Hi Stephen,
Well...obviously I read every post in every forum (not quite true 8) but that in itself is related here --- there are many posts that I read and/or not/not respond to expressly because they relate to some nuance with usage of the Mac & OSX in conjunction with Crossover. Then further, how the win32 program might behave differently because of these platform/OS differences, and how one can work around them, because I don't have access to a Mac. Yourself and I have already encountered this very same knife-edge even within our own OS of choice, linux, because although we're on the same OS/platform, our video hardware specs differ enough to have significant impact on how things work using Crossover and win32 programs 8)
This all said, I do know it's very 'safe & sane' to turn a blind eye to the Mac users most of the time - why? - the fine skills of the Mighty Ninjas (many of them are Mac users too), advocates themselves who use Macs, and of course all those other Mac/OSX folks that contribute to the forums here ; there is an impressive resource here to service the Mac/OSX user... the real trick is asking the the right question...ie; that folks actually state what platform/OS/hardware they are using when asking for help....hmmm...
....if your thoughts here diverge towards the C4P system and it's usage....?...I gave that some thought during my recent tinkerings with C4P et_al. When one creates the c4p file itself, it's medal ranking is acquired from the C4 page for that app_id. Even though you will end up with a c4p that may be 'gold' for linux, and 'untested' for Mac, it will still install in either case...(I'm not sure if a 'known not to work' should automatically try to but it probably does..) You can use <postinstallurl> in the c4p file to point the user back to a URL on the C4 page for that app...either a forum thread or tip&trick.. if there's anything specific the user needs to know for -their- situation,...hmmm...
....I'll just hedge a bet here you -might- be able to leverage 'secondary install profile' in some way here...ie; in the case of the Mac/OSX you do have relatively 'fixed' targets wrt hardware/software context, based on the specific Mac model name being used (didn't I read somewhere you could nail a Mac's actual makeup most times, based purely on it's serial number?) ....consider the case of how the nvidia IGP chipset carries on versus this pcie 9800 and the deb5 unit here with a 7400gs. If you knew for sure your c4p recipe (which may have different registry tweaks etc than the c4p recipe already there) was a 'sure fix' for the IGP case, it'd be nice to have that as a secondary install profile, so you could offer the user a choice when they first load the c4p file, which has a selector to allow them to choose the specific IGP recipe -- obviously, same could apply to the Mac situation as well, with Mac model targets to choose from to suit anything a c4p could/can do to suit that enduser situation....
...I suppose the other other way to use <postinstallurl> is to presume in the 'untested' + 'known not to work' situations, you default to the throw of app_id + base_forum_URL? I guess that makes sense to me...ie; try encourage folks to to report back to that area either way, good or bad, about their experience with using the C4P system itself....makes sense..
...in the end, best thing would be for them to just try the demo version of Crossover + C4P and see how it goes. If it doesn't work 'as expected', they should post that experience back to the app_id's forum. -If- a c4p recipe is being 'actively maintained/advocated' then that posting should gain a response -- you could then modify the existing recipe for people to better suit their setup, and just email it to them or whatever (rapidshare) for them to manually load instead of the one they downloaded from the C4 page. Note: the 'how to delete a bottle' C4 docs should figure in here somehow...err...hmmm....that's a bit undefined, you experienced that too...oat...
I reckon all the mechanisms like this are already there for the most part...ie; if a Mac user tries the demo of crossover with the app involved, even I as a linux only user can -try- help them in an automated fashion by using custom c4p recipes, which hopefully one would be able to incorporate into the...Crossover C4P Cookbook...<grin>...
Cheers!
