The Ellen G. White Estate has not released a Mac application for searching Ellen White’s published writings for many years. In fact, they have never released one that runs natively under OS X. And because newer Macs no longer ship with OS 9 emulation, this means new Mac users (and probably most users in general these days) are left out in the cold.
Of course, using Apple’s Boot Camp, it is possible to install Windows on a Mac, and run the EGW software that way. But this involves tedious rebooting each time you want to switch to Windows. Or it is possible to run the EGW software under a virtual environment such as VMware Fusion or Parallels. And that is what I had been doing; it works, but it’s slow (open VMware, wait for Windows to awake, start the EGW software, which then runs a bit slow in the virtual environment).
Recently, a friend, Nathan Tyler, tipped me off to the fact that the EGW software works great under Wine, a software environment for running Windows apps under UNIX-based operating systems (such as Linux or OS X). There is a special build of Wine for OS X, called Darwine. He claimed that the search software ran faster under Wine than it does on his Windows machine. (Edit: I guess he just claimed it was fast!) And guess what? I found that to be true for me as well.
It is not trivial to set up the EGW software to work this way, at least not yet. First I downloaded Darwine, and configured it. (The main thing to configure was mapping the folder where I would put my Windows apps to a drive letter.) Then I copied all the EGW software files from my Dell over to my Mac. Then came a tedious process of finding all the related Windows registry entries on my Dell, exporting them to files, copying those files to the Mac, editing them so the paths to the files are correct, and importing them into the Windows registry running in Darwine. (This is necessary because those registry entries contain the license information needed to run the software. The installer writes the license information to the registry, but I have not learned a way to run the installer from the CD-ROM under Darwine. Thus I had to do it myself.) Then I had to copy a file, “egwhite.lcf,” from the main EGW software folder to the subfolder “Books,” because for some reason I got an error saying the file had to be there instead. After that I could run the EGW software, but it was a bit tedious to launch. So then I created a shell script to open the EGW software using Wine, and then used the freeware application Platypus to create an OS X application that can be opened from Finder. And for a finishing touch, I copied the EGW icon to that OS X application.
Now I have a cool little OS X application that I can open with a simple click, and the EGW software is blazing fast. Faster at opening than on my Dell, and much faster than going through VMware Fusion.
Tags: Darwine, EGW, Ellen White, OS X
Nathan, I’ve never made a shortcut in Windows.
Okay…. but that’s the only scenario under which I’ve seen this behavior happen. Did you install direct from the CD in each case?
Thanks for trying to help.
I got it working now on the Window/Fusion. But, that’s not really what I’m after.
I won’t have the time tomorrow to comment since the sun is set at 3:49PM here.
So, happy, peace and a joyful Sabbath to you all.
Daniel
I downloaded and installed the beta 2 from the link that Larry sent me, but I can’t copy/paste. I’ve tried control c/v, edit copy/paste with out success. I haven’t tried to print yet.
I drug the beta 1 egw icon from the applications folder to the trash before installing beta 2. Was this the proper way to uninstall beta 1. This may sound elementary but I just switched from pc to mac.
Does anyone have any suggestions?
In the 1T under the book section when you select that book and select that item to drop down the different chapters the first 14 are in roman numerals which doesn’t match the rest…. but I can see the difference between the topics from the first section and the following. However, I noticed that the first one says 1 and should be I to match it’s respective chapters.
You’re right, Tara. Send that comment to the White Estate to look into it. They do take notice of corrections that are sent in, and each new CD gets better than the last as they fix those little typos.
Is the CRE 2008 Mac beta still available? The links posted in the blog no longer work.
Thanks,
Ralph
The new link is http://whiteestate.org/cre/egw-cre08_b2.dmg
Can someone post a link to beta 2? I haven’t been sent the link yet.
Thanks,
Randy
Installed the second beta. Installed perfectly. Works perfectly for me. Copies, pastes. I have not tried to print.
I am very happy with this version. I tried it on both the 15 and 17 inch, non-unibody macbook pro’s.
Are the copy and paste commands supposed to be Mac or windows? If they are supposed to be Mac mine are not working. Printing works great under windows commands. Though this is the first time I have actually ever printed directly from any of EGW either in windows or Mac.
The copy command is Windows, use ctrl+c (copy). To paste use the standard Mac cmd+p if you are wanting to paste into Pages, email, Word etc. If copy is still not working your x11 preferences need tweaking. My copy/paste works perfectly on beta 2 all the time.
I never made a public post of beta 2 on this blog, although some of you have had access to it. But we have been working very hard to try and get it to work under Tiger. Everything but copy seems to be working now with some help from Daniel.
More news soon… stay posted.
Umm…. That’s everything but paste.
Darryl,
Actually, I sent you an email very, very early this morning (it was so early it was almost last night) with the final details to the Tiger solution. I sent a link to the posted “Tiger Fix” files. This should allow full functionality on Tiger.
Daniel
I found that when wanting to select text using shift in a main reading panel it doesn’t allow me to do so. When wanting to select in a search window by hitting F2 it just makes a + sign. ‘Twould be nice to use the shift command to select text.
Actually you can select text using the keyboard commands. Use Control+Shift instead of just shift, this will allow you to select text with your cursor arrow keys on the keyboard while hold down these two keys.
The F2 (Advanced Query) search also works just fine. On my Mac keyboard to access the function keys I have to hold down the Fn (Function) key + the F2 key to access the alternate F key functions. Mac normally has their own system functions assigned to these keys.
Darryl,
You can change F-key function in System Preferences in the Keyboard Preferences. You can check (tick) the box for: “Use all F1, F2, etc, keys as standard function keys”. Then you’ll have to use the fn key to use the other features. So, the key functions are reversed.
On older Apple desktop keyboards they may have different F-key mappings to control the hardware features because there is more space and keys available, however the new Apple keyboards that ship with desktop Macs are the same as their Laptops.
Daniel
I know this might be a bit taboo, but if you are tight on space on your hard drive, I discovered you can save some space by replacing the ‘Books’ folder in ~/Library/Application Support/Wine/Prefixes/EGW CRE 2008/drive_c/Estate/Research 2008/Folio/ with a symbolic link (symlink), an alias wouldn’t work. The symbolic link should point to the ‘books’ folder inside the EGW CRE 2008 application.
I did it on both a Tiger installation and a Leopard installation. I can’t see any difference at all in the way it works. Warning, if you move the application, you’ll have to make a new symlink, Folio cant find it’s books.
I used a freeware called Symbolic Linker to make the symlinks.
Daniel
I had earlier suggested a similar solution to the EGW Estate developers. In theory it should be possible to replace the whole “Estate” folder hierarchy within ~/Library/Application Support/Wine/Prefixes/EGW CRE 2008/drive_c/ with a symbolic link to the respective files in the EGW CRE 2008 application bundle. I haven’t tried it. But it would both speed up the first-run installation and save drive space.
Michael,
Actually, that was the first thing I tried. I think it writes to that fake drive_c.
White Estate has nothing to do with how this part is designed. WineBottler is the tool they used to put this together. It is a ‘wrapper’ application that can be used to ‘port’ Windows applications to the Mac. Winebottler is designed to work that way.
Read the developer’s blog here:
http://mike.kronenberg.org/?p=350
I’ve used it several times to make ‘ported’ Mac programs for myself. It doesn’t work with everything Windows, but many things it does.
Recently, I tried it with Amazon’s KindleDesktopPC. That did not work.
Daniel
This is a general question and wondered if anyone tried this… I don’t know that I could have enough Mac brains to figure it out. Larry helped me do it when I was using a PC….
Let’s say a new edition beta 3 comes out or even after the product gets launched and then there will be newer versions and updates of that… has anyone tried to highight, book mark etc., save the changes then try to get those saved change files into a newer installed version of either beta?
Does this make sense…? If not I can try to rewrite it so that it can.
Yes, that makes sense. The only problem with that would be if they have made changes to the actual data in the infobases. That’s generally why you would want to upgrade to a new release anyway.
But if it’s just going from one beta to another, then here’s what you do. In the Books folder, find all files with an extension of “.sdw” – those are your shadow files, where highlights and bookmarks are saved. Copy those files to a safe location where you will retrieve them later.
Once the new install is done and you’ve started and closed the program once, then you may copy the original shadow files to the Books folder, overwriting the new ones with the old ones. You should then still have your highlights and so forth.
As far as I know, this only works well when the White Estate has not made changes the main infobase. Larry would have to help if it gets anymore complicated than what I mentioned, as this is the only way I know to do it.
One thing that I really appreicated about how CRE ran on PC was that I could open up several windows of the same program. So I would have one maybe up to two to three windows that I would have various searches done in the SOP, then I would have usually one window open that would be for Bible, Pioneer, and Webster searches. But now I can have only one search window open. Is it possible to have it made so that there could be more than one window of the same application open at a given time?
Tara,
You can open multiple windows in this version too. You use the windows menu item to access the window you want. You can also choose Vertically or Horizontally tile or Cascade the windows from there too.
Daniel
On Linux I have no problem opening multiple instances of the program, same as Windows. I guess the Dock in MacOS doesn’t really let you do that. Hmmmm….. Daniel’s suggestion may be the only way to go.
The benefit to what Tara is talking about is that each instance is treated separately, so you can switch between them like switching between any other programs. I’ll often be in the middle of reading through the results of a search, and want to look up something else that comes to mind. I’ll simply leave my current window as it is, click on the EGW icon in my programs panel which will launch a new instance of the program, then perform the new search there.
If you duplicate the EGW app in your Applications folder, you can do what you are suggesting … although at a sacrifice of hard drive space (about 1 GB). There is probably also a way you can launch multiple sessions without duplicating the app, but I haven’t worked it out yet. I know that launching the app from the command line will create multiple instances, because I did that when I was creating my own EGW launcher. But I’m not sure the best way to do that with the White Estate’s setup.
Do you think it will be possible to achieve this?
What do you mean by “launching the app from the command line”?
well… what I meant was will it be possible to get the software written in such a way that multiple windows can be opened with out having to sacrifice the hd space? Twould be a great blessing!
After opening more windows per Daniel’s suggestion when I closed the application and then reopened it (even saved it because I had some previous highlights made) didn’t save the various windows that were open i the main window if that can makes sense.
Also after hitting the green + then making the window smaller again it seemed to make some glich. For when I would hit file, window, view etc… it would go to full screen view, then when I would click on one of the titles again it would go back to the smaller orginial size in which I use it most frequently. I then closed it out and started it again and it did the same thing but this time it just stopped after a few times…. with out having done anything different per say. hmmm… just did the whole process again a third time and it seems to be working…? =S
Now… when I close the program and then open it it opens as a full screen application and not a smaller sized window! This is not good. I don’t like applications that fill the screen and now I have to re-size it each time I open and close. It has NEVER done this for me before on beta 1, 2, and even on PC. It always opens to the size it was upon closing. HELP!!! =S
Having it opened to the windows last saved is great, but if that option is available, there needs to be a way you can go back to the original defaults it came with when downloaded.
I just created an app that lets OS X users run multiple instances of the EGW CRE 2008 beta. You can download it from:
http://www.mediafire.com/?jot4nzj3nmn
It downloads as a zip. Just extract the zip, and place the app inside your applications folder. It is called “EGW CRE 2008 New Instance”. Each time you run it you will get a new EGW app running. (It requires that you already have the beta installed, and that it is installed in your Applications folder and that you haven’t changed the name of that app, etc.)
Note: If you quit with Cmd-Q, you will close ALL instances at once. To quit one of them, use the EGW app’s quit command, or the X11 window close button.
Note 2: I do not use advanced features like highlighting, notes, etc. So I’m not sure what possible gotchas might exist if you save settings from multiple instances. Those who use these features may wish to try them and report back. (My concern is that one instance might overwrite the changes of another, if you change settings in both.) YMMV.
How do I know if I make changes to the actual data in the info base? Really all I do is create bookmarks, make notes, and highlight text. Does that change the data?
No. That does change the data.
Daniel, I think you mean it “doesn’t” change the data–what it changes is the shadow file. Tara, if you got Larry’s email he explained a little more about this.
Nathan, you are right.
Sorry, I can’t spell, or proofread very well.
Tara Marie,
When you talk about the green plus button, That’s the X Window System window manager: Xquartz. It is not part of the beta software. When you close the window using the red close X button, clicking the green zoom + button to change the size or the yellow minimize – button to put the window in the Dock, Folio does not know it. That is Mac system software.
If you want to save a window position and size you must close using the red X button first, just like when you want to save a Finder window size and position.
At least that’s the way it works on mine.
Daniel
“Michael said:
I just created an app that lets OS X users run multiple instances of the EGW CRE 2008 beta. You can download it from….”
Michael,
I downloaded and tried it. It did not work for me. It came up very briefly in the Dock, like it tried to run but couldn’t, but nothing else happened.
Daniel
All it does is run the EGW beta app, which it expects to find at “/Applications/EGW CRE 2008.app”. You may want to check Console and see if it reported anything. It works on my system.
Michael,
No errors. Console said the egw-cre-2008-instance completed it’s task.
Daniel
For those interested, there is a version 1.5 of the app “EGW CRE 2008 New Instance”. This one is a little smarter. You can download from here:
Download EGW CRE 2008 New Instance 1.5
(What it does, for those who don’t know, is allow you to launch multiple instances of the EGW CRE 2008 app simultaneously. This was requested in the comment thread above. Doing this is possibly handy for heavy users of the app, but not officially supported.)
It requires Leopard (10.5) or Snow Leopard (10.6).
Neither of the above links work. The link to MediaFire states the file is not available and the link to MichaelPrewitt.com returns page cannot be found.
Would it be possible to repost? This would be really helpful.
Thanks in advance.
You should be able to download the file now, using the new link provided.
Wow, 2 broken links! I’m ashamed. I’m not sure why the Mediafire link stopped working, so I removed it. The other one was missing the “http://” … I should have tested it after I posted it.
Thank you. I just downloaded the file and it works fine.
Sooooooooooooo!!! The big question of the day 27 January, 2009.
Will EGW CRE 2008 work on the iPad?
TM, I’m pretty sure the answer to that is no. The iPad is basically the same technology as the iPhone/iPod touch, and from what I can tell is not designed to run standard OS X apps (they have to be modified—basically turned into iPhone style apps). However, that does mean you can use the existing EGW apps for iPhone on it. With any luck, Laridian will enhance their current iPhone app so you can use it fullscreen on the iPad.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app.....15946?mt=8
I’m not saying EGW CRE 2008 would run on it, only that it may give the iPhoneOS the potential to run WINE applications – EGW CRE 2008 being one.
Why someone would want to… because it is there.
I have no iPhoneOS product, so I can’t try.
Daniel
Daniel, that could work, but it sounds the same as using other VNC-like iPhone apps to display remote applications on your iPhone/iPod touch/iPad. It’s a clever way to do it, I suppose, but it would require network access, as it doesn’t actually run it on the device.
Oh. Okay.
But why, if it just displays remote applications, why does it mention “display managers” noting TWM, which is sometimes called Toms Window Manager. And why does it have X11 in it’s name. Having X11 in it’s name seems to be deceiving if it’s just a VNC client.
It also says “A full X server display”
Running EGW CRE 2008 in Tiger just about requires a different window manager because Quartz-wm does not have window gravity set right. Therefore you can use a different window manager, one of which is TWM to display the EGW CRE 2008 window (which, BTW, is built-in to the X11 installation).
But, I first hand knowledge about the iPhoneOS.
Daniel
Oops. Meant to say ‘I have no first hand knowledge about the iPhoneOS’.
Sometimes lysdexia, err, I mean dyslexia is a blessing, but usually not.
Daniel
EGW CRE 2008 will not work on the iPad unless you used a remote desktop solution which would be pretty rough, but we can be hopeful about iPhone application technology carrying over to the iPad enabling us to do the same or similar things as the EGW CRE 2008. Laridian, the makers of PocketBible, has already announced their plans to not only support, but make a more thorough and full featured PocketBible application for the iPad. This means one more way to read and study EGW’s writing on the latest technological devices.
Also, I’m working with an adventist developer who is actively developing The Conflict iPhone app to support all of EGW’s writings. We’re working with the White Estate to accomplish this. Although we haven’t announced any plans to support the iPad, I can only imagine it will come in time. In the meantime, we can be guaranteed at least one option through Laridian’s PocketBible application that they’ve promised for the iPad.
http://blog.laridian.com/?p=200
In regard to multiple instances, I tested saving in different instances, then quitting and re-opening the application. All saved changes show in all instances when re-opened. As far as I could tell, changes in one will not change in another while un-saved.
Example: make a new note and save it, then open a new instance, the new note will not be there. Close the new instance. Save from the File menu of the remaining open instance. Now open another new instance and the new note is there now.
So, if you make use of multiple instances, saved changes affect all subsequent opening of the document and don’t appear to have adverse effects. As Michael said, YMMV.
Daniel
Nathan,
Could you point me to more explicit instructions to get this to work in wine? We haven’t been able to get the 2007 version to accept either of the CD-Keys that came with the disk. I don’t have easy access to a windows box, but I suppose if it is the only way, I can work on that. Thanks for your assistance and research on this.
Rob
Rob, it’s all here. If you read the whole of the comments (I know, it’s a lot), you’ll find what you are looking for.
Failing, that, you can ask specific questions. But if you are trying to run a CD installer under WINE and enter the CD keys, you will not be successful. We’ve all tried that already. This is where having a Windows installation handy is essential.
If the White Estate will let you in on the beta program, then you could possibly try out a beta version you can run on your Mac. Otherwise it’s wait for the Mac release or do the hack to make the Windows one run.
Hi Nathan,
I guess I wasn’t totally clear. There seems to be a lot of information for making this work under OS X, but I’m using Ubuntu Linux. The directories where stuff is put is certainly different, and it appears you did it under Linux already, so I thought you could put some more steps in here to help us who are trying to adapt these instructions back to Linux.
Thanks,
Rob
Hi Rob, Take a look at my comment post on August 14, 2009. You’ll need access to a Windows installation to make it work. –Nathan
Hi Nathan,
Sorry to bother you again. I must be terribly dense. I can’t find anything dated August 14 on this page.
I get the idea that I need to install on windows, somehow export the registry files (which I have no idea how to do at the moment. because I’ve never used windows much) copy those over to the .wine/drive_c somewhere. I also need to copy the program files which are on the CD (and I’m not sure exactly what files are necessary there either) to .wine/drive_c and I also have to copy a file, “egwhite.lcf,” from the main EGW software folder to the subfolder “Books.”
I can probably use Google to find some of the answers I need, but it would be really nice if they could all be put in here so everyone else doesn’t have to chase down all the details everywhere.
Thanks so much for the assistance!
Rob
Rob, you need to click the link that says “Older Comments” at the top or bottom of the comments section. Nathan’s comment is there.
Thanks Michael,
That was the trick!
Rob
I have been running the EGW software for years on my Ubuntu linux machine, with WINE. Installation was a snap — I simply ran the setup.exe file with wine and had a perfect working install in a few minutes. I used an old install CD: “The Complete Published Ellen G White Writings” Version 3.0, Copyright 1998; it was the two-disc, Legacy of Light release.
–Randy
Yes, It is a snap with the older versions. I installed it under WINE on a Mac with the old v 3.0, too.
Like Nathan said, it won’t work with copy-protected or the newest versions with the CD serial keys.
Daniel
I’ve tried out build 2 of the EGW software on a brand new Mac Book, running Snow Leopard. Works wonderful. Scrolling works perfect, copy paste does likewise. I’ve got to ctrl-c to copy rather then command-c. Not a problem. I’m very impressed.
Randy
Just tried printing from the EGW application – works perfectly on the MacBook running Snow Leopard!
Randy