Improve Windows dev environment documentation

[jrowberg]

Summary of changes

Add explicit documentation for how to get up and running quickly for Plover development in Windows, based on the headache I had to endure today trying fruitlessly with Miniconda and then working through MS Build Tools hurdles.

No code changes are included, only a single block of additional text in the previously near-empty windows/README.md file.

[benoit-pierre]

What version of Windows / Python did you use? Because plover-stroke does have wheels for Windows 64 bits and Python versions 3.7 to 3.10.

[jrowberg]

I'm running Win10 64-bit, and my Miniconda installation is 64-bit. However, maybe I accidentally made life way harder by absent-mindedly installing the 32-bit version of WinPython 3.9 when I tried going that route.

...yes, yes I did. I just tried with the WinPython 3.9.8.0 64-bit, and it worked without my needing to do any of that mess with MS Build Tools. Good lord.

Maybe I should rework some of the new content so that it notes the differences and provides better help to anyone who actually needs/wants 32-bit Python.

[benoit-pierre]

Maybe I should rework some of the new content so that it notes the differences and provides better help to anyone who actually needs/wants 32-bit Python

Or better yet, we only support 64 bits Python, done. In fact, I'm surprised to see that the latest version of PyQtWebEngine has a 32 bits wheel for Windows available (32 bits support was dropped at some point). Anyway, it's baffling to me that 32 bits is still a thing on Windows.

I'm also honestly not a fan of adding specific instructions for Windows, beyond the standard developer documentation.

All those environment specific instructions always end up outdated, plus once you add instructions for one env, everyone want to do it for their env, and things tends to balloon from there...

And not necessarily the simplest way if you just want to develop a Python only plugin (no C extension).

[jrowberg]

Thanks for the additional feedback. It's definitely not my call to decide about official architecture support (though I agree about 64-bit target priority these days, especially in Windows). I didn't realize that 32-bit support was dropped before, or I would have been looking out specifically for the right WinPython install. 🤦‍♂️

I've cut down and simplified the additions I made to the Windows doc, which you can review with formatting easily here:

https://github.com/jrowberg/plover/blob/improve-windows-docs/windows/README.md

Having gone through the the dev setup process today, even ignoring the architecture mistake, I think this type of "getting started" content is still valuable. It's the level of detail I was hoping to find when I began, a way to quickly connect a few important dots that a new dev on the project might not know ahead of time.

Even so, if you want to close without merging, no hard feelings.