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Conceptually challenged...

Is it me, but I am completely confused by Crossover and “bottles”. I am pretty computer aware, but no nerd. I have used Crossover to install something that supposedly does work on the Mac and also our own windows app I want to test… but then I have a “bottle". I see no folder in Applications called Codeweaver so also no apps. So how does one find the programs and run them? And what is a bottle?

Bottles are described here: https://www.codeweavers.com/products/faq/bottles/

Regarding the missing menu items: When you open CrossOver it should show you a window with menu items for your installed applications. You can drag those out of there, e.g. into your dock if you want to access them more directly. If the application does not show up in there you have probably found a bug.

(The menu system was redesigned in CrossOver 14. I am not too familiar with the GUI changes and running Linux at the moment, so please forgive me if some details are wrong).

Martin Cleaver wrote:

Is it me, but I am completely confused by Crossover and
“bottles”. I am pretty computer aware, but no nerd. I have used
Crossover to install something that supposedly does work on the Mac
and also our own windows app I want to test… but then I have a
“bottle". I see no folder in Applications called Codeweaver so
also no apps. So how does one find the programs and run them? And
what is a bottle?

Hi Martin ~ I am no savvy either so I hope I can help. Once you have installed windows software you'll find the application in the CrosOver main menu screen. It's called a bottle, and a bottle sometimes is called a shell or wrapper as well, indeed anything that describes it somehow: I think you could view it as software environment on your mac made by CrossOver to make any windows software believe it is being installed onto a windows computer.

(Correct me if I am wrong!)

Now, if you select this bottle in your main CrossOver menu screen, you can select bottle/open C:drive from the pull down menu, you'll see the actuall location on your mac, its path etc.

Hope this helps!

I now have several bottles... none of which seem to have apps in them... just offers to instal something... followed by a very long menu that seems to involve creating new bottles... ten green ones?

Mu bottles contains Favorites and Control Panels (plural?) and "Run Command". Nothing else. I can't see anywhere which might help find anything else. I also have two bottles for Microsoft NET (which I know my apps will need... but they are in separate bottles). I wouldn't mind removing them... but there doesn't seem to be a way to remove bottles...

I suspect something went wrong when you installed your applications and thus no menu entry was created. Did the installations succeed? Which application did you try to install?

Yes, it is probably best to remove all the bottles and start over with the installation process.

I am still wondering how to remove bottles... I see no menu option. The interface does seem very nerdy. We are hoping that Crossover can make it possible to run our software on Macs... but can't really let clients do it themselves. Translators tend not to be very nerdy.

You should take a look at the tutorials in this section:
CrossOver Mac tutorials

At a glance, I see 3 ways of deleting/removing a bottle (this is on a Mac; it may be different on Unix):

  1. Right click on the bottle in the list and choose "delete <bottle name>" from the context menu that pops up

  2. If you use a Mac, select the bottle from the list and then click on the hyphen/minus sign "-" (to the right of the "+") below the list of bottles.

  3. Select the bottle and check the menu item "Bottle". The 4th item called "delete <selected bottle name>" can also be used to delete a bottle.

You may be interested in https://www.codeweavers.com/services/ . With our porting services we iron out bugs that prevent your app from working well (if any) and give you a bundle that works like a native mac app. No bottles, no sign of Crossover except in the about dialog, and so on.

Thanks for the offer... but $3000 just to see whether we might be able to go this route is rather steep.

I have invested in Crossover for a year and made the first steps to getting our software running. I needed NET 4 and threed32.ocx and now the editor is working! That's great, but I cannot load a video. The program immediately crashes with a runtime 9 error. It needs DirectShow... but that is not supported? I see that K-Lite doesn't run. Is there any way to get DirectShow running?

I think DirectShow is provided by the DirectX runtime combined with Windows Media player.

It seems your software chooses all the complex Windows stuff. .NET 4.0, DirectShow, etc 😊 .

Spot is a subtitle editor written in Visual Basic and Visual studio that also needs to use video. I have the demo version running more or less. Next step is to get the full program running - this also needs a dongle - tweaking and then working out how to package it.

"Next step is to get the full program running - this also needs a dongle "

that's interesting - most production companies have moved away from using hardware,
to lock down their product - it causes too many issues with the end users PCs.

USB dongles don't really work in CrossOver. But since you control the program code you may be able to get it to work. If the dongle is a USB to serial device, you can create a symlink dosdevices/COM1 inside the bottle to the device node in /dev/ that OSX creates for the dongle. Then make your application talk to the serial port COM1. This is quite tricky, especially since you need to generate this link automatically.

The bigger problem for you will be that you're not allowed to redistribute Microsoft's .NET and the like for use on a non-Windows operating system ☹️ .

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