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WINE and CrossOver Office—Day 55© Copyright Darrell Anderson. I am close to giving up on WINE. I have installed everything and although I can use Word and Excel in WINE, there are many problems. I have no VBA, tool tips fonts need a magnifying glass to read, typographical keyboard shortcuts don’t work, the equation editor won’t run, help files are unavailable, I can’t install service packs, and PowerPoint won’t run at all. I admit I am still trying to persuade WINE to let me run my Office programs from my NT side of my hard drive. I have exported many registry entries and imported them into WINE. Mind you, I am no novice with the Windows registry. I have been routinely modifying my NT registry for years. Yet, what seems apparent to me is the WINE developers took a narrow perspective and have not allowed any possibility for running programs in a dual boot environment. This seems wasteful to me. Because so many people migrate to GNU/Linux through a multi-boot environment, I would think the developers would accommodate that effort. Consider that a typical installation requires 15 to 30 minutes. Instead of requiring people to install everything from scratch, why not allow people to merely run the Windows program from the Windows partition? As the program makes various calls to the Windows registry, WINE would intercept those calls by reading the Windows registry and transferring the information to the WINE registry. Similarly, for DLL files that are called by the Windows program, intercept that call and copy the DLL from the Windows partition to the WINE directory. Yes, this first-time run of a program would be slow, but compared to the time required for an installation from scratch, probably would be a wash. More importantly, however, the WINE version of this program would be exactly the same as the Windows version. Users would then be able to duplicate their Windows environment. My remaining choices seem straightforward. I next will try to install Office using the brain-dead approach. That is, I won’t fight a single configuration WINE establishes. Only if I succeed in running Office will I then try to fine-tune WINE to run from my NT side. However, I am exhausting my patience. If that attempt fails I then will try the Crossover Office (CxO) demo. If that attempt fails I won’t be migrating any time soon to GNU/Linux. Someday I would like to migrate from Word to OpenOffice Writer but that day is not today. I have several projects keeping me tied personally and professionally to Word, not to mention years of customizing my templates, macros, keyboard, and toolbars. Recreating that environment requires a lot of time. Yes, this is called vendor lock-in, but the situation would be exactly the same if I wanted to migrate from OpenOffice to Word. The problem is not file formats but the customization I have added. I really do not care what the priesthood, zealots, and fanboys think of Office, but I have been incredibly productive with Word 97. Mastering that tool has provided me a comfortable revenue stream. A key thought here is not whether software is free or open sourced, although I support that concept completely, the key is what enables me to be productive. Currently, that avenue is through Word. Possibly a year from now I might be fully vested in OpenOffice. Possibly not. I easily envision myself running Word under WINE for several years—if I ever get that far. However, if I can’t get Word to run in WINE/CxO, and I change my priorities to focusing first on migrating to OpenOffice, then any attempt I make to migrate to OpenOffice might as well be in Windows because that is where I am still using Word productively. Sure, I could install Thunderbird to provide me a dual way to manage my email in both environments. Moving down that path helps me improve my overall GNU/Linux and general hacking skills. However, why would I want to surf and fetch email in GNU/Linux, only to continually reboot to Windows to work productively in Word? I wouldn’t and I won’t. My primary vocation is writing—I spend most of my day in Word. Another question is not whether OpenOffice is technologically capable of providing me a similar work environment that I now have with Word. From all I have read, and because I am a technical writer I do keep current with OpenOffice developments, OpenOffice probably would satisfy me well. Yet, as a professional who uses many customized templates and macros, converting to a new environment is a task that requires months to accomplish. I don’t create “simple” documents cluttered with bold and italics formatting from the familiar toolbar buttons. I use styles for all of my formatting in all of my structured documents. I also have professionally helped other people migrate from one word processor environment to another. The process takes about a year and many more months thereafter to remove remaining bugs and kinks. A leopard might be unable to change its spots, but I am not a leopard. I can change whereas the leopard cannot. However, like the leopard, I am confined by the time domain and I cannot migrate to OpenOffice in a twinkle of an eye. Perhaps one day if scientists learn how to expand the domain of time into two or more dimensions I will be able to do thousands of things in parallel and concurrently. That day is not today. For several years I have refused to update my Office environment to subsequent versions. I saw the handwriting on the wall several years ago for the direction the Microsoft people were moving. More importantly, Word 97 simply works well. Office 97 (and NT4) also are a part of a dying breed of licensing. I could use Word 97 and NT4 for another 20 years and never be cut off as is now possible with more current versions. Why change to newer and not-so-greater versions? I am discouraged. I have progressed far and I am wonderfully comfortable with Slackware. I enjoy the entire environment. KDE runs well on my aging hardware and future releases are supposed to be faster yet. I am so close to migrating all the way. Almost anyone who has followed this journal realizes how far I have progressed. Most importantly, I feel at home in Slackware. However, Word is critical to me right now and I have little choice but to keep using that product. Thus, if I want to migrate I seem to have two choices. I either get Word to run in WINE, or I remain in Windows and focus on migrating my writing environment to OpenOffice. However, several writing projects keep me in Word right now and those projects claim part of my schedule. At best then, migrating to OpenOffice would be a part-time venture. At that point, migrating to GNU/Linux would relegate to a hobbyist’s adventure and a low level priority. That is why I wanted to first focus on migrating to GNU/Linux and later focus on migrating to OpenOffice. Perhaps in the long run this is merely a question of which road to take. I had hoped to take the short road by establishing an initial foundation in GNU/Linux and later migrating to OpenOffice. I had not considered remaining in Windows to first master OpenOffice. Some people might suggest another intriguing option—VNC (Virtual Network Computing). I don’t know how viable VNC might be because of my aging hardware. Additionally, from what I have read many people admit that even with newer hardware running a GUI screen through VNC is like walking under water—you get there but slowly. Besides, I want to avoid running two boxes. Finis. |
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