* New Version or update for modern Windows

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piotao
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New Version or update for modern Windows

Post by piotao »

Hello, and please let me apologize for what I'm trying to ask. Of course I've read the Policy and disclaimer about asking for features and newer versions, and I understand that you are working hard all-the-time, etc. I KNOW that. However, I would like to express also some, let's say, tension, which is related to the current and not-so-fresh release. I bought the latest version, and it has serious limitations, especially in 32-bit limits, which seriusly impairs its usability for bigger trees. Also, the WINAPI library or whatever it was used do not scale well with high-dpi screens, no to mention about linux environment where this app is run by me. So, let me say this: please, please let us at least know what's going on, and where, if ever, we can at least hope for some improvements. Having FH is nice but some quirks make living with it really hard. I would like to ask simply, when new version is about to be released, and knowing that this may be inappropriate question for this nice forum, let me paraphrase this in the following way: we, users, and me, especially, will be very happy and amazed somebody shed some light about what is the current phase of a new release process. Should we wait till few months, years, centuries? Reasoning is that if we have very serious tasks to do, maybe it will be more profitable to just wait a week or two for new shiny version (at least 64-bit!!!! please!!!), than struggle right now. Or you can just burn our hopes completely and then at least we will know that there is no other way, like to suffer with the current-and-only version, which is already best from the world apps... Please elaborate at least a bit, we really need to do something heavy and 32bit app nowadays is a no-go option...!
Well, that's what on my liver was hanging.
Last edited by piotao on 05 May 2019 13:28, edited 1 time in total.
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tatewise
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Re: New Version or update for modern Windows

Post by tatewise »

I think you are aiming your comments at the wrong audience.
We are just USERS like you, and have little if any influence over CALICO PIE.
I suggest you report your problems to them via their how_to:about#problem_reporting|> Problem Reporting process.

There already is a Wish List entry for Ref 525 Family Historian version for Linux/Wine.

Have you reviewed the Tools > Preferences that may help with high dpi monitors.
e.g. Display tab and the various Font settings on other tabs.

BTW: What exactly are the 32-bit limitations you are suffering?
I thought the only limit was 4GB of memory, and that must be enough even for very large trees.

It may be more effective to deal the separate issues in separate threads.
Mike Tate ~ researching the Tate and Scott family history ~ tatewise ancestry
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piotao
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Re: New Version or update for modern Windows

Post by piotao »

Thank you very much for clarification. Indeed, it seems that I do not think enough before posting. This was a moment of frustration.
I've searched thru forum and found DPI hints, and other minor things regarding visiblity. But having not much time I certainly did not found the most valuable answers here and there.
Let's address one of my problems - the tree I'm working on has 300+ nodes and in 32bit system and 1:1 view it is totally unmanageable. FH is run on Linux under WINE (quite nicely, with all custom fonts, etc.) at the machine with 64GiB of memory, and - guess what - this of course do not help at all, so I get 'too big for mem', 'cant save', etc. errors all the time. This is very frustrating, because I know I can do nothing to save bigger trees. The method I used is so painful and miserable that it's a shame to talk about in in 2019... I enlarged the whole tree to 1:1 and painstakingly scroll the screen one part after another, doing screenshots, and then I joined them all in GIMP to create a huge 5m x 1m picture. When tree is changed, I'm pretend to do this again, over and over. All that work seems to be unnecessary IF the program will work for 64bits - this only change - with widened adressing capabilities - would save me LOTS of work, probably not only for me.

Even if FH will be buggy and have its own limits somewhere else, I would love to have even half-functioning 64bit version. Meh. I feel so hopeless, not knowing when the update is planned and if at all. Hard luck!

EDIT: sorry for posting in wrong subforum, if somebody has the moderator rights, kindly please move it whenever it belongs better.
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Jane
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Re: New Version or update for modern Windows

Post by Jane »

I can only assume this is some limitation of your PC, I happily run with diagrams with a few thousand boxes without any issues.

Assuming you are using a proper Windows computer then a couple of things which may help.
1. Try setting the default printer to the Family Historian PDF printer, often problems on the diagram display are caused by buggy Windows Printer drivers, often downloading the latest drivers for your printer can also help.
2. Many users here use FH with ten's of thousands of individual records without memory issues.
3. If you save off a diagram in PDF format you can export a tree on a single page up to 200"x200" (5mx5m), if you are trying to save large diagrams off in BMP or other formats then you may run into memory problems, use PDF instead or one of the Vector formats such as EMF.
Jane
My Family History : My Photography "Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad."
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tatewise
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Re: New Version or update for modern Windows

Post by tatewise »

Jane, therein lies the problem, as the user is running in a Linux/WINE environment, not a Windows PC.

The first thing to check is whether that supports Windows printer drivers such as the Family Historian PDF feature.
( We know that the MacOS/Crossover environment does NOT support Windows printer drivers. )
So that may impact the ability to save a Diagram as a single large page PDF file.

However, I agree that the 32-bit program mode of FH is unlikely to be the cause the problems, as many users have much larger Projects running without such issues.

I've moved this thread to the General Usage forum as Wish List items already exist or are not appropriate.
Mike Tate ~ researching the Tate and Scott family history ~ tatewise ancestry
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mjashby
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Re: New Version or update for modern Windows

Post by mjashby »

The simple answer is NO, Windows Hardware drivers are not supported by WINE. The common 'advice' - https://www.winehq.org - is that the User needs to install/use the Linux CUPS driver software for their specific printer.

It's probably beyond the capacity of this 'Forum' to advise on specific methods, so best to use the WineHQ Forums. Another possibility on Linux might be Ghostscript - https://ghostscript.com/doc/current/Install.htm but again probably best to ask questions where those with the specialist knowledge 'lurk'.

Mervyn
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Re: New Version or update for modern Windows

Post by Gowermick »

One thing no-one has mentioned is that if FH is updated to 64 bit, what happens to those running it on old 32 bit machines. Perhaps CP is thinking of backward compatability. The only limitation I have encountered is the size limit for Ahnentafel numbering, but I think this is more to do with variable sizing within the program, rather than 32 v 64 bit problems.
FH works happily with15K+ individuals, unlike Charting Companion, which slows to a crawl with trees this size, now that is a program that could do with an update!
Mike Loney

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tatewise
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Re: New Version or update for modern Windows

Post by tatewise »

Mervyn, here we are not so much talking about drivers for physical printers but those that convert to PDF files.
See how_to:family_historian_v6_on_crossover_wine#printing_and_pdf|> FH on Crossover/Wine > Printing and PDF.

Do you have any advice about such drivers for Linux/WINE that would support the Diagram > Save Diagram As > PDF File in single large page PDF mode?

Mike, most applications that offer 64-bit versions also offer 32-bit versions (c.f. AS) as I guess it's just a build option.
Mike Tate ~ researching the Tate and Scott family history ~ tatewise ancestry
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mjashby
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Re: New Version or update for modern Windows

Post by mjashby »

Mike,

Yes, I'm aware that we are not talking about a physical printer, but all the Windows 'PDF creators', I've ever come across, including that provided in the FH installer, are programmed and installed as Printer Drivers with the end product actually being recognised as a virtual printer and appearing to Windows as being a physical printer to direct output to.

WINE is not designed to handle any of these 'hardware interface' drivers, but CUPS is the 'printer driver' management system for Linux type systems (including MacOS, BSD etc.) and can also produce PDF output as well as an interface to physical printers. Ghostscript is a cross platform product might also be a possibility because it also handles PDF, and Postscript output.

I don't have any detail immediately to hand, but have looked at CUPS previously and will see if I can track down some start points.

Edit:

WINE USER GUIDE 4.3.4 Printers
Wine can interact directly with the local CUPS printing system to find the printers available on your system. Configuring printers with Wine is as simple as making sure your CUPS configuration works.
If you do not use CUPS, the old BSD-Printing system is used:
* All Printers from /etc/printcap are installed automatically in Wine.
* Wine needs a PPD file for every Printer (generic.ppd comes with Wine).
* The lpr command is called when printing a document

So, it's first of all necessary to establish a 'PDF Printer' to direct output to and some starter links:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/smeserver/con ... inter.html

https://www.cups-pdf.de

Mervyn
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davidf
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Re: New Version or update for modern Windows

Post by davidf »

Watching this thread and had a look at how my system
FH 6.2.7
Wine 3.0.4 Bionic
Lubuntu 18.04 LTS (64 bit)
on an i5 8th Gen Processor with 8GB RAM (also running Firefox, Thunderbird, Zim, Rhythmbox, Clementine etc - i.e. fairly heavily loaded but not graphics intensive)
Screen 1910x1080

Manipulating a 3500 individual GEDCOM was no problem, put I did notice no pdf driver. On reflection that was no surprise - what was a surprise was that I had gone without it for 18mths plus!

Installed printer-driver-cups-pdf from the Lubuntu Software "Directory" - straightforward install without any wrangling.

Restarted FH and looked at print options and PDF now showing. This driver does not appear to have a "Custom Paper Size" option which is a bit of a blow - but it does have an extensive range of sizes (most of which I don't recognise - but A0 is in there). On A0 the Everyone Diagram for the FH Sample project printed onto 6 pages without problems (file ends up in ~/PDF).

I will over time look to see if I can find a driver with a Custom Paper size so you can do things like 1m x5m banner trees (which you can then take to a print shop and get printed - impresses the relatives!). Alternatively I am sure that there is a utility that will take a 3x2 page pdf and convert it into a 1x1 pdf - It's the sort of thing that Linux developers do in their freetime!

Re 64bit FH, I see this as a distinctly secondary requirement. When developers develop a 64bit version they tend to then want to retire the 32bit version - which could be limiting for some people. (Lubuntu has just given notice of doing so to 32bit Lubuntu in a couple of years? - which is a blow for the netbook that I sometimes work on when away from home. Strictly Lubuntu 32bit should not run on it but it does - a bit slowly but you can have a couple of applications open (e.g. Firefox & Thunderbird) and then successfully open Libre Office! I need to research lightweight OSs if I want to keep it running.)
David
Running FH 6.2.7. Under Wine on Linux (Ubuntu 22.04 LTS + LXDE 11)
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piotao
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Re: New Version or update for modern Windows

Post by piotao »

Thank you for a very friendly explanations! They helped me a lot, however, even after several tries of installing/reinstalling wine, fiddling with different repos, polluting my system with all kind of printing systems, I did not succeded. Surely, too few time and hairs was lost for that effort. Finally I decided to revive my old windoze installation hidden in VirtualBox image somewhere, and after setting it up, I've installed Historian there, and everything worked out of the box. So annoying! Surely Linux and Open Source Software is not financed well enough to provide every-time-working solutions. I could dream about the revese situation: when Linux is working perfectly everywhere without hassle and windoze crap is as painful and buggy and clumsy as it really is. But hey, you can contact with you "reseller" right? Argh.
My all problems started to fade while using windze (I hate to say this), and now I can produce quite huge PDF files with all tree information stored inside. With the biggest print format this is just few huge pages and I'm done. Under Linux I was unable to do this, because Historian crashed immediately no matter what, when I tried to save as PDF, or it has too few memory to save as bitmaps. EMF and other semi-vector format did not work either. Why it does not save as SVG?!
So the overall status is the following: FH is working fine under wine as long as I don't push it to the limits or as long when I do not require windoze-related stuff, like printing, saving EMF (which is a very crappy format), etc. Hard luck, but due to my old licence and VirtualBox I managed at least the work done without very tedious copying from the screen. Thank you for your hints!!!
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