A discussion about using Transcriber with Fusion on a Mac was held in April 2009 on the RNLD email list.
A discussion about using Windows software on a Mac occurred in May 2010 on the RNLD list, and is summarised below. The software discussed and compared by contributors includes:
Question:
I am currently contemplating switching to a MacBook for my field laptop for various reasons (viruses, reliability, speed, video-editing capabilities, etc.), but quite honestly cannot imagine a world without Toolbox. I was wondering whether anyone on the list has used recent versions of Toolbox (post-1.5) with CrossOverMac or Wine (Windows emulators) extensively, and if so what your experiences have been like. If anyone has any similar experiences with Ubuntu 9 or 10, I'd be grateful for any information on that as well, although less urgently.
Responses:
I use Toolbox all the time on my MacBook Pro but with Parallels and a Windows system.
I use Macbook Pro with Sun's VirtualBox (free, unlike Parallels) but you could also try Darwine (mac port for wine). I'm also proficient in Ubuntu up to 9.10 (haven't tried 10.4 yet). Again, you can run VirtualBox in Ubuntu if you like or just use Wine.
I have been using Toolbox on Ubuntu with Wine and it works fairly well - some issues at times, but when talking about Toolbox, it's difficult to separate issues involving Wine from those involving Toolbox itself.
On a Mac, one linguist shoehorned Toolbox on his mac using CrossOver, and another used Parallels, each swears by his method. The difference is that Parallels is running a virtual machine (that integrates nicely with the Mac OS), so you have to have a copy of Windows (but with an institutional affiliation, you should be able to get it for free); CrossOver is a Windows emulator, but I find setting it up to be prohibitively difficult.
I might also suggest using VirtualBox, by Sun Microsystems. It's just a virtual machine again, but it's free and open source, but doesn't quite integrate with the host as much as Parallels does - I have had some trouble defining shared folders, for instance, so I can't pass files from the host to the virtual machine and vice versa. However I can map a network drive, so you could potentially configure your Mac to share itself over the network, and then mount it in the virtual machine as a samba drive... (I'm only considering this as an option now - never tried it, but it could work - I may give it a go in my spare time today and report back).
I also use Toolbox on a Mac with Parallels. It is a bit slow and clunky but works fine. What doesn't work (and is frustrating) is Lexique Pro. It appears to work but I can never get a decently formatted file out of it.
I have both used Parallels and CrossOver. I have also used just the plain Wine installation on OS X, and if you're handy with a command line, this will save you having to pay for CrossOver. Make sure you have a later version of X11 if you do this.
- PC Emulator: Parallels, VMWare Fusion (haven't tried others, QEMU-based ones horribly slow and buggy)
Pros: you can install not just Toolbox, but also other PC software.
Cons: Bigger hit on your processor, more expensive, especially if you have to purchase a Windows license.
- Windows Emulator: Wine+X11 or CrossOver (also Wine based)
Pros: less of a processor hit
Cons: Occasionally buggy, limited to Toolbox. I have been unable to get other SIL software to work, thanks to heavy use of .NET framework.
In the end, I've always been used to Toolbox crashing, and so I save regularly, and I'm happier with the lower processor hit. Sometimes I find the key combo changes a bit annoying. If you see yourself migrating to newer SIL software in the future, you may prefer the flexibility of a PC emulator. I have used Toolbox in Wine on Ubuntu 9, but not extensively. I didn't have any problems (beyond the usual) when I did though.
Sharing folders in VirtualBox is easy enough. You simply choose (in Mac) Devices>Shared FOlders> CLick on the + and then input the path of any folder you want on the Mac/.Nix side: e.g. /users/username/Foldername. Then give the user full (read/write) permissions and you're set. In fact, VirtualBox then handles it pretty much the way you suggest: It creates a mapped drive by UNC Path, such as \\vboxsvr\foldername in the windows VM. If you can't leave WIndows, VirtualBox is the way to go - it will do anything you want and if it doesn't, you've not lost anything as it's free.
Darwine or CrossOver? The arguments will be the same; Darwine's free and open-source, CrossOver is commercial, not-free (quite costly) and closed-source. On the flip-side, Darwine is not maintained very well so there's fewer updates, CrossOver is updated regularly. The only questions at the end of the day are of preference and freedom to use the software you own.
Does anyone know whether it would be feasible to just go ahead and open the Toolbox .db file (created on a Mac) in a PC running Lexique Pro? Since most people seem to only use Lexique Pro for last-stage formatting, rather than data-input, it seems like this arrangement would work fine. Or are there some sort of compatibility problems with .db files created on a Mac being opened on a PC running Lexique Pro (or, for that matter, native-PC Toolbox)?
I don't know if this is of any help on the Lexique-Pro question (and I don't use a Mac, and am not a teckie by any stretch of the imagination) - but I have found that for my Maasai dictionary, an OLDER (2.8.6) version of Lexique-Pro works. The newer version (3....) is superbly slow and/or has some other issue to the point that I am not able to generate a formatted file using it.
My Maa lexicography database is (I think) reasonably complicated because I am trying to handle cross-dialect information in it. It is also over 6MB (generating a formatted output file of approximately 1200 pages), and perhaps the size has something to do with the problems? In any case, the older version works! The newer one does not. I don't know wherein the problems lie (my database, or the newer program).
All of that said, I am supremely impressed with what the (older) Lexique-Pro version does with my non-standard set of field tags and do not wish to let that fact go un-noted.
Acknowledgements:
Thanks to contributors Mark Post, Frances Kofod, Xavier Barker, Aiden Wilson, Felicity Meakins, Tom Honeyman and Doris Payne.