Australian Tax Program now working, but WINHLP32.EXE fails

[Ben Stanley]

Hi,

I've been using wine cvs for a while now, and trying to run the
Australian Tax Office's ETax2002 program for preparing tax returns. Up
until yesterday, it would fail with an illegal memory access, but
yesterday it started working! I have not identified which patch fixed
it, but the program uses flat scroll bars and list (tree) views.

I have now used the program to complete one (non-lodgement) tax return,
and am part way through preparing another. The ETax2002.EXE program
appears to work very well!

However, I am unable to utilise the on-line help, which is provided in
winhlp format. When I try to run

wine winhlp32.exe etax2002.hlp
wine "C:\Windows\winhlp32.exe" \
"C:\Program Files\etax2002\etax2002.hlp"

I get a message dialog saying
Error while reading the help file 
`"C:\Program Files\etax2002\etax2002.hlp"'

The WINE help program then displays an empty window.

So it looks like more work is needed upon the help file viewer, but I
suppose this is on the todo list anyway. I am able to access the help
using the printed material from the tax office, which is identical to
what is in the help file.

Thanks for all of your work on Wine!

Ben Stanley.

[Andreas Mohr]

On Wed, Oct 16, 2002 at 11:45:51AM +1000, Ben Stanley wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I've been using wine cvs for a while now, and trying to run the
> Australian Tax Office's ETax2002 program for preparing tax returns. Up
> until yesterday, it would fail with an illegal memory access, but
> yesterday it started working! I have not identified which patch fixed
> it, but the program uses flat scroll bars and list (tree) views.
>
> I have now used the program to complete one (non-lodgement) tax return,
> and am part way through preparing another. The ETax2002.EXE program
> appears to work very well!
>
> However, I am unable to utilise the on-line help, which is provided in
> winhlp format. When I try to run
>
> wine winhlp32.exe etax2002.hlp
> wine "C:\Windows\winhlp32.exe" \
> "C:\Program Files\etax2002\etax2002.hlp"
>
> I get a message dialog saying
> Error while reading the help file 
> `"C:\Program Files\etax2002\etax2002.hlp"'
>
> The WINE help program then displays an empty window.
>
> So it looks like more work is needed upon the help file viewer, but I
> suppose this is on the todo list anyway. I am able to access the help
> using the printed material from the tax office, which is identical to
> what is in the help file.

Our builtin winhelp implementation is known to be far from perfect, indeed.

[Uwe Bonnes]

> > > > > "Andreas" == Andreas Mohr  writes:

Andreas> On Wed, Oct 16, 2002 at 11:45:51AM +1000, Ben Stanley wrote:
    >> Hi,
    >> 
    >> I've been using wine cvs for a while now, and trying to run the
    >> Australian Tax Office's ETax2002 program for preparing tax
    >> returns. Up until yesterday, it would fail with an illegal memory
    >> access, but yesterday it started working! I have not identified which
    >> patch fixed it, but the program uses flat scroll bars and list (tree)
    >> views.
    >> 
    >> I have now used the program to complete one (non-lodgement) tax
    >> return, and am part way through preparing another. The ETax2002.EXE
    >> program appears to work very well!
    >> 
    >> However, I am unable to utilise the on-line help, which is provided
    >> in winhlp format. When I try to run
    >> 
    >> wine winhlp32.exe etax2002.hlp wine "C:\Windows\winhlp32.exe" \
    >> "C:\Program Files\etax2002\etax2002.hlp"
    >> 
    >> I get a message dialog saying Error while reading the help file
    >> `"C:\Program Files\etax2002\etax2002.hlp"'
    >> 
    >> The WINE help program then displays an empty window.
    >> 
    >> So it looks like more work is needed upon the help file viewer, but I
    >> suppose this is on the todo list anyway. I am able to access the help
    >> using the printed material from the tax office, which is identical to
    >> what is in the help file.
    Andreas> Our builtin winhelp implementation is known to be far from
    Andreas> perfect, indeed.

Most problems are with regard of starting winhelp from another
application. At present, we don't pass arguments valid in the other process.

Are you sure, the problem above isn't a pure filehandling problem. Some
+relay,+dosfs debugmessage consulting should tell about that...

Bye

[Ben Stanley]

On Wed, 2002-10-16 at 18:36, Uwe Bonnes wrote:
> Most problems are with regard of starting winhelp from another
> application. At present, we don't pass arguments valid in the other process.

My problem is observed by staring winhelp directly from the command line
with the help file to open as the first argument.
> Are you sure, the problem above isn't a pure filehandling problem. Some
> +relay,+dosfs debugmessage consulting should tell about that...

Fairly sure, as the dialog says error while reading the help file.

Running the command line

wine --debugmsg +relay,+dosfs winhlp32.exe etax2002.hlp

was not terribly helpful. It brought up two desktop windows, one with a
Wine debugger and the other with WINE help. The Wine debugger window
shows

Unhandled exception: wait failed on critical section 0x400f9550
(loader_section in libntdll.dll.so)

The WINE help window shows no messages.

Re-running the same command line without --debugmsg brings up a WINE
help window, but no help file and no error message. Trying to open the
help file using file->open yields no error message and no help file.

I'm unable to go any further with this at this time. I'll use the paper
help for now.

Ben.

[Eric Pouech]

> Our builtin winhelp implementation is known to be far from perfect, indeed.

Ben,

if the help isn't too big, please send it to me (no need to CC
wine-devel)
A+

[J.Brown (Ender/Amigo)]

I'd like to know how the heck you got this working, because for me the
program simply displays some message box (which doesn't draw correctly)
over the splash screen, and hangs.

This is all it's EVER done for me, up until the very last set of cvs
commits. I don't know why it's working for you :)

- Ender

On 16 Oct 2002, Ben Stanley wrote:
> Date: 16 Oct 2002 11:45:51 +1000
> From: Ben Stanley 
> To: [e-mail]
> Subject: Australian Tax Program now working, but WINHLP32.EXE fails
>
> Hi,
>
> I've been using wine cvs for a while now, and trying to run the
> Australian Tax Office's ETax2002 program for preparing tax returns. Up
> until yesterday, it would fail with an illegal memory access, but
> yesterday it started working! I have not identified which patch fixed
> it, but the program uses flat scroll bars and list (tree) views.
>
> I have now used the program to complete one (non-lodgement) tax return,
> and am part way through preparing another. The ETax2002.EXE program
> appears to work very well!
>
> However, I am unable to utilise the on-line help, which is provided in
> winhlp format. When I try to run
>
> wine winhlp32.exe etax2002.hlp
> wine "C:\Windows\winhlp32.exe" \
> "C:\Program Files\etax2002\etax2002.hlp"
>
> I get a message dialog saying
> Error while reading the help file
> `"C:\Program Files\etax2002\etax2002.hlp"'
>
> The WINE help program then displays an empty window.
>
> So it looks like more work is needed upon the help file viewer, but I
> suppose this is on the todo list anyway. I am able to access the help
> using the printed material from the tax office, which is identical to
> what is in the help file.
>
> Thanks for all of your work on Wine!
>
> Ben Stanley.

[Ben Stanley]

On Wed, 2002-10-16 at 18:09, J.Brown (Ender/Amigo) wrote:
> I'd like to know how the heck you got this working, because for me the
> program simply displays some message box (which doesn't draw correctly)
> over the splash screen, and hangs.
>
> This is all it's EVER done for me, up until the very last set of cvs
> commits. I don't know why it's working for you :)
> - Ender

I think that the main trick to getting it working was to use the desktop
mode instead of managed. I have also set all of my dlls to builtin.

Ben.