Running Wenlin on Linux

Wine has advanced enough to run Wenlin, and it does it quite well. I'd give it about 90%, but this is enough for me to not bother using it in Windows under VMWare anymore. If you aren't familiar with Wenlin, it is the premier computer reference program for learning Chinese, but it is only supported on Windows and the Mac.

How I set up Wenlin under Wine

I installed Wine on my Debian system. I currently am using version 20030709 of Wine, but other versions before that worked as well. I then set it up as a pure Wine installation, without using any installed Windows files. I then popped in the Wenlin CD and installed it according to the regular instructions. I put it on my virtual C: drive, so to start Wenlin I then enter: wine ~'/.wine/fake_windows/Program Files/Wenlin3/wenlin.exe'.

That's all there is to it. It you want to try Wenlin without installing it, mount the Wenlin CD in Linux, start Wine with wine wcmd, go to our CD-ROM and enter ./wenlin.exe.

I will list my test results here. They are based on Wine 3.1. I initially tested Wenlin 2.0 and it seemed to work alright, but I did not spend much time on it, preferring to use 3.1. I used 3.0 a bit in between and found that it mostly worked except that I would get errors opening existing documents.

Things that work well

1. Instant Lookup
   
2. Regular lookup (Ctrl-L)
   
3. Opening, editing, and saving files
   
4. Handwriting recognition
   
5. Transformations
   
6. Character lists
   
7. Searching, regular expressions
   
8. Stroking box
   

Things that don't work

1. Open the Stroking Box and switch to another desktop in KDE. You get a little Unhandled Exception box and the program freezes. As long as you stay on the same desktop and close the Stroking Box when you want to switch, the Stroking Box will work fine.
   
2. Open a file, click on a character to open another window, and scroll to the bottom of the new window. Switch to a different KDE desktop. You may get an unhandled exception error.
   
3. Copying and pasting characters between Wenlin and Linux. This could be a configuration issue on my system, since aside from installing Chinese fonts I haven't otherwise tried to hard to make a Chinese environment. Letters transfer fine, though.
   

Cosmetic issues

1. The grabber shows up as a white disk with a black edge. Still perfectly useable.
   
2. If you switch desktops in KDE while you have the Brush Tool open the Brush Tool window follows you to the new desktop. Unlike the problems with the Stroking Box, though, this does not cause Wenlin to freeze.
   
3. Open a file, then click on a character to open another window. The title bar for the new window will not appear until you click somewhere outside of the Wine window.
   

Untested features

Wenlin has lots of features, and there are some I just don't use, so the following are untested:

1. The mouth tool
   
2. Flashcards
   

So overall Wenlin works quite well. If you prefer the convenience of running Wenlin in Linux you should definitely try it with Wine.