 am
@Patrick I'm sorry but doPDF won't support silent deployment, even with the risk of losing from the popularity doPDF gained lately (another webmaster of a highly popular website gave up on recommending doPDF http://www.dopdf.com/forum/topic/spread-the-word).
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Too bad about your experience with "silent deployment" Have you considered using a msi package? Active Directory software install works well with msi and MS installer can force the EULA. Could the EULA thing be a secondary reason for wanting to move corporate users into your NovaPDF server. Cost prohibitive for us. plus we don't want the network traffic.
dashcraf - Credit given where credit's due, I want to thank you for the above information! I've only seen a few instances where a sw eng could successfully uncompile an exe, outside of ms visual studio! I was in fact, able to uncompile the original exe very nicely, including all the subdirectories.
Unfortunately, I couldn't get this scenario to work satisfactorily because as you mention above, it only produces part of the code (can't figure out why???). The script that gets uncompiled doesn't (!@#$%^&) contain the functions neccesary for the install to work. You would think that if the script uncompiles what was used IN the original compile, it would ALL have to be there. But it isn't. All the basic functions like installing the doPdf printer into windows is missing! And I don't know how to write those functions in Inno language. I managed to get a fully working exe re-compiled that DOES install successfully - but it won't produce the doPdf printer (i.e., won't install it). Still, it is a foundation to work from.
We did request and receive an OK from novapdf.com to use doPdf in our enterprise environment, and appreciate it! But it would be nice if I could get the script to run silent...
Larry
Unfortunately, I couldn't get this scenario to work satisfactorily because as you mention above, it only produces part of the code (can't figure out why???). The script that gets uncompiled doesn't (!@#$%^&) contain the functions neccesary for the install to work. You would think that if the script uncompiles what was used IN the original compile, it would ALL have to be there. But it isn't. All the basic functions like installing the doPdf printer into windows is missing! And I don't know how to write those functions in Inno language. I managed to get a fully working exe re-compiled that DOES install successfully - but it won't produce the doPdf printer (i.e., won't install it). Still, it is a foundation to work from.
We did request and receive an OK from novapdf.com to use doPdf in our enterprise environment, and appreciate it! But it would be nice if I could get the script to run silent...
Larry