Installing Acrobat Reader 7 and Acrobat in general

[gslink]

Holly Bostick wrote:
> gslink schreef:
> 
>>The user interface is what the user has to do to use the program.  This
>>is not supported in Wine.  You will find links from winehq to several
>>lists of things that run under Wine.  When you attempt to use these
>>lists you will find that many if not most of the programs do not run as is.
>>The user outside the Wine world sees a totally false picture of Wine. He
>>loads Wine and finds there are NO current instructions on how to use it
>>so he presumes Wine to be worthless and goes away.  Even if he persists
>>there is still the problem of figuring out exactly how to make many if
>>not most of the programs in the will run database work.  The public
>>simply won't put up with this.  You can't have Wine so that a user must
>>be a priest to load a special dll or to find out what special dll is
>>necessary.
>>Currently, there needs to be a short document written and KEPT up to
>>date.  To install and use Wine do .......  This document needs to point
>>to somewhere where the user can get more help.  There needs to be a WIKI
>>where postings can be made specifically concerning what is necessary to
>>make a program work on Wine.  How do you currently make Office or
>>Acrobat work on Wine?  To my knowledge there are currently no large or
>>complicated programs that you just load and run under Wine.  You must
>>set them all up first.  It doesn't make any difference to the user if a
>>program fails because of a sound driver.  Waiting for all this to be
>>fixed perfectly means a wait forever and serves no purpose without at
>>least simple instructions on how to use Wine now.
>>
>>
> 
> 
> I'm sorry, gslink, but I cannot find any reasonable point of mediation
> or compromise in your position, as it does not completely make sense to me.
> 
> On the one hand (the previous "Commercial Support" thread), you're
> against public requests for "support" (in the sense of "help" in various
> forms), because Wine is not "ready" in one or more senses.
> 
> On the other hand, you admit that Wine needs "support", because it is
> not "ready", thus people can't use it.
> 
> Am I the only one seeing the circular chain of reasoning here?
> 
> All I can get (meaning, "guess wildly") from this (and our previous
> conversation) is that you feel that Wine(lib) must be made ready so that
> all these supposedly non-working applications can be ported so that they
> work transparently, because that's the only solution to this conundrum.
> 
> Which would be very nice, I'm sure. However, my position is (as it has
> always in fact been), that concerns about the ease or difficulties of
> porting applications should be left to the next stage, not this stage
> (because Winelib isn't ready, for one thing)-- but that you (meaning,
> the project) are perfectly capable and ready to ask for support in
> solving problems like the one that you (gslink) have listed above, so
> that it *is* solved, and you (the developers) can devote your attention
> *to* making Winelib or whatever "ready", in whatever form you feel that
> "readiness" should take. I do not believe that every application must
> work 'transparently' out of the box *today*, as long as there is
> adequate documentation on how to get it to work readily available to the
> user.
> 
> 
>>Currently, there needs to be a short document written and KEPT up to
>>date.  To install and use Wine do .......  This document needs to point
>>to somewhere where the user can get more help.  There needs to be a WIKI
>>where postings can be made specifically concerning what is necessary to
>>make a program work on Wine.
> 
> 
> I, personally, am perfectly capable of creating such a document.
> Probably right now-- literally, this very minute. As it happens, I just
> started (yesterday) documenting a huge comparison list of what I've got
> working under Wine vs. under Cedega, and what I had to do (or why it
> doesn't work), which I plan to put up on a web page to help users. So a
> simple document of "how to get Wine working" is nothing by comparison. I
> am not the only one capable of such a document, I am sure. I can think
> of at least two other people who hang out on Wine-users who could likely
> produce such a document, either alone, or in concert with others (even
> though those users may have never thought of doing so, or think that
> they're too "inexperienced" to do so). Unfortunately, there is no
> publicized and easy-to-understand methodology in place for me or anyone
> else to submit such a document, and of course, the only reason that I
> know you need one is because I go out of my way to hang out on this
> list. If I didn't, I would be ignorant of both things-- your need, and
> how to satisfy it-- rather than just the one thing (how to satisfy it).
> 
> The wiki will not survive-- OBviously--without user support. The appdb
> will not recover without user support.
> 
> *But the users do not know that you need their help!* And in all this
> discussion of requesting support, the prevailing consensus is against
> asking them-- because you're not even thinking about them, even though
> the "commercial" supporters you are discussing are ultimately just
> users, too.
> 
> Who the hell knows about the Wiki?? You, me (because I hang around
> here), and the few users who go to the website. But who goes to the
> website? "Nobody" (not really, obviously, but proportionate to the
> number of people using Wine, nobody).
> 
> Why? Because the vast majority of users don't even know the website
> exists. Why should they? SuSE (my fallback installation) installed Wine
> in the initial install. Gentoo, Debian (and variants), Fedora et.al, all
> have some version of Wine in their repositories. So the user just
> installs it from there. Half the questions on wine-users come from users
> using an insanely old version of Wine, and they don't even know that
> it's insanely old. We have to send them to the site to get a current
> download-- and don't forget, these are users who've managed to find the
> ML somehow, but not the site or its "download" link. I don't even want
> to speculate on the number of users who never find the ML nor the site,
> nor the current download (which they're probably not even looking for
> since they have no way to know that Wine has a montly release schedule).
> 
> There is no popup on firstrun that says: "and by the way, if you need
> more help, or want to help, head over to http://www.winehq.org !", there
> is no documentation included (now that it's been split off from the main
> package, and I don't know if it's included in the pre-packaged binaries
> available on the various repositories)-- and even if the documentation
> was included and gave a reference to the site, man pages are not the
> default first search point of this so-called "average (Windows) user",
> or are the provided docs HTML and would pop up in a Web browser if a
> link to them was automatically generated in the K-menu or GNOME menu
> when Wine was installed?
> 
> And other than Google, where is the existence of the site, much less its
> critical nature, much less the existence of the Wiki or the appdb
> published in GREAT BIG RED LETTERS?
> 
> If they don't even know about the site, how exactly is the "average
> user" supposed to find out that there was a Wiki? It's not like the news
> was published anywhere this "average user" might have seen it. Ooh, a
> side reference on /. . Yeah, that would cover it.
> 
> What about distribution news pages? What about IceWalkers? What about
> Freshmeat? What about NewsForge, or "ApplicationWatch" (a
> currently-non-existing variant on Distrowatch that would track news
> about "important" applications not supported by high-profile websites of
> their own)?
> 
> Why is the important Wine news not published where the Wine users are,
> and in places where potential Wine users are? Why is there no one
> creating and maintaining a relationship with Tom's Hardware, whose
> Migration to Linux article was a year ago? Or Rage 3D, targeted at ATI
> users, who would be very interested in knowing how Wine overcomes or
> works around ATI driver bugs (heaven knows, I would)? Or Linux Journal,
> whose article about Wine that I found in a Google search is from 1994? I
> found an interview with Alexandre published in Linux Gazette from 2000,
> and a LinuxWorld article published in 2003.
> 
> Where is the current news? Where are the current reviews? Where are the
> detailed changelogs (even quarterly) that let a user know that things
> are changing and give them some idea of the project's current status in
> terms of improvements and regressions (for instance, I know that Deus Ex
> regressed a few months back, but there is no way for me to know if that
> was fixed without trying it, which I haven't had time for).
> 
> This is why I had to get on my soapbox twice in one week, to tell two
> different people on two different, unrelated-to-Wine forums that my
> reference to Wine was to the WINE project, and not Cedega. Because
> people know about Cedega, if they know anything at all. The squeaky
> wheel gets the most grease, as they say.
> 
> I mean, please. If the project consists only of the development team,
> the development team clearly cannot -- and in fact, should not-- be
> responsible for managing publicity and administrative issues.
> 
> However, it seems obvious that managing these issues is becoming a
> critical concern if the project as a whole is going to progress to the
> "next level".
> 
> So for $DEITY's sake, ask for help. Ask everybody. Loudly, everywhere,
> and at every opportunity. You've got a lot of friends-- you've earned
> them with all the hard work you've already done. Make new teams. The
> documentation team. The legal team. Liasons all over the place to
> coordinate one team with the other. Become a not for profit organization
> so you can accept money without legal issue (and tax breaks for the
> contributors). Start treating yourselves like people doing valuable work
> instead of like a bunch of guys diddling around in the garage, because
> you are better than that, and have been for some time.
> 
> But who is going to take you seriously if you don't act like you mean
> business?
> 
> I love you guys, but you gotta stop selling yourself short.
> 
> Holly
> 
You say it better than I!  This is exactly the point of what I am trying 
to get across.  I am tired of having to step people through installing 
Wine on the user forum because nobody ever said anywhere to install the 
latest rpm and then run something.