Running P4 on Restricted access machines

An observation.

I recently had the need to run P4 on an access restricted windows machine. In order to install P4 I had to go through the pain of gaining access rights to that machine through a separate "software install" account. Having successfully run the installer I found I was still unable to launch P4.

I did some googling and found a link to the non-installer version of P4. For this I didn't even ever need install access rights and could have run it straight out of the unpacked Zip file. More than that, with the non-installer version I am able to carry a copy of P4 around on my USB stick - along with any interesting ontologies - which gives me the ability to boot up P4 on any machine whenever and whereever I like, even if that machine has no internet access or appropriate install permissions. In addition, this version of P4 feels a bit faster on loading itself and ontologies - but I have no evidence for this.

I would like to know why the non-installer version is not more obviously available through the Stanford download site. I can imagine many situations (like running a tutorial for example) where this version would be better for sharing the tool. Perhaps I would also like to know what significant advantages the installer brings at all. The one advantage that I would have thought it would bring - being able to double click on a .owl file and have it automatically open in P4 - doesnt seem to happen.

Cheers,

Dr Andrew Gibson
Universiteit van Amsterdam

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