[Wine] How can we improve WNE?

[Austin English]

On Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 3:24 PM, fcmartins <wineforum-user at winehq.org> wrote:
>
> man_in_shack wrote:
>>
>> The solution to the above problem is separate wineprefixes, but if the intent is to make it *easy* to configure, then that doesn't help.
>>
>> Sorry, but even if the general consensus of developers was "Yes, we should make it easier to change all these settings", the user supporters would then have to deal with brokenness of individual configurations akin to installing apps via ies4linux or wine-doors, or if someone thinks it's a good idea to install MS DirectX in wine.
>>
>
> This touches on another area of Wine weakness regarding usability. Although adding more options would aggravate the situation, as it stands, winecfg already allows for a change in a setting to mess up the next or previously installed application.
>
> IMO, ideally, Wine(cfg) would support configurations per application. It just looks silly that I have to change settings each time I run an application that needs different settings from the previous. (of course, by then I already forgot which were the original settings I used).

It does, to an extent. You can set windows versions/dll
overrides/virtual desktops and a couple other things to be 'per
application'. Sound drivers cannot be.

> I'm not sure the solution has to lead necessarily to different wine prefixes. Maybe it is sufficient to keep in the registry a set of winecfg settings per application (.../wine/winecfg/app_name/setting) which would be automatically re-set before the app is run.
>
> Anyway, I think the concept of a wineprefix per application can be reasonably accepted by the users AND made transparent. Ideally winecfg would facilitate different wine prefixes, but this is arguable, i.e., maybe it falls better under the domain of "wine distributions".

winecfg can't do this, it is a winelib application, and is only aware
of the wineprefix it is running in. You'd have to have a non winelib
application do this. This is what, e.g., Crossovers' bottle manager,
PlayOnLinux, and Bordeaux do.

-- 
-Austin