Watchtower Library

What works

Everything, except playing videos.

What does not

Videos do not play. But unlike in the past, the program does not crash when attempting to play a video. 

(In recent builds of Watchtower Library 19.0 videos seem to be streamed from the Internet, and not included with the program.)

Workarounds

To update my comment from 2019, I work around the problem of videos not playing by:

1.) Creating a new folder called "WTLIB Media" (or whatever you wish to call it).

2.) Downloading the videos directly from JW.org and placing them in the folder.

3.) Playing the videos using an external media player program.

What was not tested

All frequently-used functions were tested.

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU: Intel
• Driver: open source

Additional Comments

Watchtower Library 19.0, Build 11338, Update 2206 (English version); and Update 2209 (German version).

(The combination of Watchtower Library 19.0, Build 11338 and Wine 7.0.1 seems even more stable than previous versions were.)

Tooltip shadows stay after tooltips disappeared

This issue appears on some video cards with Compiz enabled. The workaround is in disabling fade animation for wine tooltips. To do this:

1. install Compiz configuration tool. In most distributions it is in package named compizconfig-settings-manager.
2. After you install it, run it (executable file named ccsm).
3. Then go to Animations, open Close animations tab and double-click line that starts with Fade.
4. Click plus sign in pop-up window,
5. In new window select Window Class as Type, enter Wine as Value, select And as Relation and check Invert.
6. Click Add button and you're done.

Black blocks in interface and text on Intel video cards

If you use Intel graphics and experience blacked out text and interface items in Watchtower Library, (that is, experience bug 24998), you can fix it with following steps:

1. Run wine regedit
2. Open HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Wine/X11 Driver. Create it if it does not exist
3. Create new String value (using context menu on right part of interface) named ClientSideWithRender and set its value to N
4. Close (restart) all wine applications

Broken fonts

If you see squares instead of text in Watchtower Library on the first run, go to settings (press f2) and change font settings, choosing any font you like. If you see broken characters in interface, you may need to install MS truetype core fonts for web package. To do this

• Install msttcorefonts package using your packaging system. If it fails:
• Install it using winetricks (this will affect your wine installation only, fonts won't be available for non-wine applications):

  winetricks corefonts

Problems with XFCE, LXDE, Enlightenment and others

XFCE and some other DE ignore path parameter for desktop and menu launchers. As result, Watchtower Library prior to 2011 does not start when you click these. The simple solution is to change "Command" parameter in launcher to

wine start wtlibrary.exe

Watchtower Library for Mac OS X 10.7.3 "Lion"

There are some initial issues with using the Watchtower Library in Mac. The first issue is

Installing WINE

Simple solution: watchtowerlibraryformac.info

Or, you could follow the guide in the WINE wiki about installing Macports (MacOSX Installation). It is recommended that once you have installed MacPorts you need to configure it (How to install & configure Macports)

Do not install WINE but rather install wine-devel sudo ports install wine-devel for the latest WINE version.

You should also update X11, the default version is 2.3.2 which doesn't display all of the images in the Watchtower Library. The website XQuartz MacOS Forge contains the latest XQuartz (2.6.2). Once XQuartz has been updated you can run the Watchtower Library out-of-the-box with no issues.

To set up an application to run the Watchtower Library from the dock, go to Applications -> Utilities -> AppleScript Editor

Once in the editor copy & paste the following script:

tell application "Terminal"
    do script "/opt/local/bin/wine ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\\ Files/Watchtower/Watchtower\\ Library\\ 2010/E/WTLibrary.exe"
end tell

Click on run to make sure it works and then click on compile if successful and then save the script as an application filetype (Leave startup screen unchecked). Once saved as an application drag it into the dock.

Missing DLL File Errors

WINE in Mac doesn't seem to look for the DLL files in the same way it normally does. The DLL files it is referring to (Such as uresearch21u.dll) are located in the "MEPS Platform 2.3" folder in the Watc­htower directory. However WINE searches for them in the /drive_c/windows/system32 directory. Just copy and paste the contents of the "MEPS Platform 2.3" folder to the "system32" folder to resolve the issue.

Broken "Fetch from clipboard" function

If you copy multiline-text and a reference happens to be divided between two lines, the results can be a bit odd. This seems to be by design; wtlib seems to read the clipboard contents line by line. For example, if an article reads:

hechos recientes son más que los de antes" (Rev. 2:
19, 20).

Then wtlib will extract Revelation chapter 2, the entire chapter. This is due to wtlib reading just one line at a time. Now, in linux you can install xclip and run this command after having copied, say for example an entire article:

xclip -o | tr "\n" " " | xclip -selection clipboard -i

The command translates \newlines to spaces. If you do that before going Edit - Fetch from clipboard in wtlib, the correct references are extracted :D (Just Rev. 2:19, 20 in the example above).

You could even stick the command in a script and launch that from a button on your panel, or something.

I don't know how to do this in windows, but could be AutoIt would be a start...

Whether the install process went fine, or if not, what went wrong

Whether the program starts without any tweaks/modifications, or if not, what needs fixing/tweaking.

If the program runs, does the following work, or if not, what has to be done to fix/tweak it?

• Search and navigation through the library
• Tooltips (rest the mouse over a link)
• Special characters like in Hebrew, and the */M signs in the Bible
• Toolbar buttons just above the publications tree on the left, do they look good/ do they work?
• Print (you obviously need to have a working printer setup in Linux first, wine will pick up CUPS printers at least. You can add cups-PDF printer if you have no physical printer)
• Maps/graphics
• Word list box
• Add Favourites
• Open Favourites
• Settings
• pronunciation (if you have a sound card and language version you are testing have this feature)
• Synchronisation (if you have multiple languages installed)

did I forget something? just edit this note.