Creator of the Symmetry454 CalendarUsing Kalendis with Linux or macOS

by Dr. Irv Bromberg, University of Toronto, Canada email icon

[Click here to go back to the Symmetry454 / Kalendis home page]

This page explains how users of non-Windows operating systems running on computers with an intel processor, specifically Linux or macOS, can run Kalendis.

All of the current models of Apple personal computers have intel processors. Using Apple's BootCamp facility, see <http://www.apple.com/support/bootcamp/>, it is possible to install Windows as an alternative operating system, then install Kalendis to run as an application within the Windows environment. The disadvantage of this approach is that the computer can run macOS or Windows, but not both simultaneously, and Kalendis will only be available when Windows is running.

Another alternative is to install Parallels Desktop for Mac, see <http://www.parallels.com/>, or VMware Fusion, see <http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion.html>, which allow any version of Windows (or, for that matter, intel Linux), to run as a process under macOS on intel-processor Macintosh computers, thus allowing Windows and macOS to both run at the same time. Likewise Parallels Workstation for Win&Lin allows any version of Windows to run as a process under Linux. Parallels or Fusion makes it possible for Kalendis to run within a Windows environment that is running under macOS or Linux. Provided that the system has sufficient random access memory (RAM), performance will be at near native speed for all except graphics and networking, which are partially emulated under Parallels or Fusion, but Kalendis doesn't intensively use graphics or networking anyhow, so the user experience ought to quite satisfactory.

I haven't tried it, but the free ORACLE VirtualBox should be able to run Kalendis under macOS or Linux by creating a virtual Windows installation, see <https://www.virtualbox.org/>.

If any of the above is your preferred method for running Kalendis then go back to the Kalendis web page and download and run the Kalendis installer within your Windows environment.

The third alternative doesn't require Windows at all, and can be used under Linux or macOS, by executing the Kalendis.exe program within either the free WINE environment (a recursive acronym for WINE Is Not an Emulator), see <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_(software)>, or the commercial CrossOverLinux environment under Linux, or its equivalent under macOS, CrossOverMac, see <http://www.codeweavers.com/>. These environments allow Windows applications to run as Linux or macOS applications, without installing Windows. Calls by a running Windows application to the Windows Application Programming Interface (API) are automatically translated to their Linux or macOS equivalents and the results translated back, achieving near-native performance without the overhead of emulation.

I find that under the WINE environment in Linux or macOS indeed Kalendis runs almost as quickly as its native Windows performance on comparable hardware, and I find it very convenient to be able to interchangeably run Kalendis in Windows, Linux, or macOS.

Installing WINE under macOS:

Installing WINE under Linux:

Kalendis requires the Microsoft Sans Serif Truetype font for the "Month" view of the ISO calendar, and also requires the Courier New (regular and bold) TrueType fonts for the end-of-report modal dialog box. These fonts aren't always present in Linux or macOS and aren't included in WINE bottles. Many Linux distributions provide the Courier New font family as part of the Microsoft TrueType core fonts set available through the built-in software manager. You can alternatively freely download these fonts from https://fontzone.net/, and here are the direct links to their download pages:

Kalendis also requires a default web browser for .htm files and for URLs, otherwise it will crash at launch, so I recommend as a minimum downloading and running the WINE Gecko Installer as instructed above.

If using either the Linux or macOS version of WINE, launch the Configure WINE application. Click on the Applications tab, then click on the Add application... button. Navigate to where the Kalendis executable was installed (typically ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Kalendis/ or in a 64-bit version of Linux ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Kalendis/), select Kalendis.exe, then click the Open button. Back in the Application Settings dialog, select Kalendis.exe, choose Windows 7 as the Windows version, then click the Apply button.

In Linux, to set up easy launching of Kalendis using the File Manager, maximize your File Manager window so that the menu bar will be available at the top of the screen, then from the View menu choose Show Hidden Files (alternatively Ctrl-H can toggle this option on or off). Open the .wine folder, then the drive_c folder, then the Program Files folder (or in a 64-bit version of Linux, the Program Files (x86) folder), and then the Kalendis folder. Right-click on the Kalendis.exe file, then choose Properties, then click on the Open With tab, choose the WINE Windows Program Loader, and finally click the Apply or OK or Close button.

In Configure WINE, available from the program menu or by entering winecfg into a Terminal window, there is a "Graphics" tab and within that a "Screen Resolution" section, with a slider that starts off set to the default minimum 96 dpi. I find this minimum a tad hard to read, with many letters appearing distorted, so I suggest that you bump up the setting according to your preference — I recommend 120 dpi.

In my experience, using Kalendis under WINE in Linux or MacOS, one annoyance is that the on-screen word wrapping of dialog boxes isn't as intended. Either the text characters are too wide or the dialog boxes are too narrow. Nevertheless, copying the text and pasting it into a text editor or similar program yields properly wrapped text. I suppose that this misbehavior is due to a missing font, but don't know what's missing. This annoyance doesn't affect any of the Kalendis Report Finished dialogs, because for those the program explicitly controls the fonts and layout of those dialogs instead of letting Microsoft Visual Basic handle it.

In CrossOverLinux or CrossOverMac after running the Kalendis installer for Windows the Programs menu will show Kalendis with a small version of its icon, and you can launch Kalendis simply by choosing it from that menu. In Linux distributions that have a programs menu, Kalendis and its icon will appear as a subentry under WINE, which you can launch by clicking that item.

For a while I actually ran the full version of Microsoft's Visual Studio for Visual Basic 6 (updated to service pack 6) with Internet Explorer 6 as above on a MacBook Pro with intel Core 2 Duo processor under CrossOverMac version 10 or later, allowing me to program, debug, run, and package Kalendis under macOS. Since version 11 of CrossOverMac this has worked very well. Prior to version 11 there were occasional transient minor display glitches: when switching users or connecting or disconnecting an external display, extraneous graphic user interface elements would persist in view in the Finder. These would go away if you quit all running Windows applications and then re-launch them. Overall Kalendis under CrossOverMac seemed to run at about 80% of the speed of comparable hardware running Windows.

This page updated 20 Tishrei 5781 (Traditional) = 20 Tishrei 5781 (Rectified) = Oct 11, 2020 (Symmetry454) = Oct 11, 2020 (Symmetry010) = Oct 8, 2020 (Gregorian)