Audacity Forum

Hi,

I just want to inform you that the current release 1.3.6-Beta does no longer run under Windows 98!

And before someone asks: of course I´ve downloaded the correct (i.e. non-unicode) version ...

I was about to say that the most recent beta version was Audacity 1.3.5, but I see that you are really on the ball and have picked up the 1.3.6 version that was released yesterday.

I've not had chance to look at this yet, but when you say that it does not run, could you give a bit more information - do you mean it won't install, or it will install but won't launch, or it installs and launches but then crashes.....

stevethefiddle wrote: I've not had chance to look at this yet, but when you say that it does not run, could you give a bit more information - do you mean it won't install, or it will install but won't launch, or it installs and launches but then crashes.....

I can´t say anything about the installation/setup-file, because I prefer ZIP-packages whenever available.

The problem is already when starting/lauching then program, there is an error message (translated from German) like "The file AUDACITY.EXE is linked to the missing Export-SHELL.DLL:SHBindToParent".
This is the usual problem when using some WinAPI-functions (in this case SHBindToParent) in newer compiler versions, which are not available in Win98.

From some searching around, I think the SHBindToParent function may simply not be available on Windows 98 (or 95) systems, and applications written for those operating systems may need to have a workaround implementation of that function written for them. We hadn't tested 1.3.6 on Windows 98 for lack of a computer running that OS, and it may be open to question now if 1.3.6 and later will support 98 or ME. We were intending to support 98/ME, as some 8% of Windows Beta downloads are for those legacy systems.

For now, the previous two Beta versions should run on Windows 98:
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/audaci ... -1.3.4.exe
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/audaci ... -1.3.5.exe


Gale

fhub, (or anyone else on Windows 98), would you be able to try this build
http://www.gaclrecords.org.uk/audacity- ... s-ansi.zip

and see if you have the same problem trying to launch it? I'm not sure it will help, but it may give us some more clues.

What I don't understand is that there have only been two reports of this problem despite some 13000 downloads to date of the ANSI build of 1.3.6 advertised as for Windows 98 and ME.


Gale

Hi Gale,

Gale Andrews wrote:fhub, (or anyone else on Windows 98), would you be able to try this build
http://www.gaclrecords.org.uk/audacity- ... s-ansi.zip
and see if you have the same problem trying to launch it? I'm not sure it will help, but it may give us some more clues.

thanks - I´ve tried this one, but it has exactly the same problem.
Since SHBindToParent simply doesn´t exist in Win98, there´s only one possible solution for this problem: just avoid this API function.
If this function is absolutely necessary, then the Win98 compatibility of Audacity has definitely come to an end.

What I don't understand is that there have only been two reports of this problem despite some 13000 downloads to date of the ANSI build of 1.3.6 advertised as for Windows 98 and ME.

Well, a simple explanation might be that certainly VERY few people would join this forum just because the new beta doesn´t run anymore under Win98 - most people would simply ignore this new beta and stay with the last working version.

Nevertheless thanks for trying to solve this problem with Win98,
Franz.

Fortunately there was only one place in the code where SHBindToParent had been added, so we've replaced it with function SHBindToParentLocal based on this:
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/ ... lpers.html

which should make it compatible with Windows 98. Can you try it again please ?
http://www.gaclrecords.org.uk/audacity- ... s-ansi.zip

Thanks

Gale

Gale Andrews wrote: ...
which should make it compatible with Windows 98. Can you try it again please ?
http://www.gaclrecords.org.uk/audacity- ... s-ansi.zip

Yes, now it´s working again, many thanks!

But from the included DLLs msvc?80.dll I see that you´ve switched to a new compiler version starting with the new beta 1.3.6, and so I´m quite sure that similar problems with Win98-incompatible API functions will reappear again very soon in your further development. So it may be a good idea to keep this beta above as "probably the last Audacity working in Win98" ...

fhub wrote:But from the included DLLs msvc?80.dll I see that you´ve switched to a new compiler version starting with the new beta 1.3.6, and so I´m quite sure that similar problems with Win98-incompatible API functions will reappear again very soon in your further development. So it may be a good idea to keep this beta above as "probably the last Audacity working in Win98" ...

We are still compiling with Visual Studio 2005 as before. The included wxWidgets dlls are there because Audacity 1.3.6 and future versions are now built modularly against wxWidgets, rather than being statically linked to it. Widgets builds against the Microsoft dll's too, so those dll's are also included. At the moment I'm still hoping to see a non-Unicode 1.3.7 and then 1.4.0 stable for Windows 98/ME. But that will be the end, and Beta 1.5.x will only support Windows 2000 and later.


Gale

Well, the switch to Visual Studio 2008 finished off any more builds after 1.3.7 for Windows 98/ME, but Leland has got Visual Studio 2005 going again by converting the project files back to 2005 format, so we have an apparently working 1.3.12 Alpha (ANSI, for Windows 98/ME only), if anyone wants to test it:
http://www.gaclrecords.org.uk/audacity- ... -alpha.exe

I'll probably try to keep this building so there is a 1.3.12 Beta release for Windows 98/ME, but after that there may not be any more releases. It depends on demand and how difficult maintaining it proves to be. The actual number of downloads of 1.3.7 for Windows 98/ME last month was about 13000 (about 3% of Windows Beta downloads). In the month 1.3.6 came out (October 2008), about 8% of the Windows Beta downloads were for 98/ME, but we're now strongly encouraging users with Windows 7 and Vista to download the Beta rather then 1.2.6.




Gale