Slashdot Mirror
Macromedia to Port Flash MX to Linux?
LnxAddct writes "An article on CNet reports that Macromedia will start taking Linux more seriously. It will start this new initiative by making it's suite of tools run easily under WINE, then depending on the response it gets, it will port it's tools natively to Linux! Their Chief Software Architect, Kevin Lynch, stated, 'What we've been investigating is, When will it be time to bring our tools to Linux? I think it might be happening now.' Maybe 2004 will be the year of Linux."
This is half the reason I dont use linux on the desktop. Now, get me a stable version of Photoshop CS, and I'm in.
Thank god, because the only thing the world needs more is more adoption of Flash.
I'm still waiting for Microsoft to port Office to Linux! Then I'll switch over.
All them emails I sent them finally paid off!!
Hopefully, this means that they'll take non-x86 platforms semi-seriously. ;b I'd like a PPC Flash plug-in, that's for certain.
Bít, zabít, jen proto, ze su liska!
They might as well just come out and say they will not support Linux. My experiences with WINE have been, shall I say, bitter. I've managed to get a few games running with it, but never without significant hassle or loss of resources (sound, fullscreen, etc.).
The roadmap to desktop acceptance for Linux cannot go through WINE.
IIRC previous version of Flash (5?) was running almost properly under WINE.
Dunno if much changed in MX, but i guess it's not a lot of work for Macromedia.
I'm a chainsmokin' alcoholic sociopath, so-ci-o-path
There are some software titles that just -need- to be ported to linux, do to lack of OSS alternatives. The Macromedia MX line of tools is -definately- one of those.
;D).
AFAIK, there is no alternative to Flash MX on Linux -- yes, Openoffice.org Impress will save to Flash, but to some designers, that's simply not powerful enough.
And Dreamweaver MX is the -only- wysiwyg editor that I will allow to touch my code. It works cleanly and with compatibility, something no other wysiwyg editor, even oss ones, can claim. (disclaimer: I code in gedit
On a side note -- didn't I read something a few months back about Adobe doing something similar with Photoshop?
Jay | http://oldos.org
While I applaud any efforts to get more software running natively on Linux, I have to ask: why Flash? I mean as far as most of us are concerned, it's the scourge of the internet, responsible for a slew of poorly designed sites, bad flash movies, and anoying advertisements. If Macromedia wants to go after the Linux crowd, wouldn't a more appreciable tool like Dreamweaver be a better choice?
down with linux... uh I mean windows...um no.. uh...hmm!...down with cp/m cause everyone knows flash mx for cp/m sucked
Are they doing this as a response to SVG? Especially since Microsoft is "embracing and extending" SVG into WVG? It'd definitely be easier, without a Flash MX that runs on Linux, for Linux users to develop SVG than Flash. Many of the people that create interactive content that's as advanced as Flash are geeky enough to love or at least know how to get around in Linux.
I claim first use of "Error No. 0B" - or "No. 0B error." It'll be the new ID 10T!
Not that I am in any way disparaging The GIMP, which is awesome, but the PHBs and CXOs only know Illustrator and PhotoShop...
libertarianswag.com
OpenOffice.org (that's kinda two words...)
Can we keep the tools, but not get the plugin? Please? PLEASE?
Isn't it sad when you prefer the platform where a quarter of the "web" content DOESN'T work, and that's perfectly OK? No full motion ads, no ads that start talking to you when you mouse-over them...
Please help metamoderate.
about time they figured out that people actually use Linux. they have Unix ports of their stuff like Coldfusion so why not make everything cross-platform. this is something Adobe should start doing.
http://www.geocities.com/baddsectorr
Oh Macromedia, please please please/b> bring DREAMWEAVER. I"m having a hell of a time with posting comments to Slashdot. It would make my life easier if I wouldn't have to do my own HMTL.
Until Slashdot fixes the funny modifier, use insightful or interesting. The poster knows your intentions.
One thing I like about Macromedia apps is that they fully support WebDAV. And I dont know of any good Linux based Web Development app that supports WebDAV natively. So this move by Macromedia will be very welcomed. WebDAV is IETF stardard for WebBased Document Authoring and Versioning, and is very useful in WebDevelopment. Support for WebDAV in Windows based WebDevelopement apps is what forces me to use windows. If Macromedia ports its apps, I will be able to switch to Linux completely.
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
will we start seeing Flash with better content soon, seeing Linux users are on average better skilled technically.
This move by Macromedia could be a big one because it would give a serious leg up on Adobe. For whatever reason, Adobe has steadfastly refused to acknowledge the Linux market. Where is Photoshop? Gimp is no Photoshop. It is good but no Photoshop. Photoshop on Linux alone would be monstrous, but why don't they do it? Who knows.
Anyway, if Macromedia really wanted to scoop Adobe, this is the one way to do it.
No trees were harmed in the composition of this; however, numerous electrons were inconvenienced.
The more I delve into my job search here in Japan, I've come to realize how much Linux is growing on the minds of companies. Almost every company I've interviewed with has asked the "what experience do you have with Linux" question. I'm glad I installed Debian Woody last year and have been running that on a separate spare box here at home.
Until now, most multimedia production platforms have either been Windows or Mac based. But as the tools of Linux become better, especially with the recent improvements in KDE, Linux is seen and being used more and more as a desktop production platform. Because of this, software vendors are feeling their ears perk up in the direction of Linux.
While it may never take the lead in the Desktop wars, Linux will find a nice niche somewhere between Windows and Mac. Software vendors who do not take Linux seriously may find themselves and their competitive positions usurped by some other up and comer, if not someone else who wants to write a free version of the software.
I have been pwned because my
Actualy having your QA team try it and consider Wine bugs real bugs... I mean...they have access to the official source code... How many things don't run in Wine because of an half buggy splash screen, a messed up installer, or because they rounded up the corners using some "features" (read: bugs) of Windows to their advantage... That would be how: by actualy trying those things... Lots of things that dont work in Wine, would with a few hours of cleaning up code... If I remember well, its even written somewhere on the Wine page, that programs can be made "for" Wine, and will then work flawlessly in both environnements...
I'm not sure if it was so much Adobe as it was Disney and 2 other unnamed companys paying codeweavers lots of money to get Photoshop 7 (was current at the time) running in Crossover Office/Wine.
Jisho - A Japanese English German Russian French Dictionary for the rest of us.
I'm not sure I agree with the porting strategem. Getting MX to work on Wine is all fine and dandy, but basing the full port to Linux on the acceptance of the Wine port seems silly. Yes, I know it saves money doing it this way, but that's kind of like changing the tires on your 15-year-old car and expecting people to buy it for full price; not very likely. I have used Linux frequently, both as a software developer and an end-user, and I have rarely had any call to use Wine (though it is a great tool). As a developer, though, I would be really leery of using this kind of potentially unstable platform for my bread-and-butter work. The bottom line is that MX works on Windows, so I run it on Windows. If it gets ported fully to Linux with the same support and the Windows version, then great, I'd consider using it on Windows (especially if the same box came with both versions!) I'm not about to fiddle around getting it running on Linux, and I doubt many other developers will either. (Why are you so afraid of Linux, Macromedia??)
This could be an excellent move for Macromedia, since the Linux-platform is currently (still) being ignored by its archrival Adobe.
I'm an optimist, so I am sure that Adobe will eventually be convinced by the increased marketshare of Linux to port their applications over as well. But the sooner Macromedia gets a foothold in Linux in the meantime, the more of an advantage it will have when the time comes for Adobe to follow suit.
Since we're talking about Macromedia and Flash anyway: does anyone here know why the open-source Flash plugin hasn't been developed further by anyone? Macromedia's binary-only plugin lacks performance (and often stability) as well as platform-support, is currently still at version 6. Besides, the Flash 7 specs are publicly available anyway, so we wouldn't even have to reverse engineer the format to reimplement the plugin, right?
Perhaps such an open-source plugin could eventually even be integrated in the Mozilla directly? Or would that somehow be an undesirable idea?
"Oooh, does that mean we get to kick some puffy white mad zionist butt?"
It's worse than spam. Harder to filter, too.
slashdot crowd also expects them to:
1. Release the source under GPL
2. Give the product away for free
3. Hate Microsoft
Neither of which they do. So I predict this will be a complete failure.
They fix the Flash player first? I mean, jesus. Yeti Baseball shouldn't be using my entire CPU.
It is => it's.
Otherwise, use its. Even for possession.
Remember that "its" is an exception to the usual rule of the apostrophe indicating possession, as in Steve's, Bill's, Darl's, etc.
Let's practice on the article header:
Sorry for OT-ism.free speach
Did you mean: free speech
Dude, wake up and smell the coffee. A lot of spam generating software already runs on linux. As does a lot of porongrapic websites, why would you use windows for a server?
That which is done from love exists beyond good and evil
I've noticed that at least people in the UK, and perhaps a large portion of Europe (I don't really know) treat companies, bands, etc etc as plural. So while your grammar naziing is valid for American English, it doesn't necessarily hold elsewhere.
(The idea behind it is not that Macromedia is a group of companies. It's that Macromedia is a group of people.)
It seems weird to me every time I see it (since I'm American), and it strikes me as odd to accept the abstration of a bunch of people into a company without accepting that the company can be treated as a single entity, but it's still idiomatically correct.
IMHO, there can never be too little Flash.
/usr/local/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so /usr/local/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so.temp
BTW for those who want to turn it off by default, all you need to do is rename the plugin, eg
mv
And if you REALLY need it, like those horrific sites that don't actually use HTML (car manufacturer sites are the worst offenders I come across) you can rename it back
So does Anonymous Coward have good karma?
Why not port a native Dreamweaver? There is NO decent WYSIWYG HTML editor on Linux. Flash is an accessory to Dreamweaver. People who want Flash can't work without a decent HTML editor. They definately won't edit their HTML in vi, so they won't buy Flash for Linux.
/, then you get to dig for the home directory.
WINE is a pain when it comes to drive letters.
First, it has a totally different view of the filesystem than every native app. It has a fake drive letter (Z: for instance) that leads to
Or, if you set up the home directory as H: or whatever, the user ends up looking for their H: drive from a native app.
WINE is unstable, even using the Crossover Office I bought to try to get my wife, the last holdout in my house, off of Windows.
PLEASE, Macromedia, don't use WINE to hack this together and please port the main application FIRST!!
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. - James Madison
The F4L project (at sourceforge) is already working on an open source alternative to Macromedia's monopoly. The GUI is already in place in version .01, and there are already libraries in the wild for editing .SWF files (based on information released by Macromedia), so it is only a matter of developer time before it is finished.
I run the F4L Documentation Project. You can chat about F4L at irc.freenode.net and #F4L
Center for Student Developed Education Policy
For what is, unfortunately, probably not the last time, OS X being UNIX has nothing whatsoever with how easy it is or isn'tto port a Mac program to Linux. Mac apps are written for (in this case) the Carbon API, which is a continuation of the Mac Classic API. It has no resemblance at all to any API available on any non-OSX UNIX platform. It is, in fact, probably more difficult to port a program from OS X than from Windows, because there is no WINE equivilent for Carbon, and the APIs of popular widgets sets are closer to Win32 than to Carbon.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
It can also generate SVG animation.
There are 2 kinds of people in this world: Those who write in decimal and those who don't
As good as this port might be for the user friendly desktop-oriented distributions, the reality is that Flash is a deeply dated, inferior technology when compared to the open standard SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics).
The old proprietary Flash standard is centered around a rendering scheme built through reverse Bezier curve transforms. This is fine for small, non-interactive banners with small frame counts, but in more complex applications it scales horribly and is incredibly inefficient on commodity hardware (ever notice how a huge, complex Flash applet will *completely* monopolize your machine until you manually kill it). Even worse, although it may be difficult to believe, internally the Flash format uses 16 bit INTEGER values exclusively! (Is Macromedia stuck in 1983?). It might have made sense in 1996 when Flash was first being developed, but today using a bit depth that's less than an architecture's default word length is devastating to cache coherency, not to mention that all the processors floating point functional units are left idle.
By contrast, SVG uses 128 bit variable-length pages, with a modern cubic spline rendering core (see last years SIGGRAPH proceedings for a great paper describing the rendering model). Best of all, it's free software with all the efficiency and security that it brings. If people would just get behind SVG instead of beating the dead horse that is Flash, we wouldn't have to deal with Macromedia's half-hearted "outreach" efforts.
Just say no to Flash!
As much of a "win" as this is for Linux, I really wonder what's in it for Macromedia. It's not as if flashy website developers won't have any windows and mac boxes around (if only to test what your sites look like on the platforms that determine the majority of your users' experiences); the people who are really into using these tools aren't likely to be the same people who are into compiling kernels and tweaking their mod_perl.. As some one else here noted; there's no photoshop for linux.
Of course, getting the MX tools working with Wine is a great step, and gives them instant cross-platormability, but I have a hunch things will stay at that level for a while..
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
No Doubt--having Dreamweaver tie into Apache/Postgre/MySql would send me running to CompUSSR to pick up a copy. Flash? I couldn't care less--.swf is one of the more evil file extensions out there.
Fireworks would be nice too--it's great for doing quick mockups of navbars, etc. Fireworks doesn't write the cleanest code ever, but when you can do a prototype navbar in about 10 minutes, who cares? Not I, at least.
OTOH, I doubt that the developers of NVU are terribly pleased. There will be those out there that are all about a free WSIWYG tool, but they're going to lose a lot of pro designers and others who could potentially contribute to its development. I'm going to keep my eye on Nvu, but until it's stable and will do 95% of what I ask of Dreamweaver, I'm still going to have keep that damn VMWare Win2000 install around.
Don't Panic!
Something that endless consume your processor speed (like a little movie) while you're reading a text or with a lot of tabs/windows open, it's definitly not the way I want to expend my processor time.
I think you may have some other problems, if you can't play a Flash movie without crushing your performance. As I type this, I have an 800x600 Flash movie playing, 5 other instances (and probably 15 tabs) of Firefox running, as well as an active connection to a busy MUD, AIM, etc....With no appreciable slowdown at all. And this is on a 4 year-old P3 667.
As others have said above me, the problem is not with Flash itself, but with how people use it. Yes, it can be used to make annoying ads and interfaces, but it can also be used to make some pretty damn neat things as well.
Great, Macromedia. Glad you are taking the cheap way out with WINE.
By the way. Where is Flash Player 7? Your last Linux release, 6.0 r79, is 12 months old now, and several sites now *require* Flash 7.
If they don't take Linux more seriously, they'll eventually see some SVG browser plugins pop up with similar (better) features, and better native Linux support.
You mean like the Flash Click To View plugin?
It turns all Flash animations into a little button - which loads and shows the flash animation only when you click on it.
instead of increasing the number of platforms that their products work on, adobe has been reducing it... premiere no longer works on mac (once considered THE platform for premiere) because of heavy reliance on the windows media format in the latest premiere version (can use wmv as a 'native' format for editing)... i doubt that adobe will clue into linux, we'll have to rely on hoping that the gimp folks will figure out how to make an interface that is comprehensible and we can get rid of photoshop once and for all
Gekido's Lair
Because anyone who looks at webstats knows that linux is not overtaking anything on the desktop, and certainly not Apple's share.
Your 'smart move' comment is also wrong for another reason.
The other critical difference between Mac users (the only other platform supported by most mainstream commercial developers) and Linux users, is that people who throw down all that extra cash to have a nice Mac instead of buying parts and putting together their own PC... ALSO PAY FOR SOFTWARE! Imagine that. Who the hell is going to move major apps to linux to sell to people who have never bought anything beyond Windows games? How many Linux users are gonna drop $1200 for Adobe's Creative Suite CS or Studio MX 2004?
Also recall that Macromedia has started DRMing MX 2004 apps.
Much to the dismay of many of my designer friends, the last few development cycles for Flash have been focused on Flash as an application platform. Just take a look at their recent initiatives, Flex, Central - they're targeting the developer community.
Sad to say, lately their efforts haven't been going so well. Most of the people who are Flash programmers right now don't need new interfaces for creating Flash content because they're already acclimated to the old interface, and many programmers who aren't already in the Flash community aren't getting turned on by these changes to the tools because they already have strong opinions that they aren't open to changing. ("Flash is good for Strongbad, but why should I care?")
So, how do they attract more developers? By going where the developers want to go, to Linux. It might seem obvious here on Slashdot, but this is real leadership in the market in which they operate - let's hope it starts a cascade that turns into a flood.
FYI i don't do websites as much as i do client/server apps - and in the past year, 3 of 6 projects i did used flash as UI. Given the alternatives - Tcl/tk, VB, java, [Insert Other clunky UI Toolkit] - flash rocks. i've no need for 3D animation zooms & video & overblown stuff - i'm a fan of unique, clean information design with enough aesthetic detail to make it more appealing to the user than traditional applications, which tend to somehow make user experience even less appealing than those using the magnifying glass monitor contraptions in Gilliam's 'Brazil'. So - in short - flash is not just a tool for crappy websites. it's a tool for slightly-less-crappy application UIs. and note, even though i DELIVERED 3 apps in LINUX - i still had to DEVELOP them in WINDOWS. so, i'm with #1, above - this is one more stunt that will let me ditch windows altogether. joy!
Dreamweaver MX is already listed as a bronze application in Codeweavers Compatibility center's list of win32 apps. That means it is able to perform some of its functions under either the latest wine or crossover office 2.1 Take a look, vote for it and/or pledge money to help make it work.
Anand Rangarajan anand@cise.ufl.edu
Wow, Flash MX on Linux, natively? I might actually have to buy software!
Now if we could only get a port of FrontPage... :)
How about a flash 7 plugin guys?
The reason they want their tools to work under Wine is simple. People will use them instead of code a replacement. Ming exists but isn't anywhere as easy to use as Flash. They're probably worried someone will make a Flash clone that will output swf and svg files and be OpenSource. That would kill their market for Flash.
The Flash plugin is a pretty good example. Its a version behind. It enough that most people aren't going to bother coding their own viewer but not exactly Macromedia's top priority.
Macromedia didn't to 'a direct port to Unix' in any fashion when moving Flash from the classic Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X.
Apple did the majority of the work by building a cleaned up version of the Mac APIs (Carbon) to run along side OpenStep (Cocoa). Both are so far above the BSD userland in OS X that there is no possible way to 'port' major OS X applications to Linux or any other Unix-like OS, even Darwin.
PLEASE stop asking to have Mac OS X apps ported to Linux "since both are Unix-variants." The only way to get commercial apps on Linux is using WINE or if Apple were to port Cocoa/OpenStep to the Linux kernel. Carbon wouldn't do much good, since it's tied to the Mac hardware. This won't happen though, sorry.
What you are thinking of is Mac OS X's ability to run most open source CLI software, and X11 apps. Since most of the value in Unix/open source software is based in server/utility/function code, most of it can be easily moved to OS X and given a graphic interface in Cocoa.
So Apple took the khtml engine to make Safari, but did their own interface. Safari can't be ported back to Unix/Linux as a graphic app, because its missing Cocoa/Carbon. All Apple can give back is code improvements to the khtml render engine.
Macromedia's use of WINE is analogous to their use of Apple's Carbon to port their existing legacy code to another platform with little effort. With Carbon, they produce a native OS X app that's integrated into the Mac's interface on every level. With WINE, they are simply making their Windows code run on top of Linux; it takes no advantage of Linux. In particular, it does not make it free.
The other critical difference is that with no effort to move their app to Linux, they have no investment to maintain and no commitment to selling a product. Which is fine, because Linux users don't buy commercial software (except for their Windows games).
It definitly won't choke any computer, but using 7% of my computer time, just because there's an ad playing (and I won't even look at it because it's in background), is not what I want when compiling some heavy program that will take hours.
Do you want some proves, here they are:
(measures made while idle, just watching top, specially mozilla-bin)
Mozilla with the Sun flash banner opened:
- active (i'm seeing the banner) 17-19% of processor use
- background (i'm not even seeing mozilla): 3-5% processor use (ok, that specifically isn't a heavy banner)
Mozilla with no flash:
- active (mozilla opened): 0.0%
- background: 0.0%
It may not be a lot for some, but for people which computer is always doing other stuff in background (aswell as their browser is always opened where you last stopped) or just waiting a java applet on the other window, it is.
These are facts, I'm not trolling.
I agree now that I shouldn't have used "sucks" (might be a strong word for some) but that's what I feel about it most of the time, and don't think my comment should be hidden for most of people ( tagged flamebait) just because of that.
I vaguely recall that, much like Real, Macromedia often 'hides' some of the Linux downloads where they are difficult to impossible to find.
I can see the link to the over-a-year-old Flash plugin for Mozilla 1.1 for Linux, but I don't see the fabled "standalone viewer" (which I know exists - I downloaded it to another machine last year), and I wonder if there isn't perhaps a 'beta' download directory or something hidden on Macromedia's site somewhere...
Anybody know of any such links?
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Yeah, I mean, christ, AcroRead6 even displays a freaking little ad button on the toolbar now. One time installing that POS taught me to only use version 5.1, conveniently available from the text-only download page.
I just don't get Flash. The only good thing about it is all the flash ads that I don't have to see<snip>
We're just starting to experiment with flash-based training for our software, and so far, we're incredibly pleased.
Of course, we aren't using anything from Macromedia, we're instead using Qarbon which allows you to turn a screen-shot into a flash animation with reasonable bandwidth requirements and amazing pizazz...
We posted a "Viewlet" to our website, and got a sale that paid for it within just a few days! We bought the software, and had our first sample video in 20 minutes, including install time.
Incredible.
And, the reviews we're getting from trainees is just wonderfully positive.
I encourage you to try the link above; you'll be amazed.
Oh, and I'm not affiliated in any way with Qarbon...
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Flash is smooth, it allows you to do a lot of fancy stuff, like annoying ads and badly designed web sites, but say sweet good bye to your CPU. What I mean by that is anytime I visit a page with flash I see a 10-20% increase in CPU usage per embeded flash. In some cases I have had my CPU usage at 80% until I closed all web page with flash in it. For this reason I ask Macromedia to please be considerate with my CPU. Maybe we need an option to be able to do a 'nice' on plug-ins?
If it makes a difference, my browser is Mozilla. If you want an example of CPU usage and Flash visit http://movies.yahoo.com/oscars/
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
1) Take a reasonably useful product.
2) Add bloat and adverts.
3) Loss!
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Something like three years it was absolutely clear with *everyone* in the professional IT field that Linux/OSS would take off and soar. It went just as generally predicted, only did I lose a bet that Macromedia would have ported at least one app from the dreamteam to Linux within 2 years.
And here is why they're to late for me to collect my dinner out:
During the dot-bomb Flash was everybodys darling. There was no way you could design a solid site with predictable Layout behaviour without using flash. CSS was so crappy everyone just plain ignored it after playing with it for 2 hours. If you wanted a webdoc that was more than just a string of characters you had to use flash.
Then came the bomb, the web grew up within 6 months flat, Flash was to crappy for solid client side apps and the remaining pros switched to functional sites, also ditching Dreamweavers template engine for the bazillion OSS CMSes popping up left right and center. In the mean time IE and Netscape 6.1/Mozilla finally fullfilled the promise CSS had been making for 5 years. That all together weighed in on MM. Flash lost big chunks of it's significance on a monthly basis.
Nowadays Sites are cool and don't need no flash whatsoever.
But here's a really interessting thing: I happend to work on a Rich Media Framework in Flash MX 2004 Pro. After 2.5 years ignoring it I was in pretty fast again. (Sidenote: Customer and Partners agreed to GPL it once the bills are payed!) I actually had to install Windows to do it. While the IDE still has the typical super-crappy anoying macromedia glitches and quirks in it, ActionScript 2 has become a full range PL. ECMA compliance, error handling, a stack of oreilly books for it and all. Rolling an XML controlled industry leading E-Learn-Player and Webpresentation framework was a piece of cake and took me and a guy I work with no more than 8 weeks. On top of that, Macromedia is getting a drift before anybody else in the app vendor field: Their newest product 'breeze', doesn't come in a box anymore. They sell it as a service!
I presume that they saw income going down after the bomb and hushed and listend to the experts. I think there is a strong developers team with them that is seriously fed up with the crappy underlyings in their products (just like many of the professional customers) and that they have gotten a chance to call the shots. Not only is MM doing some very smart moves as a corp. right now, but a Flash MX 2k5 Pro for Linux would bring me right back onto their list. MM has had a steady revenue stream through nice packaging. Now that that doesn't work anymore, they're doing the next step. If I were to bet a fistfull of stockshares on a closed source software vendor, they'd be my first choice.
Linux/OSS is rolling and there ain't no stopping it. And now that MM isn't everybody darling anymore they have to shape up and comply.
All good news indeed.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Not quite per-site blocking, but Flash Click to View for Mozilla may be of interest to you.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
Q: Are there any tools that will let me fill in forms in pdf?
Yes, acroread. But it provides output only via printing. When run on a pdf with a form to fill in acroread reports the following : "To save form data you need to have Adobe Acrobat or Acrobat Approval. This form can be completed and printed from Reader; however to save the data you need one of the viewers noted above."
However, it is fairly easy to partially circumvent the above and direct PS to a file instead of the printer. Then you'll have the completed form in PS format. PS can then be easily be converted to PDF using ps2pdf. This doesn't let you edit the form later, you would need to start over in acroread. (Unless the edits required are small, then editing the Postscript file before creating the PDF file is quite possible as Postscript is just another text file).
Speaking as a software developer whose package runs under Windows (because that's where the money is) but sees that platform collapsing into an entropic mess in the not too distant future, I'm interested in ways towards liberation.
If (judging by the comments on this story) adapting your product to WINE and then doing a native port isn't a viable strategy, what is?
There are a lot of vendors like us out there and a little bit of guidance could result in a flood of Linux products.
hold the shift key while acrobat loads. it will start up in 1 or 2 seconds then, because it doesnt load the plugin this way.
IAAL
Maybe it's time to trade up the Altair? ;-)
- traskjd
My blog [.net, rants, general IT]
Simply hit Ctrl-Meta-Shift-X-U-G, then Meta-Shift-Q-Shift-P-77, then type gvaomp-txt
... since everyone knows that's what emacs stands for anyway.
Don't worry, it becomes quite natural after a while.
I find it much more intuitive to remap it to Escape-Meta-Alt-Control-Shift
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
I used to use ColdFusion back when there was a good Linux server for it. I also used to code with HomeSite and/or ColdFusion Studio through WINE when I was coding for ColdFusion. When Macromedia bought Allaire, that all went to hell. Their next Linux server was for ColdFusion MX and it was a horrible product. Completely unreliable and completely rewritten to be a Java plugin to a plugin to Apache, rather than the native Apache module as it had been. Further, the CF community wouldn't hear from Macromedia for months at a time while they promised patches and updates galore.
Meanwhile, we returned our copy of ColdFusion MX Server, which wasn't that hard since the support staff was used to taking those calls. We stuck with the older CF server and are almost done porting to PHP. Further, eventually, I discovered Quanta and so no longer care about using HomeSite/CF Studio under WINE.
Obviously, our new setup doesn't take well to Flash, but that's for designers more than developers like us, so I don't feel a loss. We've found the free software world's equivalent and we've found it's better, cheaper, and far more reliable.
From the sound of it, they're going to do like Corel did and make WINE-compatible programs, but as I recall Corel actually had to package an entire WINE distribution with their software to make it work reliably - not exactly efficient. We'll see, but it's going to be awhile before I trust Macromedia to do anything good with Linux for a bit.
-N
I've nothing to say here...
That's the first I hear about somebody actually trying to be wine compliant. Asking for wine compliant products in markets in which producing separate windows and linux versions is not an economically sound option would be an excellent path to linux acceptance. Electronic train schedules and such stuff would be a good niche to focus on. "Runs on Windows 95, 98, 2000, XP and Wine."
Dirk van Deun
There are however a _lot_ of patents for converting from colourspace to CMYK, a fair number of which are held by Adobe.
Pantone is primarily a spot colour standard (they provide a swatch book which shows what a given colour will look like on coated or uncoated stock), w/ a library of swatches for use on a display to approximate that. They also have a CMYK - equivalency list which shows which Pantone colours can be approximated by CMYK. And they've since branched out to offering a list of RGB swatches which allow one to pick an RGB colour which (in theory, on a colour callibrated monitor) will match a range of official Pantone libraries. These libraries are protected by trademark and copyright, and the methods used to get at the derivatives by patent.
That said, the big problem is that there's no way to do an ink representation in GIMP --- a generalized method of doing this would get one CMYK ``for free'', and allow one to do spot colour monotones, duotones, tritones &c. Possibly even Hexachrome (printing w/ six colours for an extend colour range). There's a British company (Cerilica) w/ a wonderfully cool system for this, Truism --- I _really_ wish Macromedia had listened when I suggested they license that tech.
I've a list of books in my bibliography on my web page which cover this sort of thing (ob. discl. I'm an Amazon Associate). Check out _Four Colors / One Image_ and _Duotones, Tritones and Quadtones_ for specifics.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
I think you'vew all managed to go off on a big tangent..again.
I work with games, and increaingly, we're seeing Macromedia flash being used in kids/ed. games.
I believe its a growing market,
so if joe bloggs is scared that by using Linux, his kids will miss out on education possibilities etc. he's mistaken.
If this works out the way it should, Linux could eventaually compete with M$ on the most difficult level - a serious alternative gaming environment...
Good news.
macromedias current linux support is quite bad, you only get flash player 6 on i386 (and this is even "unsupported" by macromedia), nothing for ppc (i asked macromedia many times to release a ppc version) and other architectures. interesting to see there is something going on at macromedia, but i consider this to be marketing as log as the real thing isnt out.
There are a lot of people on /. poo-pooing this initiative. Its simply absurd. I have my issues with Flash , and Dreamweaver too, just like everybody else.
But for heavens sake this is great news and I support it whole heartedly. Consider this, suppose this initiative was a success, and we have industry standard applications running, on the linux desktop , Flash, Fireworks, Dreamweaver, Homesite and so forth? There are a lot of New Media shops out there who are going to benefit immensely from avoiding the Microsoft OS tax. The repercussions of this are immense.
Just quit moaning and support Macromedia for taking Linux more seriously. Regardless of issues with the software or how its put to use. Macromedia are doing a good thing period!
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Dude, there are plenty of badly designed websites out there written in HTML. Do we denounce HTML as a bad standard too?
Sheesh!
Drill baby drill - on Mars
it's gonna be a long long time. Do you ever hear a knock at the door? DO YOU? I say... A KNOCK AT THE DOOR. Do you ever think when you herar this knock on the door.. that maybe... just maybe these bastards are porting their shit to linux? NO, YOU DON'T.