Seasonal headache: ABBYY eFormFiller 2.5 on Linux

The beginning of May (May 6 this year) is the deadline for income tax declarations in Lithuania. Our tax inspection accepts paper forms, has a lame web interface, and offers a Windows program that looks nice, calculates all the derived values for you, and has validation. There are some problems with running it on Wine. Last year I tried getting it to run for a couple of hours, then gave up and booted Windows on one of the laptops.

This year around, I made an effort and finally got it to run. Here are the commands that made the cut for me (Ubuntu Hardy, Wine 0.9.59):


mkdir /tmp/formfiller
cd /tmp/formfiller
wget -nv http://deklaravimas1.vmi.lt/eFormFiller25v6_2008_03_06.zip
unzip eFormFiller25v6_2008_03_06.zip
wget -nv http://kegel.com/wine/winetricks

export WINEPREFIX=~/.wine-eFF/
wineprefixcreate

sh winetricks dcom98
sh winetricks win98
sh winetricks riched20
sh winetricks vcrun6
sh winetricks wsh56

wine setup.exe /q

wine $WINEPREFIX/drive_c/Program\ Files/ABBYY\ eFormFiller\ 2.5/FormFillerLight.exe


I hope it will be useful to somebody.

Update: naaaah, it works with the last year's income tax form, but doesn't with this year's. Time to boot Windows again :(

Oh, the convenience!

I was browsing around for hotels close to the Europython 2008 conference venue (Reval Hotel Lietuva). I remembered that the classic Soviet-decorated Neringa hotel is 10 minutes away, just across the pedestrian bridge between the banks of Neris. Unfortunately, Scandic Neringa does not have any rooms available for the duration of the conference, but they suggested another hotel nearby.



Your daily commute: 1250 km in each direction.