Far east font rendering in Wine

If you use Wine on Linux, BSD or Solaris and your trying to render your native language fonts you might have noticed just how slow Wine renders far east fonts. This doesn't just happen to far east languages it can also apply to western languages as well. Below is four reasons why this happens and solutions.

1). Reason:
Wine uses traditional protocol for communication between client and server, and it seems that iptables is disabled in linux/wine.
Action:
execute command "iptables -I INPUT -s 127.0.0.1 -j ACCEPT"

2). Reason:
Locale problem, lots of Linux distributions use utf-8 for Chinese locale, and wine will firstly try to search/request the utf-8 font sets which do not exist in ./wine/drive_c/windows/fonts. Then wine will request other font sets that suits other locale(language environment) one by one (image how many languages their are in the world).
Action:
Execute command "env LANG=en_US wine your_program" or "env LANG=zh_CN wine your_program", to tell wine which language locale you want to use. (zh_CN is the Chinese locale in Linux)

3). Reason:
GKB font sets, maybe it is a bug while wine is very slow to request GKB font sets. (GKB font sets are used to display simplified Chinese fonts and traditional Chinese fonts, but it is not the national standard in China. Simplified Chinese fonts are used in mainland China, and traditional Chinese fonts are used in Hongkong/Taiwan/...).
Action 1: delete the comments about GKB in /usr/share/X11/locale/zh_CN.UTF-8/XLC_LOCALE
Action 2: execute command "sed -i "s/^[^#]*GBK/\#Marked for GBK--- &/g "/usr/share/X11/locale/zh_CN.UTF-8/XLC_LOCALE >/dev/null" to let wine not continue to use/request GBK fonts.
4). Reason: No fonts in ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/fonts (actually that is a null folder at the beginning, nothing to suit Chinese environment in wine)
Action:
Copy the font file simsun.ttc (the default Chinese font in Chinese version of $MS Windows system) from XP to ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/fonts, and then save the following contents as fonts.reg:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\FontSubstitutes]
"Arial"="simsun"
"Arial CE,238"="simsun"
"Arial CYR,204"="simsun"
"Arial Greek,161"="simsun"
"Arial TUR,162"="simsun"
"Courier New"="simsun"
"Courier New CE,238"="simsun"
"Courier New CYR,204"="simsun"
"Courier New Greek,161"="simsun"
"Courier New TUR,162"="simsun"
"FixedSys"="simsun"
"Helv"="simsun"
"Helvetica"="simsun"
"MS Sans Serif"="simsun"
"MS Shell Dlg"="simsun"
"MS Shell Dlg 2"="simsun"
"System"="simsun"
"Tahoma"="simsun"
"Times"="simsun"
"Times New Roman CE,238"="simsun"
"Times New Roman CYR,204"="simsun"
"Times New Roman Greek,161"="simsun"
"Times New Roman TUR,162"="simsun"
"Tms Rmn"="simsun"

Then execute the command "regedit ~/.wine/fonts.reg", so wine can be very well displayed as in Windows Chinese environment and much faster than before.
Sub Pixel Font Rendering

As of Wine 1.1.12 support for subpixel font rendering was added into Wine, there are some registry changes you need to make for sub pixel font rendering to work.

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]
"FontSmoothing"="2"

"FontSmoothingType"=dword:00000002

"FontSmoothingGamma"=dword:00000578

"FontSmoothingOrientation"=dword:0000000

Font rendering performance

Font rendering performance at least on nvidia and ati video cards is 50 times faster if you enable font smoothing. (set it to rgb or bgr, gray is not that much faster). The easiest way to enable font smoothing in Wine is to download WineTricks and apply the settings with it.

Thanks to Axel Xia and Roderick Colenbrander

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Microsoft Office OneNote 2007 on Linux

About Oneote 2007
Office OneNote 2007 is a digital notebook that provides one place to gather notes and information, powerful search capabilities to find what you're looking for quickly, and easy-to-use shared notebooks to help manage information overload and work with others more effectively. As an integrated part of the 2007 Microsoft Office system, OneNote 2007 makes it easy to gather, organize, find, and share your notes and information more efficiently and effectively. Powerful search capabilities can help you locate information from text within pictures, or from spoken words in audio and video recordings. And easy-to-use collaborative tools help teams work together with all of this information in shared notebooks, whether online or offline. Plus, the familiar look and feel of the Microsoft Office system makes it easy to start using the program right away, minimizing wasted time and training costs.

Gather and Organize Everything in One Place
With so much information coming your way--and in so many different forms--you need one place to keep it all and a tool that's flexible enough to capture it. Otherwise, information that could have been used to help make better decisions or make you more efficient is lost or difficult to find. Unlike paper-based systems, word processing programs, e-mail systems, or other productivity programs, OneNote 2007 delivers the flexibility to gather and organize text, pictures, digital handwriting, audio and video recordings, and more--all in one digital notebook on your computer. This software can help you become more productive by keeping the information you need at your fingertips and reducing time spent searching for information across e-mail messages, paper notebooks, file folders, and printouts.

Save Time By Consolidating Information
Taking notes on paper and transcribing them later can be time-consuming and difficult, and you run the risk of losing important pages. In addition, it's difficult to share data kept in a conventional paper notebook, and they're only good for capturing one kind of information: handwritten notes. When it's time to gather information from other sources and in different ways, other difficulties can arise. For instance, because most people don't have a way of digitally capturing unstructured information, they often print out Web research, and store information in file folders or on desks, which is difficult to find later and inaccessible when you're away. And sharing information with others can be challenging--even when using e-mail, it can be hard to hard to figure out what the plan is without reading through long e-mail threads that may or may not contain the information you need. OneNote 2007, however, gives you a solution with a flexible software program that enables you to gather virtually any type of information in one place. With your information readily available, you can be more prepared and informed.

Quickly Find What You Need
With OneNote 2007, finding information is easy and fast because it eliminates the guesswork of figuring out where you stored critical information. No more clicking through file folders and sorting through pages of paper notebooks to find the information you're looking for. Powerful search features give you the ability to locate information quickly, while allowing you to search across new types of content, like text in scanned documents or images, and spoken words in audio and video recordings. With easier access to the facts, you and your teammates can make better decisions.

Protect Your Intellectual Property
OneNote 2007 helps you consolidate various types of information--including freeform notes, images, documents, files from other Microsoft Office system programs, and rich media--and organize it in the way that works best for you. And because it keeps everything in one place, you don't have to worry about frequently saving or creating backups of your information--OneNote 2007 does this for you.

Ideal For Businesses
If you're attending an important meeting and don't want to rely on your memory, simply take meeting notes in OneNote 2007 to create a living repository of group decisions and brainstorming sessions that adds continuity and context to subsequent meetings. You can also catch all the details of customer calls and meetings by synchronizing typed or handwritten notes with Office OneNote 2007 audio and video recordings. If you're working outside of the office, gather information on your Microsoft Windows Mobile powered devices (including notes, audio recordings, and pictures) and transfer it to OneNote 2007.

And when it's time to share data with your colleagues, take advantage of OneNote 2007's export application programming interface to easily transfer information gathered in OneNote 2007 to your company's business systems, and in so doing reduce errors and wasted time spent rekeying the same information in different systems. Need to copy, paste, or print information from and into other 2007 Microsoft Office system programs? It's no problem with OneNote; this software lets you access and exchange information in Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint. You can even use OneNote 2007's drawing tools and tables to annotate and easily organize and manage information.

Search and Link Options
OneNote 2007 lets you search and find keywords quickly within text, in images, and in audio recordings made within the application. You can also view hyperlinked search results in a summary task pane; a single click takes you to relevant results. For added convenience, view all open notebooks at once, use drag-and-drop functionality to easily arrange and rearrange your notes, and add hyperlinks to other pages in your notebook to quickly find relevant content. Manage tasks easily with two-way synchronization between OneNote 2007 and the 2003 and 2007 versions of Outlook, or link notes and other information to specific Outlook 2007 or Outlook 2003 contacts to help you better prepare for meetings and recall information easily. If you want to underscore a particularly important point, date, or other piece of information, mark notes with note tags, visually rich icons that make it easier to return to reminders, to-dos, and other action items.

Work Together More Effectively
With team members working from different locations and on multiple projects, communication, coordination, and information sharing can challenge group effectiveness and productivity. Teams often rely on e-mail messages to share information, causing confusion and bloated e-mail inboxes. Tasks, action items, agendas, and issues stored within static documents or document management systems are difficult to update, track, and access, and they prevent multiple people from working with the same information at the same time. OneNote 2007 helps people work together better by eliminating roadblocks that arise when information is isolated in paper notes or file folders, or on one person's computer. Groups can share information easily, work more productively, and keep track of projects, issues, and goals more effectively. Individuals can work together from the same notebook--whether online or offline--using shared notebooks. OneNote2007 manages changes made to the same notebook, eliminating the need to track versions or upload changes.

You can also create a team knowledge base so that everyone has access to the same information, helping to get new team members up to speed quickly, and minimizing duplicate efforts. Share notes even with non-OneNote 2007 users by sending your notes as HTML so that anyone with an e-mail client or Web browser can view them, and stay in control of your information by choosing which notebooks to share with your teammates and which to keep private, and help ensure privacy with password protection. You can even use OneNote 2007 as a shared digital whiteboard, enabling virtual teams to work together in real time, viewing and editing the same set of notes.

About Bordeaux 1.8.0

The Bordeaux Technology Group is a software services and development company specializing in Windows compatibility software. Users of Linux systems from time to time find themselves in the need to run specialized Windows software. The Bordeaux suite enables access to these programs and data in a seamless and low cost manner without requiring licensing of Microsoft Technology. The Bordeaux Group also provides migration services and support for alternative operating systems specializing in Windows compatibility.

There is a multitude of software developed only for the Windows operating system and even when software vendors port thier applications to another platform, generally it lacks features that the Windows version contains. The only solution these developers face is to have access to both systems for testing which leads to increased infrastructure demands, and wasted project resources. If you are vendor interested in supporting your application on Linux or a software user that needs to run a Windows application on Linux or BSD, we can help.

The cost of Bordeaux 1.8 is $20.00. Anyone who has purchased Bordeaux in the past six months is entitled to a free upgrade. Bordeaux comes with six months of upgrades and support and of course a 30-day money back guarantee.

System configuration

Linux Distribution: Gentoo
Wine Version 1.1.24
Bordeaux Version 1.8.0
Installing OneNote 2007

Start Bordeaux and select Office 2007 and when asked for the install location select your Office 2007 CD if its bundled or the appropriate location of the install media and OneNote should install and create a menu selection for you.

Running OneNote 2007

OneNote 2007 can be run from the command line or via the newly created Applications menu.
To run OneNote from the command line simply set office 2007 as your wine prefix
$ export WINEPREFIX="$HOME/.bordeaux/office2007"
Then cd to your OneNote 2007 install location
$ cd /home/tom/.bordeaux/office2007/drive_c/Program\ Files/Microsoft\ Office/Office12
And run $ wine onenote.exe


Conclusions
While OneNote 2007 isn't officially supported in Bordeaux 1.8.0 at this time, with my limited usage of the program it runs remarkably well everything has worked as expected and the program hasn't ever crashed or hard locked.

So if you need to use OneNote on Linux or BSD this might be the time to give it a try as this very economical way of doing so.. And with enough user feedback we can further improve OneNote 2007 and officially support it in Bordeaux 2.0

Anyone who purchases Bordeuax can report any and all problems through the issue tracker and we will track them and help with any known problems and provide fixes or work arounds if necessary.

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Bordeaux for Mac OS X 1.8 beta 1 released

Release notes for Bordeaux for Mac OS X 1.8 Beta1

Thank you for purchasing an advanced copy of Bordeaux for Mac OS X!

STOP NOW AND PLEASE READ! If for any reason you are not satisifed with your purchase, let us know within 30 days and we are happy to provide a full refund.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

• Intel Apple Mac (Mac Pro, Mac Mini, iMac, Macbook, Macbook Pro and Macbook Air)
• Mac OS X Leopard OS-X 10.5.7 or later is required to install this package.
• Updated X11.app from http://xquartz.macosforge.org (At least version 2.3.3.2)

Supported Software

• Microsoft Office 2007 and Office2003 Applications (Word, Excel, Powerpnt) Microsoft Project 2003, Visio 2003, and Internet Explorer 6.0 are supported.

Known issues with this release

• libgphoto2 and libsane support has not been compiled in to this release. This means that scanner access most likely will not work. We plan to fix this in the beta build.
• libpng and libjpg support has not been compiled in to this release. This will be corrected in the next beta. Please let us know if you have problems viewing any images in Microsoft Word, Excel or Powerpoint.
• Icon creation for Application Bundles are not supported at this time. This will be corrected in the next Beta release
• The Install Windows Applications and Bordeaux Cellar Manager Application bundle will create two icons on the doc when these applications are running. This will be corrected in the final build
• Many other bugs will be present. Please be patient while we work to correct these issues.

Getting Started

When you install this release of Bordeaux for OS X a directory on your HardDrive will be created called Bordeaux Applications. In this folder, you will have tools which allow you to install and manage Windows Applications under OS X. Simply select Install Windows Applications to get started. At this time while you are presented with a list of many Windows applications that can be installed, only Internet Explorer 6.0 and Microsoft Office 2007 are supported. Future beta releases will include more applications as support is added.

Once your applications is installed a new directory will be created called "Windows Applications" in the root of your Hard Disk. From there you will have a standard application bundle you can use to launch your program. Support for native icons will be added in the next beta.

Screenshots

About Bordeaux:

The Bordeaux Technology Group is a software services and development company specializing in Windows compatibility software. Users of Linux, BSD, Solaris and Mac systems from time to time find themselves in the need to run specialized Windows software. The Bordeaux suite enables access to these programs and data in a seamless and low cost manner without requiring licensing of Microsoft Technology. The Bordeaux Group also provides migration services and support for alternative operating systems specializing in Windows compatibility.

There is a multitude of software developed only for the Windows operating system and even when software vendors port their applications to another platform, generally it lacks features that the Windows version contains. The only solution these developers face is to have access to both systems for testing which leads to increased infrastructure demands, and wasted project resources. If you are vendor interested in supporting your application on Linux, BSD, Solaris or Mac OS X or a software user that needs to run a Windows application on Linux, BSD, Solaris or Mac OS X we can help.
A advanced copy of Bordeaux for Mac OS X can be purchased for $20.00 in the store.

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