Real-world appdb

[Jonathan Ernst]

Thanks again for your message.

Le lundi 07 février 2005 à 01:16 +0100, Holly Bostick a écrit : 
> I had to go through 4 links just to get to the main application page.
> First, the sidebar link from the main site to the appdb front page. This 

[FIXED] I sent a patch to replace "Applications" with "Applications
database" in www.winehq.org

> front page is useless to me (and imo, fairly useless overall), since the
> majority of the "Gold" and "Silver' apps so prominently listed I already
> do/would use the native alternatives for in the case of winzip, p7zip, 
> Paint (Paint??! it's barely useful under Windows!), SimCity, IE, Excel, 
> ACDSee, Money, Frontpage/Dreamweaver, and Ant Movie Catalog. Others I do 
> not use at all, either because I have no use for them, in the case of 
> Powerpoint, Access and Visio, or because they are "special interest 
> programs" as in the case of Warcraft and Age of Empires (I play games, 
> but not those).

[NOT FIXED] We have to discuss it and make changes to this first page.
Paint and other applications are here because peole voted for it (i.e.
the list is generated automatically).

> What I would have found more useful on what is essentially the
> "overview" page is some indication as to whether the problems with the 
> application that I am consulting the app database about are known, and 
> whether they are solveable (so I'd know whether to continue with the 
> appdb or if I need to immediately begin searching elsewhere for 
> solutions). A nice bulletted list (or a couple of them) would do just 
> fine: "Installs: Yes, no, with modification (the last being a link to 
> the comment explaining the needed modifications); "Runs: Yes, no, with 
> modifications (as above); "Known Problems: Bulleted list (with links), 
> none".

[FIXED] Application overview contains a general description of
application but version-specific pages (should) contains the
informations you are requesting and new templates are trying to enforce
that. Yes you have to click once more on your version but it is normal
imho as each versions has it's specific problems and the summarry under
the main overview tells you already if an application is Gold, Silver,
Bronze or Garbage.

> 1.4) The big "Become a super maintainer" link/button is nice, and
> encourages me to become one (via guilt; because I'm attempting to look
> up programs I very commonly install under Wine whenever I install a new
> distribution, I feel I might be familiar enough with the issues 
> surrounding them  that I should contribute something back) but I do not 
> become a maintainer because:
> 
> 1.4a) I couldn't log in via that login button anyway; I had to use the 
> side menu link and then go back to the page I was on. Fortunately the 
> "send a new password" link on the login page that the "Log in to become 
> a maintainer" button takes you to didn't seem to work either, so I was 
> able to look up my original password in a password maintenance progam
> (PCMagazine's 6-year-old Password Prompter) that I run via Wine (which
> is why I hadn't so much bothered to stop what I was doing and look it up
> in the first place) and use my real login in the side menu link instead;

[FIXED] Please report back if you think otherwise.

> 1.4b) more importantly, I do not know what the responsibilities of a
> "maintainer" are-- much less a "super maintainer". There is no link on
> that page as to what this means (not even a little question mark with a
> tooltip popup), and no indication as to whether actually clicking the
> button will go to an "intermediate" page which explains what it is, or
> just sets your login as the maintainer for this app (since I have 
> specifically had to log in in order to enable this button in the first 
> place, it's not an unreasonable assumption that that might occur).

[FIXED/NOT FIXED] These informations are shown after clicking on the
button. But we discussed the possibility to add a "?" sign near the
button that will bring you to the related help page.

> Weirdly enough, going to the version page for the application offers me
> the opportunity to be a "regular" maintainer-- so, what, that means I
> would be a maintainer for that specific version, whereas "super 
> maintainer" means that I'd be maintainer for all versions, like some 
> kind of 'team leader'? I'm not sure that either makes sense to me as a 
> user, nor that it is a logical setup generally, at least for games, 

[NOT FIXED] Yes it is what it means it should be explained in the help
section discussed above and the button should have a "?" sign as well.

> which usually should not be run at lower versions if a patch (which 
> increases the version while repairing errors) is available. So there is 
> in some ways no reason to maintain version "1.0" when no one should 
> actually be *running* version 1.0 other than immediately after install, 
> and then only for the 5 seconds before the user has installed one or 
> more patches (after which they will be running a higher version). There 
> are certainly some games that would require that several patch 
> levels/versions be maintained; I know of at least one (Settlers 3) that 
> only works (for my boyfriend under Windows 2000) with a lower patch than 
> the "latest" patch, and SiN (a game which I run under Wine despite a 
> native version being available, because I already have two copies of the 
> Windows version) is also very touchy about patches, so it certainly can 
> happen that multiple patch levels of a game might need to be separately 
> maintained. I would think that the game's maintainer would know if 
> his/her particular charge needed special circumstances though, and since 
> this is not a common situation (you usually want all users to be running 
> the latest patch, and this is usually a good idea), having it as a 
> general organizational strategy, at least in the games category, seems 
> to be unnecessary work.

[WONT FIX] We cannot handle different behaviour for games and other
categories. As you said it yourself there are cases when it makes sense
to maintain separate version. If it makes no sense it's the duty of the
app or version maintainer to rename his version (for example 1.x instead
of haveing version 1.1 and version 1.2 if their behaviour is the same).

> 1.5) Comments are not being counted properly on the main overview page;
> Icewind Dale actually has two comments on the version page (version 1.0,
> which again is not the "real" version as there are two expansion packs,
> both of which contain patches that increase the version number, and
> these patches are also available separately, so no one should be using
> "vanilla" 1.0), but the main page says that the number of comments are 0.

[FIXED] I sent a patch for this as well. Thank you for reporting.

> 
> 1.6) I hope that one of the responsibilities of the maintainer or super
> maintainer is to control comments in some way. I completely understand
> that users of the appdb who are having problems with any given app *have
> no other place to state their issue with the specific program in an
> organized and somewhat reliably maintained fashion* (as wine has no
> forums, and certainly no forums linked to the specific app). However,
> comments like
> 
> "hmm... when exporting registry, the reg file is all messed up. It has
> weird symbols in it. Any idea what I'm doing wrong?"
> 
> have no place in the appdb. On the other hand, if I was the maintainer,

[FIXED] Yes maintainer, supermaintainers and administrators can delete
comments and explain why they deleted it.

> I would want to know that a user of the app that I maintained was
> evidencing this problem (assuming that the issue commented on is
> specific to the app, which in this case it probably is not), and help
> the user solve it so that I could update the procedure to install and
> run the app.
> 
> I'd really like to see forums or at least some kind of PM system so that
> the users of the applications could reliably communicate with the
> maintainer for the benefit of both parties. I see that Planescape:
> Torment (another game I have running under Wine, without issue;
> http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?versionId=437 ) has a maintainer,
> but his name is not a mailto: link, so I can't contact him (afaik) to 
> advise him of any new information I may have discovered short of posting 
> a comment myself... which is fine if it's new information (assuming that 
> my comment fits into the organizational structure of the db so that 
> following users can find it easily), but if it's an app-specific issue 
> that I want his help with, it's a waste of space (insofar as such a 
> comment provides no real information to other users searching the 
> database except a confirmation of the issue), and the appdb as it is 
> gives no assurance that the maintainer will see the comment anyway.

[FIXED] Maintainers, Supermaintainers and Administrators  receive e-mail
telling them an user made a comment in applications they maintain. If
the comment is in reply to another comment the other people in the
thread receive the email as well.

> 
> Comments should also require the specification of the Wine version, the
> distribution under which it is used, and the type of install
> (self-compiled from source, distribution repository package, or Wine
> distribution package; I have visions of a radio button) to be attached
> to the comment, as new users often don't know to include this
> information, but it's pretty hard to answer many questions without
> having this information (so one has to ask, which wastes time and space).

[NOT FIXED] Good idea. Might be worth implementing it.

> A Wine FAQ at the forefront of the appdb, or even linked to each
> application's overview page might be nice, too, for more general issues
> like the above comment-- an explanation of basic procedures such as
> exporting/importing registry entries, what common errors mean, like the
> "Warning: The specified Windows directory L"C:\\Windows" is not
> accessible" error and what to do about it, why not to get all freaked
> out by seeing "fixme"s, and simple statements like the fact that some 
> programs will run fine with wine /path/to/app.exe, but some will fail 
> that way with very scary looking errors, but will run fine if one first 
> cds to /path/to/ and then runs wine app.exe. This kind of thing is often
> something new Wine users don't know, but is a very simple way to
> eliminate possible vectors of error before going to any mailing list or
> forum with problems, and may eliminate the need for a user to ask for
> help at all (as the program works when started in the alternate manner).

[NOT FIXED] Good idea too. Might be worth implementing it in the help system.

> Somebody's going to say I should write a FAQ myself and submit it as a
> patch, aren't they? Yes, OK, but let me finish this mail first ;-) .

Are you thinking to do that ?

> 1.7) Descriptions are really not very useful, for several reasons. Still 
> focusing on Icewind Dale (since that's the page I have open in the
> appdb atm), here's the Description for the version page:
> 
> "Description
> CD Release. Runs from a modified Baulders Gate engine. Notes from that
> game would help here as well."
> 
> But there's no link to said notes, nor are the relevant notes copied
> from that page and posted as an addendum, so even though this particular 
> description does contain some useful information (for once), it's not 
> even a lead, but only a suggestion of a lead. Big help.

This should be fixed by maintainers.

> 
> 1.8) (or, "On the road again") Off to the Baldur's Gate page, then... 
> Back button to the subcategory (Games=>Role-Playing; thank heavens 
> they're the same type), follow a new link to the Baldur's Gate page... 
> I'm ranging far afield now, but in this case, that's OK. I have BG as 
> well, but haven't installed it yet, so it's useful for me to look at the 
> page anyway. Luckily. Because if I didn't have BG, I would now be 
> traveling to the page of a completely different application in which I 
> had no interest, with no assurance that what I find there will be of any 
> use to me. In that case, I'd probaly be pretty bloody pissed off by now, 
> given that I would have spent a fair amount of time trailing around the 
> appdb without being so much as a single step closer to solving my actual 
> problem with the original application, or even having it confirmed as a 
> known problem, or receiving a clue that implied "user error", or 
> anything whatsoever that would give me a troubleshooting or solution 
> trail. http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?appId=157 if you'd like to 
> come with me.
> 

Hmm not sur I understood you on this one.

> 1.9) (or, "Helpful help?") Well, there are helpful notes there on the BG 
> page, or rather, actual solutions to potential problems that I might 
> have were I installing BG, which I remind you that I am not. Mind you, 
> I, a simple user, don't know if the solutions posted for Baldur's Gate 
> are problems that also exist under Icewind Dale -- well, actually, I 
> personally do know, because I have run IWD and IWD2 under Wine in the 
> past, and am currently running Planescape: Torment, (which btw runs 
> great under 20050111 without any modification to Wine dlls, one 
> appdb-documented change to the game's configuration file, and one small, 
> optional [AppDefault] in Wine's config). All 5 of these games (IWD, 
> IWD2, BG, BG2, and Planescape) are made by Black Isle, use more or less 
> the same engine, and evidence similar problems to each other. But this 
> does not mean that "your average user" would have any experience with 
> multiple Black Isle games and thus know their technical similarities and 
> differences.
> 
> The solutions on the Baldur's Gate page are general enough to be worth 
> trying if IWD did not run at all, or ran poorly. However, this is not my 
> problem; IWD installs perfectly and seems to run quite well (except for 
> one minor but annoying issue related to Managed or Desktop settings that 
> I haven't yet idenitified how to fix, since the way I fixed the same 
> issue for Planescape doesn't seem to work here). Thus, none of the 
> listed issues for Baldur's Gate is related to my actual problem with 
> Icewind Dale, the specific application I have trailed all over the appdb 
> trying to fix-- and the foremost reason is that my problem is not with 
> IWD itself, but with installing the the expansion pack, "Heart of 
> Winter", and
> 
> 1.10) *this application is not listed in the appdb*, either as a version 
> of IWD (since installing the expansion does require IWD, and does patch 
> the original to a higher version), or as a separate program.

You won't find every application and version in the appdb, nor every fix and problem. That's why you as an user can:
- submit applications and versions
- submit screenshots
- submit how-tos, notes and comments
- modify application and version description (maintainer)
- etc.

You seem to know how to make many application run fine, why don't you
share this knowlege with other appdb users ? You'll make the appdb more
usefull for many and so more people will come and visit the appdb. Some
of these new users you attracted might know more than you on
applications you failed to make to run and might decide to contribute
as you did. That way everybody will benefit.

> 
> Also not listed are the Baldur's Gate expansion, "Tales of the Sword
> Coast", and the Baldur's Gate 2 expansion "Throne of Bhaal", so I hope I
> have no trouble installing those expansion packs when I get around to

Please submit thes new versions or application if you can.

> it. However, given that I am already unable to install the expansion
> pack for IWD, and since I know that IWD and Baldur's Gate are strongly
> related, I'm expecting the worst-- and since the appdb is unable to help
> me with IWD: Heart of Winter (nothing said about the official, free,
> downloadable final expansion, Trials of the Luremaster, which is also
> not in the database), if I hit trouble, I already know where I *won't*

Same here ;-).

> find any help.
> 
> Fine, I'm stopped cold with this issue, let's stop quickly by the
> Icewind Dale 2 page ( http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?appId=1033 )
> and see if there's help for me there; the issue being that it won't
> begin the install. InstallShield fails to extract/open with a regular
> Windows-type dialog saying either that some dll in the /tmp/{long
> CLSID-looking-string-of-numbers} folder can't be opened, or that
> IKernel.exe can't be run. Actually the same issue I'm having when trying 
> to install IWD:HoW, which doesn't surprise me very much, as I would 
> guess that the Installshield for IWD:HoW and IWD2 are more closely 
> related to each other than the one for the original IWD. Since the 
> issues seem similar, maybe there's a fix for both apps on the IWD2 page.
> 
> 2.1) Only one version (the original version, although there is a 2.01
> patch), but whatever; according to the description, I am supposed to be

Same here, any user can submit a new version ;-).

> able to install this, as long as I have an insanely old version of Wine
> (the original description was penned by someone installing under
> 20020904!), which I don't.

The fact that someone reported that an application worked fine with
Wine 20020904 doesn't mean it won't run with a newer version. On the
opposite, regressions are not so common in Wine nowadays and if you or
any user finds out that an application which was working with an older
version of wine doesn't work anymore you can just send an e-mail to
wine-devel to spot the regression. On the other hand if you find an old
comment like this and can confirm that it still works using the current
Wine version, you can tell others by adding a comment or modifying the
description (please keep an history of reported Wine-version tested) if
you are a maintainer.

> 
> 2.2) Two comments listed on the overview page, only one comment in 
> actuality.

[FIXED] The patch should be comitted tonight.

> 
> 2.3) I'll try the workaround listed in the description, but since the
> version of Wine used is so distant from what I actually have, and the
> error which the workaround is fixing may or may not be the same one I'm
> having (it's impossible to tell), and furthermore may not even be needed
> anymore given the improvements in Wine in the meantime, I don't have 
> much hope that it will work. But it's the only lead I have, as far as 
> the appdb is concerned. Given that my second-best source of 
> information--Transgaming's games database and forums-- has been blown 
> away and replaced with a new games database (for which little or no data 
> for most individual games has yet been entered), I don't have many other 
> options than the appdb, since sites like Frank's Corner only cover a 
> very limited selection of apps/games, and the various IWD sites on the 
> Web don't cover Linux).
> 
> If the workaround doesn't work, I will probably dig up my backup of my
> last installed and updated Win98-- which I cleverly saved all the
> system files from before blowing it away, for just such an eventuality--
> and "taint" my Wine installation by copying over the "real"
> InstallShield files to the fake windows Common Files. This will probably
> work-- it has in the past-- but I was really hoping to run 'pure' Wine
> this time around. It has so been improving by leaps and bounds lately.

If you take time to investigate this you might then report back in the
appdb so that next user will have mor luck than you had in the first
place.

> 
> 
> Let's see if things are any better in the Applications section. My issue
> here is that I need to burn some CloneCD images. K3b claims they are
> unuseable, and ccd2iso did not create recognizeable isos from them. It
> remains unclear whether this is because the images themselves are no
> good, or because there is a problem with ccd2iso, which several users
> claimed was the case on the project site's bug tracker (
> http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=94638&atid=608541 ). So I want
> to install either CloneCD (preferred), or Nero (version 6 or above,
> which I *think* will also recognize the images, I have version 5.* as
> well, but I don't *think* it will solve my problem to install it, as I'm
> not sure when Nero's recognition of *.ccd images became reliable, but I
> believe it was with version 6, if in fact it is reliable at all), to see
> if the error is in the images themselves, or burn them if the problem is
> with K3b.
> 
> I do not have any real interest in installing these programs on their
> own account, although if I kept one, I would keep CloneCD for the
> specific use of handling .ccd images, on the rare occasion that I need
> to deal with them. I would prefer not to install Nero at all, and
> certainly not to keep it, as it's too much overhead for the only use I
> have for it (for my normal requirements, K3b is perfectly adequate). The
> only reason Nero is under consideration at all is that I may not be able
> to install or use CloneCD and Nero is the only other application that I
> know that might reliably recognize and burn the images if they are in
> fact not flawed.
> 
> I have already tried to install both programs; CloneCD installed without
> problems, but would not run, starting the debugger immediately with an
> error in the 32-bit code-- I would like to find out why, and if there is
> a solution. I then tried to install Nero 6.3, but clicking either the
> Nero 6-only setup button or the "install suite" button on the autorun
> dialog blinked and returned me to the autorun dialog-- I'd like a
> solution, if I cannot get CloneCD to run (which I don't think I can).

This kind of informations would be very usefull to other appdb users.

> 
> This is a real issue I am attempting to solve, and my goals are clear. I
> am now going to the appdb to see if it will help me.
> 
> 3.1) Gotta search for CloneCD, as I have no idea what category it would 
> be in. Utilities=>File System, it turns out. Guess that makes sense, no 
> idea if it's "intuitive". http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?appId=822

[NOT FIXED] Yeah I always found it odd to find cd-r applications in this category.

> 3.2) Version: not the version I have, but any port in a storm... 
> Comments field says there's one comment. Also not a hopeful sign, but 
> the appdb has been wrong about the comments before, and anyway, any port....

[FIXED]...

> 
> 3.3) ..what the..???!!! There is no comment! Is the description being
> counted as a comment? In any case, there is absolutely no information

[FIXED]...

> whatsoever for this application (I don't call "Description:
> Program for burning CD Especially to make clones of original CD\'s"
> information), and there are Zarro bugs found in Bugzilla (of course; I'm 
> not even certain if Bugzilla is even linked to and indexed with the 
> appdb in that way yet).
> 
> OK, this is a dead end. Guess I'd better try to fix Nero, so it's off to 
> http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?appId=152 .
> 
> 4.1) Hey, the first app I've looked at in this db with a "native
> alternative" link. Nice, but I'm not reading the description anyway (I
> know what Nero Burning ROM is and does), so I almost missed it. I think 
> that the link should be underneath the link to the Nero URL, above the 
> screenshot (one extra field, thus; "Native Alternative  <link to K3b>").
> 
> I'd be much more likely to see it then (if I didn't know about K3b already).

[FIXED] It's now possible (again) to add applicatin specific links in the place you mention.

> 4.2) Versions: all versions that an 'ordinary' user might have are 
> represented, good; no comments counted for any of them, bad (if true). 
> Following the link to 6.x.
> 
> 4.3) Nope, there are in fact no comments. And the description field is
> exactly the same, except without the native alternative link. What is
> the point of that? It's Nero version 6, one can reasonably assume that

[FIXED] Before the recent changes I made. Version description and
application description was identical when a new application was
submitted. Now people have to enter two different descriptions for
application and version (and these fields have templates).

> 4.4) huh, 7 comments, when none are counted on the overview page.

[FIXED]



Thanks again, I'd be happy to see you reporting back.
Jonathan
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