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Adobe Unveils Open Source Library

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the catching-up-to-the-little-old-gimp dept.

anamexis writes "Adobe premiered (no pun intended) opensource.adobe.com recently. The first two libraries available, titled Adam and Eve, respectively, take on complex GUI issues in applications. They are written in C++ and have been released under the MIT License, an OSI-Approved Open Source License."

24 of 406 comments (clear)

  1. Acrobat Reader by jamesshuang · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If only they'd fix Acrobat Reader for linux...

    1. Re:Acrobat Reader by dsginter · · Score: 2, Interesting

      If only they'd fix Acrobat Reader for linux...

      We don't want Adobe Reader on Linux. For that matter, we don't want it on any platform.

      Adobe, like a page from the Evil Corporation book, has taken it upon themselves to cash in on the success of Acrobat Reader. Currently, if you're a Windows Joe User who wants to download it, you'll wind up with all sorts of stuff. You'll get the Adobe Download Manager, the Yahoo Toolbar, Adobe Photoshop SE, and some mysterious Adobe Internet Printing that just appears in the start menu. Didja ever wonder why SO MANY people have the Yahoo toolbar even though they don't use Yahoo?

      This is bullshit. While I realize that, in an ideal world, everyone would uncheck the little checkboxes and opt out of it but this isn't an ideal world. Adobe needs to be punished.

      If some programming hero wanted to step up, it wouldn't be hard to knock a few hundred million dollars off of the value of Adobe's stock. Here's how:

      1) Create free, open-source PDF writer and reader with none of the typical Evil attributes.
      2) Distribute.

      Adobe derives a significant amount of their revenue from their Acrobat Writer product. Most people simply want to create PDF files so they buy it. The company that I work for has thousands of licenses because they just want simple PDF creation functions. This is mind-boggling. They use none of the advanced features.

      While we can all create PDFs in OpenOffice for free, I think that a set of PDF tools would devastate Adobe. This needs to happen if only for the simple fact that they've crossed the line.

      PLEASE!?

      --
      More
    2. Re:Acrobat Reader by PoprocksCk · · Score: 5, Interesting

      You're right, it is less bloated. But the point is that they're still using some ugly, closed-source GUI library, and that they fully neglected Linux users for one whole major version.

      Sure, they announced a 'beta' of version 7 for Linux, but has anyone ever *seen* it? They cancelled the public beta after a few days. So it's not so much that the product is a poor one (version 5.0.10 is pretty decent, really) but that they see Linux as a tier-2, unimportant platform. I truly hope that that changes in the near future as Adobe begins to embrace OSS.

    3. Re:Acrobat Reader by ColdWetDog · · Score: 2, Interesting
      While I just love bashing Adobe (their support is non existent for Photoshop, their documentation worse), I'm not sure that your statement:

      "Even with their flagship, Photoshop, Mac versions have sometimes lagged behind, or been missing features of the windows release."

      Is correct. Most of the real Photoshop CS manuals (third party) use the Mac version. It's awfully common to come across a phrase like "we do it this way on the Mac with this cute little shortcut, but you can't do it on Windows" and no "windows only features".

      Not sure about any of thier other products though. I sure do hate thier "activation" feature on Windows... Doesn't work reliably with firewalls or antivirus programs (you're supposed to turn them off... in Windows... right...). If I leave Photoshop CS on my laptop running whilst hooked to the net, an hour later it complains that the "activation configuration license is missing. Please uninstall and reinstall the applicaton".

      Of course I will. I have lots of time to do that. Well, I could use all of the wasted hours reading slashdot to do that but it's lots more fun to complain.

      I would love a credible competitor to Photoshop. It is a great program but Adobe as a company is awfully annoying. And lets not get started with GIMP, it's Photoshop 3, maybe 4 at best. I check it from time to time and it's improving, but not there by any means.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    4. Re:Acrobat Reader by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting
      Even with their flagship, Photoshop, Mac versions have sometimes lagged behind, or been missing features of the windows release. It is all just symptomatic of a company that has bought into Windows development, and only supports other platforms when there is just too much money coming in.

      This describes their management, not their products. I recently contracted some Photoshop (CS) plugins and discovered that Windows is a seriously second class citizen there. The Windows SDK has major issues (features that don't work or aren't supported); the metadata resource that describes a plugin can only realistically be created on Mac, then converted for Windows using a command line tool they supply (unfortunately making it much harder to crossdevelop on Mac: iShell still had the same limitation last time I looked.))

      Whatever was behind Adobe's well-publicized falling out with Apple a few years back, it mainly affected their boardroom parasites and only filtered down into the products indirectly (the PHB's probably don't know what PS does, but they can cut resources, etc.)

  2. The GIMP by justforaday · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Not being familiar with the MIT License (too lazy to RTFL), just wondering what use these libraries could be to projects like the GIMP.

    --
    I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
    1. Re:The GIMP by Homology · · Score: 5, Interesting
      Too Lazy? It's one of the shortest licenses known to man:

      The OpenBSD license is even shorter :

      Below is an example license to be used for new code in OpenBSD,
      modeled after the ISC license.

      It is important to specify the year of the copyright. Additional years
      should be separated by a comma, e.g.
      Copyright (c) 2003, 2004

      If you add extra text to the body of the license, be careful not to
      add further restrictions.

      /*
      * Copyright (c) CCYY YOUR NAME HERE <user@your.dom.ain>
      *
      * Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any
      * purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above
      * copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.
      *
      * THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES
      * WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
      * MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR
      * ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES
      * WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN
      * ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF
      * OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.
      */
    2. Re:The GIMP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Nonsense. This is the MIT license, it is 100% compatible with the GPL, and the Free Software Foundation certify this if you take ten seconds to look it up on their list of which licenses are and aren't compatible.

      The "obnoxious advertising clause", which is indeed incompatible with the GPL, is the one which requires you to mention the creator of the library in any advertising material related to your work. That is part of the original BSD license, but it is not included in the MIT license that Adobe have adopted.

      Adobe have got something right. They have released free software that is truly Free in the RMS sense of the word, and released it under a GPL-compatible license. There is no possible way they can exploit this act for evil ends!
      Let's give them some fucking credit for once, okay?

    3. Re:The GIMP by molnarcs · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Some folks misundertand parts of the reason some developers use the BSD licence: it is not just more altruistic or something, it can be more practical. I remember an outburst from an mplayer developer saying that he sees no point in the gpl, for they have no means to prevent misuse anyway. Also, once you use the GPL, you have to keep on eye on violations, you have to keep vigilant, otherwise, what's the point of using it? So, some devs think that they don't want to be concerned with possible violations, they don't recurrent themes of whether or not it is okay to write binary only drivers for the kernel because of the GPL, and so on. They want to program and that's it. This might be the spirit some refer to as "academic".

      Some developers go farther than this, and think that even the two clause BSD licence is too much legalese. Hence, code written by Poul-Henning Kamp is distributed under the beerware licence :))) (hence my reply to your post) - this is how it look like:

      * "THE BEER-WARE LICENSE" (Revision 42):
      * phkATFreeBSD.ORG wrote this file. As long as you retain this notice you
      * can do whatever you want with this stuff. If we meet some day, and you think
      * this stuff is worth it, you can buy me a beer in return Poul-Henning Kamp
      */</blockquote>
      Whether or not you agree one agrees with him (I understand the point and usefulness of the GPL very well btw) - one has to admit that sometimes this kinda licence might give more freedom not only to the user, but to the developer(s) as well in the sense that a 3rd party vendor writing a binary driver or piece of code won't cause a shitstorm on the BSD kernel mailing list (as Brandybuck put it in one of his posts:))))
    4. Re:The GIMP by pavon · · Score: 2, Interesting


      This is not a free license, or indeed a copyright license at all. Licenses can only grant the users rights which they did not already have. They cannot require service in exchange for the license - that requires a contract. Suggest modifying license to request a beer, not demand one.
      </anal> :)

  3. Nothing to see here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I was expecting some amazing graphics library but it is just a bunch of fairly trivial C++ templates. Nothing Boost cannot already do.

  4. That's cool... by PoprocksCk · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...But please, release something worthwhile under an open source license, like the backend stuff for Acrobat or something...

    And for the love of God, release Reader 7.0 for Linux, and do it soon!

  5. FWIW... by PoprocksCk · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...Searching for "Linux" using the site-only Google search on the opensource.adobe.com website, yields one result: http://opensource.adobe.com/pipermail/pythonphotos hop/2004-January.txt

    And that one result no longer exists (you get a 404 when trying to access it). So if any of you folks are preparing to post "Oh boy, that means Photoshop for Linux is just around the corner!" -- you'd better think again.

  6. Where are the previous open source projects? by SimHacker · · Score: 4, Interesting
    For several years, Adobe used to have several other open source projects on their old web site, that have now been removed from their current web site, http://www.opensource.adobe.com. The missing projects include:

    Simulated Partial Specialization for non-compliant C++ compilers. Allows a user to obtain many of the benefits of partial specialization of C++ templates without direct compiler support.

    Python action plug-in for Adobe Photoshop. Allows a user to write Photoshop action plug-ins using Python. Has Python interfaces to all the actions APIs.

    Python plug-in for Adobe Illustrator. An Illustrator plug-in adapter that allows users to access the C level API from Python

    Python plug-in for Adobe After Effects. An After Effects plug-in that allows users to access the C level API from Python.

    Python module for Perforce SCM. A C coded Python module that provides access to all the calls in the Perforce source code management system SDK.

    -Don

    --
    Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
  7. Help me out... by BlueThunderArmy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    For the less code-literate among us, what exactly do these files do? Adobe's site doesn't make it clear at all, so R'ing TFL doesn't help...

    1. Re:Help me out... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      What does Eve do? I can answer that as i've used it myself. It's a component of an application framework.

      Eve is a UI layout engine. Eve's input is a text file that contains a platform neutral expression of User Interface. It's output is a dialog platform resource on whatever platform you are using.

      Eve is used to layout many modal and non modal dialogs in various Adobe applications.

      Eve aids with UI design, tweaks, revisions, localization.

      Read the "Introduction to Adam and Eve" and you will see.

      http://opensource.adobe.com/group__asl__overview.h tml#asl_overview_intro_to_adam_and_eve

  8. Sounds like an ambitious undertaking by TeeJS · · Score: 5, Interesting
    From the article: (referring to Adam) "The code providing this functionality accounts for a third of Adobe's code base and nearly half of the bugs found during development."

    combined with: "The Eve layout engine has already saved Adobe millions of dollars in localization costs."

    Means this contibution (mainly UI work based on Boost) is a very decent contibution.

    --
    T.J. Schmitz - the man, the myth, the legend - o
  9. Adobe ported Photoshop to Sun years ago by SimHacker · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I still have my original copy of Photoshop 2.5 for Sun Sparcstation (from around 1993, registration number PUW250S7100427-380), which uses the ever-popular Flex license manager.

    Adobe used the Quorum Latitude Macintosh application porting libraries to port Photoshop to Unix and X-Windows.

    The result of using a complex Mac emulation library that mapped quirky Mac toolbox calls onto the byzantine X-Windows graphics model and shoddy Motif/X Toolkit API was an absolutely horrible, ugly, buggy, unusable version of Photoshop. I could quickly cause it to core dump with three clicks of the magnifying glass tool.

    Here is a case study of porting Adobe Photoshop to Windows and Unix. It describes some of the reasons Adobe decided to use the Macapp emulation approach for Unix, instead of properly rewriting their code to be platform independent.

    Quorum had been around for a while. When I started porting SimCity to Unix in 1991, I evaluated Quarum Latitude, and decided that it was not worth using because my goal was to make a better version of SimCity than the one that ran on the Mac, not a crippled one. For example, I implemented multi-player support via multiple X11 connections to different servers at once, which would have been impossible if the program though it was running on a Macintosh.

    -Don

    --
    Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
    1. Re:Adobe ported Photoshop to Sun years ago by Leo+McGarry · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Actually, Photoshop on IRIX was spectacular. It worked exactly like Photoshop on the Mac, and was very, very stable. And far from being ugly, it looked precisely like the Mac version. As opposed to every other Motif program, all of which were physically painful to behold.

      Maybe the Sun version was different.

      The only problem was it was more expensive and ran slower than the Mac version, and it only ran on computers that cost tens of thousands of dollars. It just didn't make any sense from a commercial standpoint.

  10. Adobe is starting to worry about GIMP by melted · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Once GIMP people implement 48bit color and color management, they'll have a potential to take away a large portion of Adobe clientele - web designers and photographers (i.e. people in no way related to prepress and CMYK). When two products have equal capabilities in relation to your tasks, but one is $650 and one is free, the choice becomes really simple.

    Right now GIMP is not yet there, but this doesn't mean it'll never be.

  11. The Book of Photoshop 1:1-4 by adamfranco · · Score: 2, Interesting

    From the modules description...

    "In the beginning the programmer created the language and the code. And the code was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the screen of the computer. And the programmer moved upon the keyboard of the computer. And the programmer said, let there be Photoshop: and there was Photoshop. And the programmer saw Photoshop, that it was good: and the programmer divided the Command Parameter Modeling Code from the Underlying Framework." - The Book of Photoshop 1:1-4

    After reading the full module overview I must say that this looks pretty nice. Note that releasing Adam and Eve won't let every program just take over Photoshop's look and feel (thank god!). You still need to provide all of your own widgets, all of your own event generation code, all your own application back end, as well as write the event handling and layout descriptions. The advantage of this system though, is that the event handling is described cleaning in Adam Expression language which can parsed to execute in any environment. Likewise, the layout can be simplified by describing it in an environment-neutral way that can then be bound to Adam values.

    It doesn't seem revolutionary, but it is a nicely worked out evolution in interface building.

    --
    "When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind." -- Bill Moyers
  12. Dynamic languages make this unnecessary by SewersOfRivendell · · Score: 1, Interesting
    I have a great deal of respect for Sean Parent; he's contributed good things to projects I've worked on in the past. However --

    I can't believe these guys are spending all that effort to, in the end, not come up with something better than Mac OS X's AppKit framework (the UI portion of Cocoa).

    They're stuck in a static-language, C++ mindset, and so they're designing this huge bloated 'organic' monstrosity of a UI engine, all to avoid the 'inefficiency' of a dynamic language like Objective-C (or Ruby, or Python, for chrissake).

    If this is the best they can do, Adobe is dead if only some well-funded competitor wants to come along and stick the fork in.

    But then, I think the Boost folks are similarly misguided. Everything they do would be unnecessary in Objective-C, Ruby, or Python, or, if they really want to continue to write in an inscrutable language, just use some obscure Lisp dialect. Boost would then be unnecessary.

  13. professionals by guet · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Actually, I'd say the quality of Adobe products has declined over the last few years - they've reached that stage where they try to milk the current line for as long as possible, while adding more and more mis-features rather than listening to their customers and splitting out features into different products. Quark in its time was also an innovate company, and look what happened to them...

    Personally I find the Photoshop CS menu bar over-crowded, and the Layer Style dialog byzantine (quite apart from the fact it takes an age to open). Double clicking on stuff in the layers palette is also a bit hit and miss - click on the text and you get to edit the layer name, just off the text and it opens the layers dialog. They are suffering a little from featuritis. Compared to The GIMP of course, it's a dream to use.

    The File menu in Illustrator CS on OS X now includes the gem 'Save for Microsoft Office' which isn't in the Export menu where it belongs but at the top level - a sure sign that the marketing department has taken over, quite apart from that Online Services... stuff and the recent emphasis on copy protection.

    I don't agree that there will be no competition to them - Apple for one have the incentive and resources to create a competitor if Adobe continues their slide towards windows. Already the CS suite are pretty slow on anything but the high end hardware under OS X, because they obviously haven't optimised for UI performance on OS X. A competitor doesn't have to produce a category killer all at once; they can start small and cheap, and build up, as Adobe did with InDesign when competing with Quark. In fact on OS X 10.4, with core image, it wouldn't be too hard to produce a competing product to Photoshop Elements, and build from there.

    Having said that, yes Adobe will dominate the professional market for years to come, due to inertia if nothing else - I'm still stuck working in quark under classic for quite a few design clients, who would love to switch to InDesign but haven't yet for legacy/cost reasons : )

  14. Re:An on-topic post by cheesybagel · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Sounds interesting. But that is mostly a problem for something like Windows Common Controls which demand pixel acurate coordinates and sizes. You can easily make an app in, for example, GTK+ 2.0 which has none of those problems. The containers and widgets automagically adjust in size and placement or dimensions are relative. Most GNOME apps, for example, are localized and use a single set of UI code.