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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."

10 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 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.

  2. 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!

  3. 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.

  4. 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.
    */
  5. 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
  6. 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
  7. 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
  8. 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:))))
  9. 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 : )