sPlan

What works

Nearly everything. This version is currently few month old so the development is still in progress and there are surely several bugs left.

What does not

Direct 2D has to be disabled to get sPlan 8 running.

See the How-To to get sPlan running with Direct 2D enabled.

Workarounds

See the How-To to get sPlan running with Direct 2D enabled.

To get sPlan 8 running, Direct 2D (D2D) must be disabled. To do this there are two options.

(1) The easiest way is to add the parameter /NoD2D to the command line. This can be done by adding this parameter to the command line of the properties window from the desktop icon. Simply add " /NoD2D" after the command which looks like "...\\Desktop\\sPlan\ 8.0.lnk /NoD2D" afterwards.

(2) Add in ~/.wine/drive_c/ProgramData/sPlan80/SPLAN80.INI (which only exists after sPlan runs successful for the first time) these two rules:

[GENERAL]

UseD2D=0

What was not tested

Export of drawings in PNG format

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU: AMD
• Driver: open source

Additional Comments

sPlan 8 will not run in X11 when the graphics card is configured to use 30 bit colour depth (RGB, 10 bit each colour) output, in 8-bit mode (24 bit colour depth) it works.

Update (16/01/2022): With the latest update of 13/01/2022 and enabled Direct2D sPlan80 will still fail starting.

To get sPlan 8 running with Direct 2D (D2D) the following steps are necessary. These steps are also necessary if your screen has a resolution above 140 dpi/ppi and this resolution is used by wine or winecfg respectively (wineconfig -> Graphics ->  screen resolution). If you don´t use the right screen resolution regarding your screen, wine will in general show fonts (and other things) not scaled correct. It could also be the case if you set the resolution to 141 dpi or higher (4k at a 27" screen = 163 PPI) that sPlan 8 during start up will crash. So I would highly recommend to make use of D2D.

(1) Install sPlan80 as normal. Don't run it.

(2) Download the right D2D library which is used by Windows (d2d1.dll) by example from here: https://www.dll-files.com/d2d1.dll.html (click opens a new tab). Download only a 32-bit DLL like version 10.0.19041.329 (5,12 MB) or 7.0.6002.18107 (0,25 MB). I've checked both versions and both are working with sPlan  8.

(3) Extract the DLL and move it to the directory where sPlan80.exe exists (~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/sPlan80).

(4) Start winetricks. If not installed, install it. After winetricks is started up, take the right wine-prefix and launch winecfg.

(5) If Wine configuration (winecfg) is shown, add sPlan80.exe to the list of application listed below in the listbox. When added, select it (important). NB: Below this list box in may case Windows 7 was shown as Windows version. It also works if you select Windows 10 (see below).

(6) Select the 'Libraries' tab. Be sure that from the previous tab sPlan80.exe is still selected. From the drop-down menu (new override for library) select "d2d1" and click 'Add'. Now d2d1 is shown in the box below (Existing overrides). To be sure that the downloaded D2D1 library is used click on 'Edit...' and select 'native (Windows)'. This ensures that the downloaded D2D will be used and there is no fall back available. The wine D2D library (as fallback) will not work with sPlan80 (tested with wine 7.0-rc4)

(7) Click Apply, Ok ... whatever and finish the setup. Now wine should use the D2D library which is located in the directory where sPlan80.exe exists. If the downloaded D2D library is not compatible the you will get an error message pop-up.

(8) Test if it works. For this start sPlan80. If you have an older drawing, load one. There should no error windows pop up. In the menu bar go to 'Settings' --> 'General settings ...' --> 'Display'. There should be shown that the entry "Use the new graphics-engine (Direct2D)" is marked. If this is not the case it should be possible to activate it. This has to do with the fact that sPlan80 writes a SPLAN80.INI file after it has been run successful for the first time. It could be possible that in the SPLAN80.INI file (located in

~/.wine32/drive_c/ProgramData/sPlan80/) the D2D setting is set to 0. The right entry should be UseD2D=1 and can be found under the section [General] --> UseD2D=1 (line 29).

NB: I've tested both mentioned DLL's (see 2). With version 10.0.19041.329 and Wine set to mimic Windows 10 and with version 7.0.6002.18107 and wine set to Windows 7. If it works crossover I don't know.

Don´t try to use less/nano or similar text based viewers/editors when your system is configured for UTF-8 character encoding (locale settings). To view or edit SPLAN80.INI make use of an UTF-16 capable editor/viewer. SPLAN80.INI uses UTF-16 charcater encoding which means you will see a lot of garbage if you're on UTF-8.