[Wine] re: Printing, Control Panel & Win3x app

[Dan Kegel]

deedee wrote:
> I've been using a legacy Windows 3x application, WordStar for
> Windows, with Wine for a long time.

(Hey, I remember that editor!)
What's the most recent version of Wine that works well with it?

After a little googling, I was going to point you at what looks like
an excellent site on the subject, http://wordstar2.com, but I see
you're the maintainer of that site :-)

> I recently installed a beta
> release of Wine compiled for Mandriva Linux (2006.0) - 0.9.22,
> and a number of problems have occurred with the program.
>
> The most critical problem is that WordStar for Windows won't print
> (it printed from the alpha Wines). I get the error message: "No
> printer is active. Please use the Windows Control Panel to make a
> printer active."
>
> The win.ini file shows all the printers installed in /etc/printcap
> correctly and indicates that the printer (which is turned on and
> local) is the default and active printer. Other programs, such as
> MS Word, print correctly from Wine.
>
> Although I have a "Windows Control Panel," it doesn't provide
> anything about printers.
>
> Another problem is that WSWin does not enter my Windows truetype
> fonts correctly. It gets the font format and size correct, but the
> cursor does not move over and it ends up typing every letter on
> top of the previous letter. ...

Those sound like two very annoying bugs.

> What do you suggest I try?

Two ideas come to mind:
1) find which version of Wine introduced the problems
or
2) convince a Wine developer to buy a copy so he can do it for you.
Looks like the going rate is $25 or so, so it's not an expensive item.
(The only version I saw was Wordstar for Windows 2.0, presumably
that's what you have?)

I recently fixed two problems in Wine that kept Lotus 1-2-3 for DOS
from working, and I'd enjoy looking at your problem, but my wrists
exploded recently, and I really shouldn't be typing at all :-(

> BTW, this Wine is otherwise doing an excellent job of running a
> number of Windows programs and games on my systems (all currently
> Mandriva Linux 2006.0). I need the Windows programs to be able to
> access quite a few large archives of user files and except for
> the recent problems with WordStar, Wine has worked better (fewer
> problems with the software) than Windows for running the
> applications.

That's nice to hear.
- Dan