Wine-1.0 release notes

[Susan Cragin]

I would agree and go further. 
Wine has made Linux handicapped-accessible for a great number of people, including me, who have mild repetitive-motion difficulties that make typing for any length of time uncomfortable. 
Many of the people who use Linux are programmers and are technically proficient, and they seem to want a lot from their computer, but here I sit, comfortably churning out text at the rate of almost the spoken word. I transcribe interviews, write letters, complain to my congresspeople, and am writing this, with no effort (and sometimes, not much thought either, because you see, it's not an effort to type).
Dragon NaturallySpeaking is a tremendously complex program, and it is a miracle that it has been made to run on Linux. Now, it runs in basic form. Many of its "special features" don't work. But on the other hand, if it were being sold as simply a text recognition medium, it would still sell. That's what it does well. It recognizes spoken words and writes them down, fast. 
In addition, I expect that soon wine and Linux will run Dragon NaturallySpeaking faster than Windows will. Windows Vista will run it better, because more of its features will be enabled, but Linux will run it faster.
And faster means better, means more words PLUS more accurate recognition. As soon as some of the bugs get worked out Ubuntu and ALSA sound, and I get better accuracy scores from my microphone, I expect Dragon NaturallySpeaking to recognize text better on Linux than it does on Windows. 
What that means for transcription services, for court reporting, etc., is anybody's guess. But I plan to find out when I take a speed test on the last day of July.
Dragon NaturallySpeaking is a unique program. Just ask those folks at IBM who worked on ViaVoice. That program was abandoned. Ask the people at Carnegie Mellon who worked on Sphinx for Linux. Ask Microsoft, which is trying to develop its own. Dragon NaturallySpeaking is the type of program that isn't going to have a rival for 10 years.

Now that I've gotten that particular rant off my chest -- and don't worry about my fingers, it only took me a minute to do it -- I'd like to mention another very useful program that wine runs flawlessly. This is keynote, a note-taking program used by academic researchers.

Here is another little thought to ponder. Massachusetts USA developed a state requirement for "open document format" but it has been delayed because, as one lobbyist put it, "there are no office applications with native ODF support that provide accessibility for persons who use assistive technology devices."

I mean, how proud do we need to be about not running everything? 

Susan

-----Original Message-----
>From: Reece Dunn <msclrhd at googlemail.com>
>Sent: Jun 11, 2008 8:02 PM
>To: Vitaliy Margolen <wine-devel at kievinfo.com>
>Cc: Wine Develop <wine-devel at winehq.org>
>Subject: Re: Wine-1.0 release notes
>
>2008/6/11 Vitaliy Margolen <wine-devel at kievinfo.com>:
>> In short - that after everyone's hard work and 15 years of development
>> wine-1.0 is just a release tag nothing more.
>
>I think that this is overly harsh. It's like saying that you should
>not celebrate a birthday, as that is just you aging just a day,
>nothing more.
>
>Wine is in a strange position as it is trying to make any Windows
>application (ultimately) run on any suitable posix system with a
>suitable X server. Given that a new version of Windows is usually
>released every 2-3 years, with new features, APIs and functionality,
>the landscape is constantly changing. Couple this with each successive
>release of an application supporting newer technologies and APIs - the
>set of which differs from application to application, makes it harder
>to support.
>
>Yes, regressions will happen. Yes, applications will crash/fail to
>work. But think of all the applications that *do* work; given what
>Wine is working against, this is an amasing achievement. Wine can and
>does run Office, Photoshop, ITunes, Oblivion, Peggle and a myriad
>other applications (some better than others).
>
>So yes, highlight the known issues in the release notes, list the
>major applications (with corresponding version numbers) that are known
>to work and refer the user to the AppDB for more information. However,
>don't sell it short either.
>
>I am personally using Wine to run the Cepstral SwiftTalker
>text-to-speech program, play Oberon/PopCap/casual games like Peggle,
>Bejeweled 2 and Bloom on my Ubuntu laptop. I'm sure that other people
>have other success stories as well, such as Susan Cragin, who uses
>Dragon Naturally Speaking 9.
>
>Maybe what we need is a "What I use Wine for" set of documents or
>mini-articles where people describe what Windows applications they are
>running, what works/does not work for them. Dan's Spouse test is also
>a good idea. Perhaps we can get some feedback on the Spouses
>experiences of using the applications under Wine.
>
>NOTE: I have been testing various casual games from Oberon with the
>various RC releases and have found that over 50% of those tested
>(around 14 at the moment) worked out of the box when ran directly from
>their install directory. While this does not seem a lot, given what
>Wine is developing against, I think this is a huge success.
>
>NOTE: I am not saying Wine is perfect, I'm saying that the message
>should be positive and realistic instead of unduly negative.
>
>- Reece
>
>