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Dosbox-X: run Signing Exact English

bgstack15

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I did a deep-dive for running a long-gone Windows 95-era program in modern desktop Linux. A user needed to run "Signing Exact English," which was the old desktop version rather than their web app. Here's how I did it.

Requirements

  • Run the program with all features
  • Print to pdf

Steps to reproduce

These steps assume the username is public. I previously tried the application in Wine, but Wine didn't play nicely with the Adobe Director plugin PrintOMatic.x32, due to some problem listing a default printer.

  1. Explode SEE.zip to /home/public/.wine/drive_c/SEE2

    mkdir -p ~/.wine/drive_c/SEE2 ; cd ~/.wine/drive_c/SEE2
7za x /mnt/public/Support/Programs/Signing-Exact-English/SEE.zip

  2. Adjust Dosbox-X win98.conf with [autoexec] entry:

    MOUNT -t dir G "/home/public/.wine/drive_c/SEE2" -label SEE

  3. Prepare the pdf995 files.

    cp -pi ~/Downloads/pdf995s-9.5.exe ~/Downloads/ps2pdf995.exe ~/.wine/drive_c/SEE2

  4. Install ps2pdf995

  5. Install pdf995s-9.5.exe

  6. Run D:\SEE.exe

    I probably had Quicktime installed already, but the installer is provided on the disc image.

    I was able to type in a sentence, and tell it to print. I told it to save to C:. It took a few minutes to complete the process and have a non-zero bytes file.

  7. Copy D:* to C:\See\ so I won't need that additional mount anymore.

  8. To view the pdf files because in in-guest pdf viewer didn't want to work, I had to shut down the dosbox-x guest, and then loop mount the image file. I had to get the correct offset of (sector size * offset).

    sudo mount -o offset="$( sudo fdisk -l /home/public/.dosbox-x/hdd.img | awk '/[sS]ector size/{ss=$(NF-1)} END {print ($3*ss)}' )",loop,uid="${UID}" /home/public/.dosbox-x/hdd.img /mnt/hdd.img

    Then I could open /mnt/hdd.img/games/output.pdf with atril.

References

  1. command line - Mounting Disk Image in Raw format - Ask Ubuntu
  2. A google search showed last version of pdf995 for windows 98 was 9.5, and Create PDF has that available as https://www.software995.com/bin/2010/9/pdf995s.exe
  3. Possible software including PDF Creator v1.2.3 by pdfforce.org: Useful software for Windows 98SE (PDF, FTP, text editor, media players, etc.) | ToughDev
  4. Software for Windows98SE: Software for Windows 98SE \ VOGONS suggests foxit reader 2.0.1606?
  5. CutePDF :: Support :: FAQs

    How to use other Ghostscript or PS2PDF converter with CutePDF Writer? CutePDF Writer detects the installation of Ghostscript automatically. If you want to use other converter application, simply create a Setup.ini file in "%Program Files%\Acro Software\CutePDF Writer" folder and put following parameters in it.

    [Parameters]
Command=put exe filename here (e.g. C:\gs\bin\gswin32c.exe)
Arguments=put arguments here (e.g. -sOutputFile="%1" -c save pop -f "%2")

If you want to use PStill, please try the following settings.
[Parameters]
Command=C:\Program Files (x86)\GPStill\pstill.exe
Arguments=-M defaultall -J 70 -C -o "%1" "%2"

Alternatives not yet researched

  1. to extract pdf file, try mounting a network path: win98 send files -> host pc · Issue #5732 · joncampbell123/dosbox-x

Auxiliary notes

  1. A snippet of text from one of the readmes built-in.

manually reconfigure pdf995 so that it uses the free converter each time you create a pdf with pdf995 by removing the following entries from pdf995.ini: TS Enabled=0 and Use Default Distiller=1.

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