Running CintaNotes in Wine / Linux

[nikhilsheth]

Hi, I know there have been other threads here talking about this on the side, but I think it needs some specific attention. We're SO close to making Cintanotes run on Linux throuh Wine.
I downloaded the latest CintaNotes installer, and ran it on my Lubuntu OS through Wine Windows Program Loader. The installation proceeded perfectly. It even created start menu group and a shortcut on the Desktop, and its icon came in the taskbar.
All of this on a Linux OS!
Then I opened it. These are the things that work:

1. Import XML : imported all my notes that I'd exported from Cintanotes in my Windows machine.
2. Main application, tags pane. Clicking on a tag, showing its notes
3. Search, all kinds of search. Search-as-you-type. Tags show up as you type them.
4. Order notes by by modified/created/etc
5. Deleting a note : popup asks if we want to move to Recycle Bin.. popup opens nicely
6. Recycle Bin : all functions incl Restore, with the due popups.
7. Right-click on a note and copy content gets copied to clipboard; I can paste it anywhere.
8. Right-click > Delete
9. Right-click > Properties : loads the properties popup, I can edit the date-time stamps and save the change.
9. Right-click > Tag : add tags, remove tags to and from notes.
10. Export as XML or TXT. (file save dialog box, browsing, saving all worked well)
11. Clicking on the note, press Left or Right keys to scroll the excerpt up or down.

There are only 3 things that are not working on CintaNotes loaded on Wine/Linux.
1. Create a new Note
2. Edit a note
3. Paste

So basically, everything except the main thing is working! When you try to create a new note or open a note, this is the error popup we get:



So please, guys, let's crack this cookie! CintaNotes is ALMOST working on Linux (over Wine)!

[CintaNotes Developer]

Hi,

it seems that Wine doesn't implement certain COM methods of the ITextDocument interface which CintaNotes relies on.
Some of the functionality is available only through COM interfaces of RichEdit.
I'm not sure we'll be able to get by without these methods. RichEdit is tricky and I'll rather avoid having to reimplement this code.
Also I have no idea how to debug a Windows app under Wine.
Sorry.

However I promise to return to this if we decide to move away from Richedit to another rich text editing component.

[nikhilsheth]

Cool. How's this for a parallel-track idea:
Make a plaintext version of CintaNotes.

All the other functionalities are working because they're using plaintext and not richtext, as per my observations.

[CintaNotes Developer]

I'm afraid it will be too much for us to maintain both versions of the software. Formatting is not only bold or italic,
it is also links which everyone needs.
So we'll have to put it off till we migrate from RichEdit.
Sorry and thanks for trying

[burrum]

Now that I switched to Linux I see why I intuitively voted against rich editing in favor of some Markdown

Eh, you can't go against the crowd

[CintaNotes Developer]

Burrum, hi, glad to see you here! )
Yep, Linux support is a sore point, unfortunately!

[burrum]

I made editing work by providing wine with original windows dlls: riched20.dll and riched32.dll. See attached screenshots (right-click -> view image to enlarge).

My setup: Debian 8, wine-staging 1.9.5, CintaNotes 2.0.3, riched20.dll and riched32.dll from Windows XP, 32-bit .wine directory (WINEARCH=win32)

This is quite amazing and I can use CintaNotes now. I also set it to show terminal so I could watch any errors. Haven't tested much but the basics are working fine.

Let me know if you need any details.

Alex, if you get interested in reaching Linux users, I think the first and cheapest step would be to make CN work with latest wine. Some ideas: prefer APIs that are available in wine, create an wine-compatible distribution, try to bundle RichEdit control with CN (is it legal?).

You may find these interesting:

* applications that list Wine as 'supported platform'
* Winelib User Guide
* Debugging

[CintaNotes Developer]

Wow Burrum, that's amazing job!
Thank you for sharing this.

About bundling RichEdit control: AFAIK this is not legal. I've now googled it and couldn't find any reliable info on this matter.

[burrum]

I documented my setup in greater detail in case I forget how to do it:

https://gist.github.com/muv/6d866ab370c4d7e91dc37bdd7c64d030

Edit: I'm using this for half a year now. Except the paste bug it's quite satisfying.

[CintaNotes Developer]

Burrum, huge thanks for taking the time for documenting the whole setup!
I'll add a link to this thread to the Goodies topic..

[Yonker]

I documented my setup in great bathmate reviewr detail in case I forget how to do it:

https://gist.github.com/muv/6d866ab370c4d7e91dc37bdd7c64d030

Edit: I'm using this for half a year now. Except the paste bug it's quite satisfying.

That's super helpful. Thanks Burrum!

[KelNoReem]

Alex, there is one more problem with CN under WINE.

Hovering mouse cursor on the long tags gives an error:



Here is an error log:

Code: Select all

Timestamp   Thread   Forced   Function   Details
19:56:29.471333   42      logging::Log::init   Started logging
19:56:29.471417   42      logging::Log::init   App version: 3.9, Jul 26 2017
19:56:29.471661   42   X   ui::wndProcCore   ERROR:class err::InvalidStateException
Postcondition failed:
ui::Tooltipper::getOuterRect
ret != 0


Could you please do something about it? It's the last thing that prevents me from using CN under linux.

[CintaNotes Developer]

Thanks for reporting, I'll take a look into it, please wait for 3.12 beta