wine users - Aug 2012 - Problem with old, old MS program

Hello all.  I have an old box running Ubuntu 10.04, with Wine 1.2.2.  
Yeah, I know it's old, and I have to get around to updating it soon, but 
things seem to be going so well....

I'm running a copy of Microsoft Works 4.5 in Wine.  It installs 
perfectly and works very nicely, except for printing.  Works tells me I 
need to install a printer through Windows Control Panel.  For the life 
of me, I can't figure out how to do that.

I have a default printer set in Linux, but Wine isn't picking up that 
setting, or at least Works isn't picking up that setting.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.  And, before you ask, I use Works 
because the database module is perfect for my needs.  I can't find a 
Linux-based database that does the job as well.

Thanks.

On Sat, 2012-08-25 at 12:18 -0700, Jeffrey Needle wrote:
> Hello all.  I have an old box running Ubuntu 10.04, with Wine 1.2.2.  
> Yeah, I know it's old, and I have to get around to updating it soon,
but
> things seem to be going so well....
> 
> I'm running a copy of Microsoft Works 4.5 in Wine.  It installs 
> perfectly and works very nicely, except for printing.  Works tells me I 
> need to install a printer through Windows Control Panel.  For the life 
> of me, I can't figure out how to do that.
> 
> I have a default printer set in Linux, but Wine isn't picking up that 
> setting, or at least Works isn't picking up that setting.
> 
Its a CUPS configuration thing: Wine prints by using IPP to talk to the
CUPS print server but IPP printing is disabled in most distros. In
Fedora you change the CUPS server settings to accept IPP by enabling
"Publish shared printers connected to this system" and "Allow
printing
from the internet" via the printer administration applet. Doubtless
Ubuntu has a similar way for doing this.

This should be safe because:
- your ADSL/DSL router should block incoming IPP requests - if you're
using IPV4 its NAT capability will block all incoming requests unless
you'd enabled IPP port forwarding.

- if your computer's firewall is enabled that should block IPP by
default and Wine should be using localhost:IPP anyway, which will be
unaffected by the firewall.
> Any help will be greatly appreciated.  And, before you ask, I use Works 
> because the database module is perfect for my needs.  I can't find a 
> Linux-based database that does the job as well.
> 
Have you looked at Glom? It generates Access-like front-end apps for
PostgreSQL. IME PostgreSQL is at least as good as anything M$ can supply
for private/SME use as well as needing next to no maintenance: it just
sits in a corner and looks after itself without any fuss. 

I haven't used Glom myself, but its on my list of things to try next
time I need a simple DB application of the type that Works can handle.
Glom can generate both the application and the database schema. 

Martin