* Ancestral Sources and Crossover V 20

[dianelingwood]

I currently have Family Historian V6 that I am using on a Mac ( Mojave 10.14.6) through Crossover v 20. I was just looking at the potential of getting Ancestral Sources but couldn't find any recent experiences from anyone who has not upgraded to Big Sur (my iMac is just too old to upgrade). Basically does anyone have version 7 of Ancestral Sources working on Family Historian V 6 or 7 using Crossover V 20 and if so what are your experiences?
With thanks

Diane

[tatewise]

Have you seen FHUG Knowledge Base Running Family Historian on Crossover?
I realise that identifies Crossover v19 and Ancestral Source v5.2 and therefore needs updating, but the recent changes to Crossover and Ancestral Sources are unlikely to have broken anything. Famous last words

I'm sure some Crossover users will be along to clarify things.

[mjashby]

In my experience to date, the latest Version of Ancestral Sources appears to mostly work in Crossover 20.x, as does Family Historian 7. By mostly, I mean data input and saves in Ancestral Sources are fine, providing the 'new' Family Historian text features such as Tables and Rich Text are avoided, which have on screen display problems. I suspect (but don't know for certain) that this is possibly also associated with the problem Family Historian 7 Wine apps have with the onscreen display of reports and also in producing some 'strange' results when saving FH reports as RTF files. - The few reports I've tested so far result in RTF documents being produced in a wholly tabular layout with poorly aligned table columns.

Mervyn

[NickWalker]

In my experience to date, the latest Version of Ancestral Sources appears to mostly work in Crossover 20.x, as does Family Historian 7. By mostly, I mean data input and saves in Ancestral Sources are fine, providing the 'new' Family Historian text features such as Tables and Rich Text are avoided, which have on screen display problems. I suspect (but don't know for certain) that this is possibly also associated with the problem Family Historian 7 Wine apps have with the onscreen display of reports and also in producing some 'strange' results when saving FH reports as RTF files. - The few reports I've tested so far result in RTF documents being produced in a wholly tabular layout with poorly aligned table columns.
Mervyn

The 'Tables and Rich Text' are really the same issue as tables are displayed in rich text. AS and Family Historian both use the same built-in Windows rich-text control. There are certainly some issues regarding tables in the rich-text control in Windows 7 so I can well imagine problems in Crossover too. As Diane is still using Family Historian 6 and so won't be using rich-text I would hope AS will work OK. In case it helps, Meryn wrote in a post in December the following, so I assume these are still the steps he'd recommend:

I've just installed AS7 (32-bit) on MacOS (Big Sur) + Crossover 20.0.2 and everything seems fine for me.
Process used:
- Create new Wine Prefix set as Windows 7.
- Installed Microsoft.Net Framework 4.8 (a lengthy process with several 'staged restarts' prompted by the installation process).
- Installed AS7 (32-bit) and working fine so far using the Sample FH7 Datafile.

[mjashby]

Nick,

Sample Output just to illustrate the RTF issue for Wine Users, plus the Error Message produced if a save is attempted with this format. Switching immediately back to the 'old style' text output eliminates the issue and allows the same entry to be processed without problems. I'm beginning to suspect that handling the implementation of Text Tables may also be at least part of the the PDF output problems for 'normal' Windows installations of FH7.

Mervyn

Screenshot 2021-02-19 at 13.57.29.jpg (83.22 KiB) Viewed 5465 times

[NickWalker]

Hi Mervyn

I wonder if you would mind emailing me (nick at ancestralsources dot com) the contents of the full error displayed if you click on the 'Details' button? I hope that's OK? I'd rather investigate this kind of thing off the forum.

If it isn't too much trouble could you also install the version 7.2.1 that I'm testing (I discuss that in this post) because I did fix a few issues with tables following v7.1.3 that you're running. I'd also be interested in whether you still get similar errors if you turn off the 'hyper-link to individual records' option under Tools-Options->General Settings - source text.

Thanks

Nick

[mjashby]

Nick,

Will do a.s.a.p.. I'll just have to do a re-run.

Mervyn

[LornaCraig]

I suspect (but don't know for certain) that this is possibly also associated with the problem Family Historian 7 Wine apps have with ..... producing some 'strange' results when saving FH reports as RTF files. - The few reports I've tested so far result in RTF documents being produced in a wholly tabular layout with poorly aligned table columns.

FYI saving reports as RTF when running under Windows also produces that wholly tabular layout.

[dianelingwood]

I posted the original message on this thread. For various reasons since then I have updated my Mac OS from Mojave to Catalina and also upgraded to Family Historian v7 through Crossover v20. This all seems to work find and FH v7 is ok. A couple of days later I have also tried to install the latest version of Ancestral Sources and Microsoft Framework 4.8, initially I had a problem with the Framework but both now installed through Crossover. Unfortunately I cannot get Ancestral Sources to open to use it, it starts to open and then drops out with no error message. Can anyone suggest a solution/what I should try to get this working.

With thanks

Diane

[mjashby]

Diane,

I'm not using Catalina now, having 'upgraded' to Big Sur (MacOS 11.2.2), but Ancestral Sources is still working fine for me (with the exception of the 'new style' FH7 Tables).

My current setup is FH7.0.2, plus Ancestral Sources 7.2.3 ('test version') in the same Crossover 'Bottle' (Wine Prefix). Both were installed as "unknown programs", not by using Crossover "Ties" which I don't think exist yet.

As my installation 'just works', the only immediate things I can think of are:

- Did you install the 32-bit version of Ancestral Sources NOT the 64-bit version?
- Using 'Wine Configuration', could you check that the 'bottle' is still set as Windows 7 (or higher)? I remember that when I installed Net Framework 4.8 in Crossover, the 'bottle' was automatically reset to WindowsXP during the installation processs, which could cause problems.

Mervyn

[dianelingwood]

Mervyn,

Thanks for the reply, I may be confusing myself now, doing this kind of thing is not one of my strengths!
Looking back at what I've done whilst I did install them as unknown programs I appear to have used a Windows 7 64 bit bottle rather than a Windows 7 - presumably I should not have done this.

The Net framework 4.8 is installed in a different bottle and that is a Windows 7 version.
Looks like I need to try again. I would be very grateful if you could confirm what I need to do.

Firstly should I delete the incorrectly set up bottle with FH 7.0.2 in it
In Crossover new Wine 7 bottle (NOT 64 bit) and include in this FH 7.0.2.
Also include in this bottle the latest version of Ancestral Sources - Should this be the 64 or 32 bit version?

I have downloaded Framework 4.8 this is in a separate bottle which is Windows 7.

Then, fingers crossed, all should be fine!

Diane

[NickWalker]

I'm about as far as you can possibly get from being an expert on Crossover/Wine so keep listening to Mervyn's advice, but I think I can confidently say, it has to be the 32 bit version of Ancestral Sources. I've just released a new version today so use that. Family Historian only exists in a 32 bit version.

[mjashby]

Diane,

Under Crossover, I have only personally tested the new, version 7, of Family Historian and new Ancestral Sources as 32-bit installations, primarily because Family Historian is a 'purely' 32-bit program. I also opted to use the same bottle for FH7 and Ancestral Sources (plus some additional software) primarily to save disk space, but also because if FH and Ancestral Sources are in different 'Bottles' they can't be in use reliably at the same time on the same Family Historian file, i.e. changes made in the file by one of the applications will cause the other application to freeze because 'some outside agency' has changed its data file. Providing you know these limitations and have allowed for them in your workflow, , there should be no problem having Family Historian and Ancestral Sources as separate applications (in different 'Bottles').

In theory, a 64-bit bottle should be O.K. for Family Historian as it installs its own Windows dependencies; and that did seem work fine with Family Historian 6 when I last tried it (on Linux). However, in my experience, some 32-bit Windows programs don't seem to install/run correctly unless they are installed in 32-bit 'Bottles'.

The main difference when choosing between a 32-bit and 64-bit 'Bottle' for Ancestral Sources, is that you must install the corresponding version of Ancestral Sources, as the version of the DotNET Framework that gets installed is specific to the Bottle, i.e. a 64-bit Bottle gets a 64-bit version of the DotNET Framework and a 32-bit Bottle gets a 32-bit version. Wine's support for 64-bit software is less mature, so can be more problematic.

Mervyn

[Valkrider]

Diane

Following on from what Mervyn said I would advise a 32bit bottle and for both and install the dotnet framework in that bottle too not in a separate one. I was one of the beta testers for v7 and the above setup worked fine. Due to the issues with tables and reports in Crossover I have remained on V6 of Family Historian.

[dianelingwood]

I was just about to send send a thank you for everyones help and support when I seem to have hit a problem.

Following your advice everything installed fine in one bottle. Opened up FH v7 and checked my projects - again all fine. Opened up Ancestral Sources, I have not used it before, to start to do some learning on a copy of one of my projects. Shut this down and went to use FH on it's own. It would not load up. I shut everything down and tried again - FHt almost gets there but does not finally load. Any advice?

With many thanks

Diane

[REMyhill]

For the benefit of anyone planning to use AS with Crossover on a Mac, I will detail my experience.

I recently updated my OS to Sonoma 14.2.1, and this necessitated also updating Crossover to V23.7.1. I currently run FH6 and in the main this runs well with only the occasional crash/freeze. I have not run AS previously, so cannot comment on how older versions perform. However, today I installed AS version 7 through Crossover and it installed without any problems. I then tried to enter a census record, following Nick's excellent YouTube tutorial. It allowed me to open a project, to make the project the default, to link an image and start to fill in the detail up to the point where you enter the address of the event. As soon as I tried to enter data into that field, AS crashed. I did reopen it and try again in case it was a one-off problem, but the same thing happened at exactly the same point, so unless anyone else has been successful with this combination, it is likely that it just will not work.

In the past I have partitioned the drive on my Mac and installed Windows 10 on one partition so that FH6 could be run natively. The problem I had there was that it drastically slowed down the computer on both partitions so I abandoned that idea. I am now going to explore whether Windows could be installed onto an external drive connected to the Mac and use that external drive instead of Crossover to run FH and AS. I will post an update in due course.