Frequently Asked Questions

Q. Is there CALIS for Macintosh?
A. WinCALIS is currently available only in the Windows format (click here to read about all the WinCALIS and UniEdit Hardware and System Requirements). Computer language coding differences, as well as full WinCALIS Unicode support, make development for a Mac platform a complex process. Check out our Java applet WebCALIS, a prototype for a multi-platform, Internet-based language learning system.

Q. What level of language learning is WinCALIS for?
A. WinCALIS is an open-ended authoring system, so an author may design a lesson for any language, for any learning level.

Q. Do you offer training in WinCALIS?
A. HCF has an annual WinCALIS Summer Seminar, held at Duke University, and can also perform on-site training at your location.

Q. I have WinCALIS installed, but I don't see the Chinese/ Japanese/ Korean/ Arabic/ Persian/ Hebrew language.
A. To access some specific languages WinCALIS supports, you need to have the appropriate supplementary module (call HCF for ordering), and indicate them as Optional Files in the Custom Installation Process (by default, WinCALIS will just load the left-to-right alphabetic languages).

Q. My updated copy of WinCALIS TrueType Printer does weird things.
A. If you have updated WinCALIS over an existing installation and experience printing problems with MLPTT.EXE "WinCALIS TrueType Printer," go to your main Windows 3.1 directory and delete the file "mlptt.ini."

Q. I have problems with an updated installation of WinCALIS.
A. If you are experiencing problems and have updated over an earlier setup, it is advisable to delete everything following the procedure described in the section "HOW TO UNINSTALL WINCALIS" in the readme.txt file, then run setup again. If the problem still occurs, contact the Duke University Humanities Computing Facility.

Q. WinCALIS Author doesn't work right on my foreign version of Windows.
A. The current multilingual WinCALIS or UniEdit software package was designed for plain U.S. Microsoft Windows and other versions of Windows which do not take control of keyboard input. It may produce unpredictable results with text other than plain ASCII text when run on versions of Windows in which an Input Method Editor (IME) takes control of the keyboard and the display. This includes the Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Thai versions of Windows. If you need to run a WinCALIS application on a localized version of Windows, please contact the Duke University Humanities Computing Facility to discuss your situation.

Q. WinCALIS keeps crashing even though I have exited and started it again.
A. If a General Protection Fault (GPF) "crash" occurs in one of the shared Dynamic Link Libraries (DLLs) used by both WinCALIS and WinCALIS Author, you will see a Windows error message reporting something like the following:

   "WINCALIS.EXE caused a General Protection Fault
    in module WCRTW.DLL at address 0000:0000"

Q. I can't see *.CAL files in my WinCALIS opening screen Lesson Window.
A. You may have installed the Student Workstation Setup on the same machine as your Author Workstation, and what you are running is the Student Workstation version of WinCALIS. The student's opening screen Options menu only allows changing directories, not converting *.CAL files or changing Window defaults.

You can fix the problem in one of two ways:

1. (Running Setup again)
   Use the File Manager to delete the current WINCALIS.EXE. Then run the Author Workstation Setup again. (You can just run the default setup--existing options will not be affected.)
2. (Using the DOS "EXPAND" command)
   Go to a DOS prompt. Change to your WinCALIS program directory (e.g., C:\WINCALIS). Place Disk 1 of the Author Workstation Setup package in drive A: (or B:). At the DOS prompt, type the following command:

           expand  a:\files\wincalis.exe wincalis.exe

Q. I tried to install WinCALIS in Windows 95. I went through all of the disks, yet I am not able to find the program.
A. WinCALIS is a setup designed for Windows 3.1. It also installs successfully much of the time under Windows 95. If it does not finish successfully on your system, you can do the final details of the installation manually. Usually, all files are written to the hard disk OK, but (1) your WinCALIS fonts are not always installed properly in Windows 95, (2) the WinCALIS Pangaea folder and icons are not created in your Start Menu, and (3) the WINCALIS.INI file is not created dynamically at the end of setup.

(1) You can install the fonts manually from the Windows 95 Start Menu. Press Start, Settings, Control Panel, Fonts. Click on File, and select Install New Font.... Then, in the Add Fonts dialog box, select the System folder under your main Windows folder. Highlight all the fonts which begin "WinCALIS 2.0..." and click on OK. You can then use the Windows Explorer to delete from your Windows 95 System folder all the WinCALIS font files with filenames WC2*.TTF, WC2*.FOT, and WC2*.FON.

(2) You can create a WinCALIS Pangaea folder in your Start Menu by clicking on the Start button with the right mouse button, then clicking on Explore. Then insert Setup Disk 1 into your floppy drive and drag the folder called WinCALIS Pangaea into the Programs folder. You will then have added the WinCALIS Pangaea folder to your Start menu. If you installed WinCALIS in the default location C:\WINCALIS, that is all you need to do. If you installed it elsewhere, you will need to open the WinCALIS Pangaea folder and click on each icon with your right mouse button, select Properties, then the Shortcut tab, then correct the paths shown in the "Target:" and "Start in:" lines. If you wish, you can also place the WinCALIS Pangaea folder right on your Windows 95 desktop by holding down the Ctrl key and dragging the WinCALIS Pangaea folder icon onto your desktop.

(3) You can copy the substitute WINCALIS.INI file from the Setup Disk 1 "FILES" subdirectory to the main directory in which you installed the WinCALIS Author Workstation on your hard disk. Then open the file in a plain text editor like the Windows Notepad and edit the the directory paths as needed. If you installed WinCALIS in the C:\WINCALIS directory, no editing should be needed.

Q. I recently purchased a copy of WinCALIS. Can I now install it on 30 computers in the lab?
A. This issue is most completely dealt with in the WinCALIS licensing agreement.

Q. I am running WinCALIS under Windows 95. I am unable to open the Multimedia Editor program.
A. WinCALIS appears to have some conflicts with a certain video driver. Here is a temporary workaround for the conflict between WinCALIS Multimedia Editor and the ActiveMovie MCI driver (the driver "mciqtz.drv"):

1) Temporarily modify the system.ini file, by any of these methods: a) Run "Sysedit" under "Run" in the Start Menu, and select the system.ini window. or b) Double click on "system.ini" in the Windows folder, to load and edit it with Notepad. or c) Run Notepad and File,Open the file "system.ini" in the Windows folder.

2) In "system.ini," scroll down until you find the section with the header [mci].

3) In the [mci] section, find the line which says "ActiveMovie=mciqtz.drv", and insert a semicolon (;) at the beginning of the line to temporarily "comment it out." Save this file.

4) Minimize the "system.ini" file, but leave it running in the background.

5) Run WinCALIS Multimedia Editor. Since it attempts on startup to load all the MCI device drivers specified in the[mci] section of "system.ini," it will now ignore the Active Movie driver.

6) When you are finished using Multimedia Editor, restore the "system.ini" file and uncomment the "ActiveMovie=mciqtz.drv" line by removing the semicolon. Save the file again.

For late-breaking details, consult the Humanities Computing Lab.

Anything Else?
Please do not hesitate to contact us for information on any question, large or small.