Mac OS X

colleen · Post by **colleen** » Fri Jul 01, 2005 6:03 pm

Does your program work under OS X for Apple computers?

FWJ · Post by **FWJ** » Mon Jul 04, 2005 6:32 pm

Colleen,
Sorry, but PechaMaker only runs on Windows 98/2000/XP.

If enough people ask for PM on Mac then I might be able to port it to OS X.
At this point I don't even know how many people are using the existing
PechaMaker so I have no idea if a Mac port is worth the effort.

Thank you for the request, let's see how many people respond.
fwj

bj lhundrup · Post by **bj lhundrup** » Sat Sep 10, 2005 9:50 pm

I think it is the best pecha program and share it with all my dharma teachers and friends. I know of about 20 using it, but Dzogchen Khenpo Choga wishes to use it on his Mac and I know of two other Mac users that wish to know if they can use it. Does that help with a little bit of an idea???

indebted to you for you offering to us all

Bj Lhundrup

drikung · Post by **drikung** » Sun Dec 25, 2005 7:48 pm

If it is possible, please make it also for MAC

FWJ · Post by **FWJ** » Tue Jun 19, 2007 10:32 pm

Has anyone tried getting PechaMaker to run on OS X under CrossOver?
Please post any information you have.
It would be very helpful if someone could try this and let everyone know.
I don't have a OS X machine so I can't test it.

CrossOver allows MSWindows programs to run on an Intel Mac.
You can read about it here:
http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac/

FWJ · Post by **FWJ** » Tue Mar 04, 2008 7:22 am

There is also a program called Fusion from VMware. It is a Virtual Machine program for the Mac that you run like any other Mac application. It literally runs Windows OS as an application. It does require you to install a copy of a Windows OS, just like Apple's Bootcamp does, but with Fusion you can run Windows programs while you are running OS X.

You can read about it at http://vmware.com/products/fusion/
The list price is currently $80.

I don't use a Mac so I can't try any of this out. It would be great if some kind soul could post some information on whether PechaMaker runs under it.

(I regularly use other VMware products and I highly recommend them.)

oubiwann · Post by **oubiwann** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 5:11 am

Hey all,

I thought I'd add my Mac OS X experience to the discussion

Crossover:
I have installed and run PechaMaker with Crossover, but it didn't run reliably. It was sometime last year, so I don't remember the issues, but there were several. It ended up being essentially useless for me. This is not to say that someone with more motivation to use Crossover won't be able to get it to work, though

Parallels:
Like the VMWare solution mentioned above, Parallels runs on Mac and lets you run installations of other operating systems while using Mac OS X (i.e., without having to reboot). I run both Windows XP as well as Ubuntu in Parallels on my Mac. For the past while, that's how I've been doing pecha work: on my Mac with Parallels + XP. However, I have recently made a switch...

Parallels + Ubuntu + Wine:
This is actually my preferred working environment for pecha creation and editing. I have PechaMaker successfully running using Wine (Windows emulator; Crossover is based on Wine) in Ubuntu. I have had some problems with OpenType fonts (for roman font text) in PechaMaker running under Wine, but other than that, it has run perfectly. I am not a Windows fan, and have been using Linux since about 1996, so this is an excellent solution for me. I just made sure all my fonts were in ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/fonts and started up PechaMaker with wine, and it ran (and continues to run) without issue.

oubiwann · Post by **oubiwann** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:46 am

FWJ wrote: If enough people ask for PM on Mac then I might be able to port it to OS X.
At this point I don't even know how many people are using the existing
PechaMaker so I have no idea if a Mac port is worth the effort.

I first started using PechaMaker when I was working with the second set of monks that came to the Tibetan Mediation Center after 2001 (sometime between then and 2004, I don't remember exactly). I didn't use it much, but it was the only software that some of the monks there would use.

After I moved to Colorado in Jan of 2005, I started using it more for my own little projects with with a Drikung center in Boulder. I don't know how many people used it there, but I don't think I was the only one. Most of their texts are still done by Vajra Publications, but over the years, there have been so many people in charge that I don't even know who to talk to anymore (I did some pecha editing for them in 1995 and 1996, but I don't remember what software we used for pechas).

In the past year, I've been using it a great deal with a Nyingma group in Denver, and there are at least 5 people in that group that I know are using it.

All told, I think I know about 10 people that use it, but I have talked to "many" more over the years that have used it (probably around 20?). I don't actually know that many people working on Tibetan texts/pechas, and most of the people I know who are working on texts are not part of any well-known translation groups, dharma pubishers, etc.: they are almost all casual users. I myself am fairly isolated, so I'm sure that I know many fewer people using it than others who move in dharma text creation circles.

I'm not sure what sort of estimates can be made from this information, but I would hazard a guess that there are actually quite a few number of users world-wide, most of whom haven't heard of or looked at this forum or don't know how to create an account and ask questions (I find this is a common problem in dharma groups: fairly wide-spread lack of experience and interest in online communities and the technologies that support them). Hell, I didn't even think to look at the forum until I had questions about the project's source code

As for a Mac port, I've been investigating creating an open source project based on the work that has been done in PechaMaker over the years. I would probably write the software in GTK+ due to the support available for python (via bindings) and the ability to run in Windows, Linux and Mac (even with native Mac widgets). If this exploration makes it into the planning stage and then prototype/development stages, it will still be quite a while before there is any usable product. As such, I would be very glad to see new features added to PechaMaker even while creating another product

Of course, a full-on port to Mac OS X is quite a bit more than a feature addition...

FWJ: I owe you an email response regarding this

I've been traveling this week and will be on the road this weekend and at a conference next week, but I hope to address your questions soon!

oubiwann · Post by **oubiwann** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 5:06 pm

oubiwann wrote: Parallels + Ubuntu + Wine:
This is actually my preferred working environment for pecha creation and editing. I have PechaMaker successfully running using Wine (Windows emulator; Crossover is based on Wine) in Ubuntu. I have had some problems with OpenType fonts (for roman font text) in PechaMaker running under Wine ...

FWJ and I have been discussing opentype support in PechaMaker + Wine in emails, but I wanted to post a resource that may be useful for others in a similar situation:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=156378

And in particular:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=156378&page=2

This comes with two caveats: 1) converting from opentype to truetype reportedly can result in a lower quality font, and 2) none of the folks in the thread posted above have reported those losses; they all seem quite happy with the results.

When I have a chance to give the fontforge conversion a try, I will report on my experience.

PechaMaker

Mac OS X

Mac users

for mac

Mac OS X using CrossOver ?

Mac OS X using VMware Fusion ?