Upgrading from Tarma QuickInstall
InstallMate 7 is a completely rewritten successor to Tarma QuickInstall 2.x. Even though its overall purpose remains the same, version 7 has many more features and uses a different internal design than version 2 did. The following table summarizes the most important differences.
| Item | Tarma QuickInstall | InstallMate 7 |
|---|---|---|
| Basic functionality | Installation and removal of folders, files, shortcuts | Same, but with many new options |
| System editing | Installation and removal of registry values, INI file values, and environment variables | Same, but with many new options. In addition, service installation and removal is now directly supported. |
| Selective installation | Limited to simple conditions | Fully feature- and component-based; can be selected at installation time. A full complement of conditions is also supported. |
| Installer actions | Limited custom actions; fixed built-in action sequences | All action sequences can be fully edited; many new custom action types. |
| Installer user interface | Limited to predefined Setup.exe stubs | All user interface elements and dialogs can be fully edited without special tools. The entire user interface sequence can be redesigned (or removed) if desired. |
| Installer types | Self-extracting or plain file | Self-extracting. Parallel build configurations allow you to create multiple installer variations from the same project. |
| Multilingual installers | US English only, per-language, or multilingual | Default language only, per-language, or multilingual |
| Localization | Readme and License texts can be localized; file installation can be made language-specific. The user interface localization is limited to the predefined language DLLs. | Virtually any aspect of the installation package can be localized. Localization can be done piecemeal on an item-by-item and language-by-language basis. All user interface elements can be localized. |
| Project files | Essentially ANSI-encoded .ini files. See details below. | Unicode-encoded XML files. See details below. |
Project files
InstallMate can open projects created with Tarma QuickInstall 2, version 2.21 and later. When opening a Tarma QuickInstall 2 ("Tin2") project, the project contents are automatically converted to the InstallMate ("Im7") structure and conventions. The original Tin2 project is not modified; when you save a converted project, it is stored in a new Im7-format project file. Tarma QuickInstall 2 cannot handle Im7 projects.
To support all new InstallMate features, the Im7 project file format was completely redesigned. The new Im7 format is based on XML 1.0 in Unicode encoding; if you used tools to modify the Tin2 project files outside of the InstallMate development environment, you will have to adapt them to handle the new format. The following table summarizes the most important differences between the Tin2 and the Im7 formats.
| Item | Tarma QuickInstall 2 | InstallMate |
|---|---|---|
| Project file extension | .tin | .im7 |
| Project file encoding | ANSI (using the default code page) | Unicode (UTF-8 or UTF-16) |
| Project file format | Derived from Windows .ini files | XML 1.0 |
| Localization | Limited to the default code page | Full Unicode 4.0 support, except for surrogates |
| Editable? | Yes, with any plain text editor or tool | Only with Unicode-enabled text editors and tools |
| Structure | Mostly flat, with a few nesting levels | Fully nested, follows XML 1.0 syntax rules |
| Robustness | Forgiving of minor errors | Unforgiving; requires precise adherence to Unicode encoding and XML syntax rules |
Automatic conversion of Tin2 projects
When you open a Tarma QuickInstall 2 project in InstallMate, the project contents are automatically converted to Im7 conventions. After conversion to Im7 conventions, you can rebuild your project. The resulting installer should be equivalent to the original Tin2 installer.
The table below shows where the Tarma QuickInstall 2 project pages went in InstallMate. Click on the Tarma QuickInstall 2 links for detailed conversion information, or on the InstallMate links for information about the new project pages.