Family Historian

What works

1. Once the workarounds have been applied both the licensed copy and demo copy of Family Historian appear to be fully functional. The text entry problems described below can be corrected by using the native msvcrt.dll file rather than the buildin version.
   
2. Importing .GED files
3. Adding photos to the media gallery and linking them to a person.
   
4. Everything seems to work except those items listed below.

What does not

1. Installation of the full licensed version fails after entering the license. The error displayed on the command line is "err:seh:setup_exception_record stack overflow 856 bytes in thread 001c eip 7bc3f72a esp 00240fd8 stack 0x240000-0x241000-0x340000" (There is a workaround), however installation of the demo version works ok. To install the full licensed version currently involves copying the Family Historian Directory from a previously installed copy on Windows and then exporting some registry entries from windows and importing into wine's registry. Upon running Family Historian it will ask for the license which you can enter without any further installation errors.
   
2. When trying to edit the field where you enter the place the person was born, or the place where the person died, or the persons occupation, an error message is displayed "A serious error has occured and  Family Historian will need to shut down". The reason for these text entry problems is due to an unimplemented function msvcrt.dll._strnicoll  used by Family Historian. A bug will be reported to winehq, however in the meantime you can overcome this problem by downloading and using the following native msvcrt.dll file, rather than wine's build in version.
3. Printing charts and diagrams. The text in the print preview is the correct way round, but in the actual print it is upside down and left to right. See bug 25685[update] This bug has been resolved (patch available) and should be committed into wine as from version 1.3.12.
   

Workarounds

What was not tested

Most of the functions used to import a gedcom file add individuals etc has all been tested.

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU:
• Driver:

Additional Comments

Once the various workarounds have been applied the only unresolved issue is the upside/down left to right characters in printed charts/diagrams. Apart from that everything else appears to work fine.

The following installation HowTo relates to Family Historian version 4.1.3 and wine version 1.1.28 to 1.3.10 Other versions of wine have not been tested however will probably behave in a similar way.

 If you are installing the licensed version of Family Historian without having first installed the demo version you will probably find that the installation program (setup.exe) exits after you have entered the serial number key. By running setup.exe from the command line (wine setup.exe) you will see the following error.

wine setup.exe
fixme:msg:ChangeWindowMessageFilter c046 00000001
fixme:win:DisableProcessWindowsGhosting : stub
err:seh:setup_exception_record stack overflow 1560 bytes in thread 001c eip 7bc3f253 esp 00240d18 stack 0x240000-0x241000-0x340000

Bug report #25540 has been submitted on this installation bug.

The instructions that follow explain how I managed to install Family Historian on Linux. This procedure assumes that you have access to a machine or virtual machine running WindowsXP (windows 98/2000 may also be acceptable) and involves installing on windows then copying the Family Historian directory form windows to Linux, exporting certain entries in the WindowsXP registry and importing those same entries into wine's version of the registry.

1. Install the demo version 4 of Family Historian on your Linux system. The purpose of installing the demo version is that it creates a load of registry entries which a required for this program to run.
2. Install Family Historian on WindowsXP. Note windows not Linux !
   
3. Copy the Family Historian directory C:\program files\family historian\ from windows to your Linux system. The Family Historian directory should be copied to /home/USER/.wine/drive_c/program files/
4. Back on windows run the program regedit and locate the following "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Calico Pie\" Click on this folder so it's highlighted then select File > Export  (IMPORTANT Makesure you have highlighted Calico Pie because by doing this you only export the Calico Pie registry entry. If you clicked on the root folder at the top called "My Computer" and then selected file export you would export the whole registry to a file. Not what we want. So makesure you only export Calico Pie. Call the file fh.reg. Check the file size it should only be about 1Kbyte where a full registry export can be 30Kbyte plus. Warning ! You can do a lot of damage in the registry if you accidently start deleting folders. So it's probably a good idea to backup the registry first. If you don't know how to do that, use google to find that info.
   
5. Copy the fh.reg file over to your linux system.
6. On you linux system, open a console window and type regedit. In the wine registry editor navigate to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\" If you have already installed the demo version rename the existing Calico Pie folder as Calico Pie.orig. Makesure you have the software folder highlighted as in "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\" So with the software folder highlighted select registry the import. select the fh.reg file and you should now find the the folder Calico Pie has reappeared.
7. Copy the c:\windows\system32\msvcrt.dll file from windows to /home/[USER]/.wine/drive_c/windows/system32/ on your linux system. (Replace [USER] with you own user name). Run winecfg and select the Libaries tab. Select the msvcrt dll from the drop down list, click add, makesure it says msvcrt(native,builtin) in that order. This DLL fixes the text input error described in the submitted bug report #25541
   
8. Start Family Historian and enter your license key (which it should now accept without crashing)
9. That's It. Any problems, typo's, errors I have made, please let me know so I can correct them.