NOTES ON RUNNING NOTA BENE ON MACS

Recent versions of Nota Bene have included significant improvements to the way Nota Bene runs on Macs. The current version includes the enhancements added in NB 13, along with subsequent improvements.

This page gives fuller information about some Mac-specific issues.

Note: On versions of Mac OS Tahoe 26.5 and later, you may receive a message on Nota Bene startup that the program will not work with a future release of macOS. There’s no need to worry.

On This Page

NB’s Current Version Installs Like Any Other Mac Program

NOTE: If an earlier version of NB+Wine is already installed on this computer, see the note in the box below.

  1. Download the file (from the link sent after you place your order) into your Downloads folder
    • This is a zipped file, not the .dmg-type file used in the original NB+Wine version
  2. If your browser does not automatically unzip the file (as Safari does), unzip it
  3. Double click to start the installation
  4. If you are prompted about installing an application from the web, click OK/Yes to continue
  5. When asked if you want to move this to the Applications folder, click Yes
  6. After a brief wait (give it a little time), the standard Nota Bene installation process will begin
    • The current NB version uses a new product key, so be sure to enter the key given on your order, not the one that you have used for earlier installs (which may be shown in the dialog)
  7. After the installation is complete, Nota Bene will auto start (just give it a bit of time)
IF A VERSION OF NB IS ALREADY INSTALLED


You can install this new version of Nota Bene on a machine on which an earlier version was installed, precisely because the location of the bottle is different, as long as you first do the following (this is important):

  • Go to the Applications folder, click on the existing (earlier) Nota Bene application, click again, and rename it (use any name)

Once the new version is installed, you can decide which version you want to start simply by clicking the appropriate Item in the Applications folder:

  1. The one named Nota Bene will be the newest version
  2. The original version will be the one you renamed (see above)

Where is Everything?

Your Files and Databases on the Mac

Note Bene’s current version includes the new “home folder” installation option introduced in NB 13. While this is optional on Windows (even if strongly recommended), this much simpler/more powerful option is the only one available on the Mac.

Thus, your NB home folder on the Mac will be either:

  • [Main Mac user folder]\YourUserName\Nota Bene
  • [Main Mac user folder]\YourUserName\[PathToCloud/Sync Folder]\Nota Bene

With this new structure, all of your files should be easily accessible in places that are familiar to you from other Mac programs. There’s no longer a need to worry about things like drive letters (e.g., c:\nbwin) or other nomenclature common to Windows systems.

If your most recent version of NB on the Mac is a version prior to NB 13, you may have had documents and Ibidem databases stored under the Nota Bene “bottle,” in the folder “c:\nbwin\document” and “c:\nbwin\ibidem\database.” During the current NB  installation, copies of these will be saved to the appropriate folders under the new Nota Bene home folder, “Documents” and “Databases.”

  • The originals are not deleted
  • If for any reason these files are not copied during the install, you can choose the Copy Files option from the File, File Options, Set Home Folder dialog from within Nota Bene
  • If you saved files in locations other than those two folders under the old NB bottle, you will need to manually copy them

Unlike on Windows systems, Macs do not have “drives” (the single letter name of devices such as “C:”), but instead have “Locations” or “mount points.”

However, the program Nota Bene uses to run on the Mac, a version of Wine from Codeweavers (Crossover), does use drive designations. In most cases these are hidden from Mac users (these do not show up in Finder, for example), but they are visible in some contexts, so knowing how Wine structures things by using drive letters will make your work with Nota Bene easier:

  • Z: — the root of the main Mac hard drive (on which Wine is installed)
  • Y: — the home folder for the logged in user (/User/YourName)
    All Wine programs are installed under this home folder
  • C: — the drive_c folder under the active Wine bottle, so bottle/drive_c

 

Other drives, such as fixed internal drives, DVD drives, flash/thumb drives you insert, will have their own drive letters, such as D: or E:

Wine, the program that lets Windows programs run on Macs, is installed into what is called a “bottle.” Since your files and databases and settings are now separate from this bottle, and thus from the location where the program is installed, you don’t need to worry about that location. But the following notes are provided for those of you who are interested in the technical details.

The new Nota Bene

  • Bottle — y:\Library\ Application Support\Nota Bene\Bottles\ notabene (“Library” is a hidden folder; to see this in Finder, click Go, and press Option])
  • NB Program folder (nbwin) as seen from within (when running) Nota Bene in that bottle — c:\nbwin
  • NB Program folder (nbwin) as seen from other Wine bottles — y:\Library\ Application Support\Nota Bene\Bottles\ notabene\drive_c\ nbwin


The original (pre-NB 13/14) Nota Bene

  • Bottle — y:\Nota Bene
  • NB Program folder (nbwin) as seen from within (when running) Nota Bene in that bottle — c:\nbwin
  • NB Program folder (nbwin) as seen from other Wine bottles — y:\Nota Bene\drive_c\ nbwin


While the new Nota Bene bottle location is further down the chain, this should never be an issue, since everything you need to access is in the data structure described above. (Only Nota Bene itself needs to know this more complicated location.)

Important: You’ll note that the folder that contained the bottle in pre-NB13/NB14 installations is “Nota Bene,” in your Mac user folder, and that this is the same folder now set up in the current NB installation as your Nota Bene home folder. This is as designed, and should not cause you any problems/worries.

  • This means that in addition to the “standard folders” in the home “Nota Bene” folder created you’ll see — parallel to them — a folder named “drive_c”
  • Since this folder also contains any data or database files you may have saved in c:\nbwin (for example, under c:\nbwin\document or c:\nbwin\ibidem\database) when using the earlier versions, you should not delete it until you are sure that you have saved/copied/moved all such files

For Those With a Pre-NB13 Installation

If you have an earlier (pre-NB 13/14) copy of Nota Bene installed in Wine on your Mac:

  • As noted above, while files and databases from the old c:\nbwin\document and c:\nbwin\ibidem\database folders will have been copied to the new location, the originals will remain intact
  • Going forward, you should open/use the versions in the new location, which won’t be difficult, since the Finder File Open/Save As dialog won’t have any direct way of showing you the c:\nbwin\… folders (they will only be visible if you browse to the Nota Bene\drive_c\nbwin folder under your regular Mac home folder)
  • The only place where you may need to know about drive letters is for Orbis, which uses its own file-management dialog, one that shows/uses drive letters, rather than Finder:
    • Since Y: is the drive designation of your Mac user folder, as noted above, you should be able to easily find any Nota Bene files you want to have included in an Orbis textbase under the “Nota Bene” folder on the Y: drive
    • If you previously stored your files — the ones included in an Orbis textbase — under c:\nbwin (or if you otherwise moved them), you will need to re-create the Orbis textbase, since the working versions of those files (the ones Orbis knows about) have been copied to the appropriate folder under the new Nota Bene home folder (or elsewhere)
    • If your home folder is in the cloud, and you want to access the same Orbis textbase from multiple computers, you will need to set up a different drive letter (such as N:) to point to the shared home folder, using the File, File Options, Set Alias for Home Folder dialog, and then select the files from that location when creating the Orbis textbase (this makes sure that the filename remains the same in Orbis, even if the actual home folder path differs on these different machines)

Although the Nota Bene Home folder, as described above, is already instantly more accessible from the Finder dialogs, you can make this even more accessible by adding it to Favorites:

Display on the Mac

Recommended Settings

  • Font-rendering in Wine has historically been problematic, and that is true even of the new build that we received from Codeweavers
  • We’ve spent a lot of time bringing over the font enhancement options we added in the original NB+Wine, and the results show significant improvement
    • You can experiment with these values under Tools, Preferences, Mac Options
    • We are still working on applying these enhancements to the various different font-rendering functions (NB text, dialogs, menus, vertical text [in dialogs], etc.,) but overall Quality settings other than 0 make a significant difference
    • The “Weight” has very visible effects (at least in our tests) on Mojave, but very minor effects on Catalina
  • But we were still not satisfied with how fonts were displayed, so we worked to add support for Retina mode (surprisingly, this is not supported in the default Wine build), and now have options for four Retina modes, for a total of five, all of which can be selected under Tools, Preferences, Mac Options (or, … Wine Options):

                1. Regular mode (96 DPI)
                2. Retina — Small (120 DPI)

Yes, this is small, probably useful only on larger monitors

                3. Retina — Medium 1 (144 DPI)
This renders text the same size/width as Mac’s Text Edit program does (but dialogs may be too small for some)

                4. Retina — Medium 2 (160 DPI)
Text, and menus, are larger (but still, as in other Mac applications, smaller than traditional Nota Bene in regular mode)

                5. Retina — Large (180 DPI)
This comes closest to the size of regular, non-Retina mode, but with clearer fonts

Note that the font enhancements options (Quality and Weight) can also be used in Retina (at this point, we are still experimenting, trying to determine in which cases they improve Retina, and those in which they don’t)

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