wine

[John Dangler]

On Thu, 2006-08-24 at 13:39 +0200, Duncan Lithgow wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-08-23 at 13:46 -0400, John Dangler wrote:
> > Not totally an Ubuntu topic, but i'm a bit stumped as far as getting
> > programs to work under wine.  The googling and reading up on winehq
> > helped me get wine installed, and short list of packages listed that run
> > out of the box is fine, but I'm having a real time of getting anything
> > else to cooperate.
> > 
> > For example, I installed Punch! Pro Platinum to do some floor planning
> > (qcad docs are too light, and no one seems to know how to get started
> > with it).
> I found the manual helpful.
> 
> What do you mean 'light'. Qcad is pretty good at what it does. It's
> certainly the best native linux cad app I've found - that said I don't
> use it much as I have to use AutoCAD anyway for work.
What I mean by 'light' is that I have 0 experience with CAD
applications, and the documentation launches into a very technical
explanation on layering and nodes and such from the beginning.  I do
understand that CAD applications were applications written by engineers
for engineers, but without spending the next 2 years taking classes on
how to use these apps, I've been somewhat lost as to how to manipulate
the application.  I did contact the author some months ago, and he told
me that he was working on a book which would take a novice through the
rudiments of using qcad, but as far as I can tell from google and
watching their site, it hasn't been produced yet.

As a parallel, if you were around long enough to have seen the original
Unix documentation (3,200 page permutated index) where chapter 1 gave
you the OSI 7-layer model, and then basically said "ok, now you know
what you should do" , you would understand the correlation.

Imagine being new to programming and opening Visual Studio...

Imagine having to create a database using Codd's white paper on
relational theory.


> But Qcad is a real CAD program, and they are hard to learn at the start.
> Not much 'point and click' to find.
I agree with you there.  If I had the knowledge to create a simple floor
diagram in qcad (something that takes all of about 10 mninutes in
Punch), I would gladly share it with the world.  Once the basics are
known, the documentation for qcad would (I'm sure) become much clearer
and I could utilize it as a reference.  There seems to be a lot of
decent information in it, but using it with no prior knowledge is an
exercise in confusion for me atm.

... Was there a reason why I received 4 copies of this reply?