wine users - Jan 2010 - 777 Gebärden : Cannot find TB70net.exe (or one of its...)

Hello forum,

just a short introduction of mine before the problem comes ;-)
Switched from Windows to Linux a couple of years ago and always avoided the
contact
to wine. Do not ask why, the program seemed scary to me.
But as the legal copy of Windows has crashed due to license errors on the
laptop, and I
am not willing to have it reinstalled next to my debian, I did install wine and
am wondering
where it will lead me to... hopefully a linux-only laptop.

And now the problem:
I tried to install one of the programs, that still makes me use windows.
"777 Geb?rden" a learning software for gesture language for deaf/mute
people
which has been tested as a CD-version quite a long way back:
http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=3840&iTestingId=613

I am using the DVD-Version that installed quite smoothly:
-Setup.exe to have the DVD checked and the serial number entered
-MSI file to have the software installed after setup.exe did exit

When starting the software from link
env WINEPREFIX="/home/username/.wine" wine
"C:\Programme\MAD\777\777.exe"
the following message appears:

| Toolbook II                    |
---------------------------------------------------------------
Cannot find TB70net.exe (or one of its components).
                     [OK]

The file is located in the same folder as the "777.exe"
The message even does appear in windows under some circumstances and there
is a support item from the publisher:
http://www.kestner.de/n/verlag/support/777-v2-support.htm#frage25

Simple put in English:
- you might have disabled support for for 8.3 names
- you might have umlaute (???), blanks or special characters within the
installation path
  I avoided "C:\Program Files\" because it allready failed in my
english windows.

Any help would be appreciated how to verify both of the above and things worth
to check
or modify etc.

Regards,
Chris
-------------------------------------------------
wine 1.1.35~winehq1-1
wine-gecko-1.0.0 1.0.1
Debian 5 / Lenny
Kernel 2.6.26-1-686

On Wed, 2010-01-06 at 14:52 -0600, C.hristianKrueger wrote:
> The file is located in the same folder as the "777.exe"
> The message even does appear in windows under some circumstances and there
> is a support item from the publisher:
> http://www.kestner.de/n/verlag/support/777-v2-support.htm#frage25
> 
> Simple put in English:
> - you might have disabled support for for 8.3 names
> - you might have umlaute (), blanks or special characters within the
installation path
>   I avoided "C:\Program Files\" because it allready failed in my
english windows.
> 
> Any help would be appreciated how to verify both of the above and things
worth to check
> or modify etc.
> 
Here's my analysis of at least part of the problem.

Evidently the program expects to use the old-style 8.3 names to find its
files and support code. Checking if this is a problem is simple. Are
there any names in the directory structure containing it that:
- exceed 8.3 in name part or extension part
- contain lower case letters, spaces of characters not allowed
  in DOS names

NOTE: that an otherwise correct 8.3 name in lower case won't work
because, although DOS was case-insensitive, Linux isn't - and WINE obeys
Linux file name matching rules.

I can see one non-compliant name for starters: "Programme" is 9
letters
and contains lower case letters. Maybe you can fix that by renaming it
to "PROGRAM". If there are any others, i.e. created by the installer,
then either modify them to meet DOS 8.3 rules or (better) add a symbolic
link whose name does conform alongside each non-compliant file. If the
filename is longer than 8.3 you'll have to apply the Win95/98 conversion
rules when you create the corresponding DOS 8.3 name

Additional thought: has the installer set the execution bit(s) on
executable files?


Martin

C.hristianKrueger wrote:
> Simple put in English:
> - you might have disabled support for for 8.3 names
> - you might have umlaute (???), blanks or special characters within the
installation path
Then this program is broken by design. Wine does not and will not support
windows' stile 8.3 names for long file names (foo~1.bar) - it's patented
and not guaranteed to work even on windows in all cases.

If you have a software that can't cope with paths that contains anything but
ascii characters - take it back and demand your money back. Coders that produce
that stuff deserve to be left without job.