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Integrating other Windows programs with Watchtower Library for Mac

Starting with version 1.2 of Watchtower Library for Mac, you can relatively easily run other Windows applications and integrate them with your library or libraries. For instance, you might want to integrate TSwin, a program for helping secretaries.

How to do it

Ah, the big question! Take the following steps. Below assumes that your Windows program comes in the form of an executable installation program.

Add Wine File to your Applications menu

First customise your Applications menu. Click Applications > Customize… then Add Item. Add the following.
  • Name: Wine File
  • Command: winefile
  • Shortcut: i (for Command+I, lower case means without Shift)
  • Launch: When selected

Close the Customise panel after adding this item. From that point on, you can run Wine File by pressing Command+I.

Go to Z: where drive Z corresponds to your entire Unix system. Navigate to Users\login to find your home directory.

Wine File shows you all the dot files. It can look a little confusing. Unix systems (like Macs) use "." to prefix hidden files. But Windows does not, so Wine File shows you them unnecessarily. Just ignore them. Hard but try.

Double click to run the custom program's install program

Wine File runs the installation program. Follow the application-specific install instructions.

Add the installed program to the Applications menu

Finally, add the program to the Applications menu by opening the Applications Customize… panel again. Add a new item. Fill in the name, command, shortcut and launch option. Of course, you will need the correct command which will usually include the drive and path specification. For TSwin for instance, the command will normally be C:\TSWIN\tswin.exe. Shortcut might be T (capital T) so that you can run it using Shift+Command+T.

Caveats

It might seem a little counter-intuitive: run the library, run other stuff too.

Watchtower Library for Mac starts becoming run anything theocratic for Mac! Perhaps that's not a bad thing. Makes you wonder though, is there any change that would make such things a little more intuitive. For example, does the application need a menu option to Run Other Windows Programs, or not?

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