[cw-discuss] Photoshop CS[23]?

[Ben Galliart]

Photoshop more functional than free software??  I tried the command line of PS and it did nothing that ImageMagick does.  To make things worse, the UI is a bloated mess in comparison to libgd's API! 

... that was a joke (kind of).  :) 

I don't think CodeWeavers needs to be convinced that support PS is important.  Please read the CW "Truth in Advertising" gaurantee.  I don't know of any other company that will give you a license they have no technical way of retracting and then still offer a full refund.  Anyone ever get something like that from Adobe?? 

The company that needs convincing is Adobe.  There are things that Adobe could do to make could make it easier to support.  However, most of the efforts to get Adobe support has been in the form of demanding Linux native binaries for their favorite distribution and package manager format.  Part of this seems to be based on the myth that if binary code has a ELF header put in front of it then it naturally becomes faster, better and more stable than anything in WinPE format. 

If Adobe could provide a full list of the Win32/Win64 OS API calls and services that need to be supported then it would provide a better way to judge how much additional effort is needed to support the application.  Even better is if Adobe was willing to release a version of PS specifically for CX that avoids ever calling hard to implement API calls.  But regardless, just being able to run PS itself will not be enough for the efforts.  For those that need a guarantee that every third-party PS plug-in will work as-is, either certifying plugins will need to become CW full time job or those PS power users are going to have to be left unhappy. 

You make a clear statement to Adobe when you say that "the second machine will clearly be staying put on my desk for a while yet!"  What you are saying in business terms is that Adobe has no incentive to being part of the solution to running on CX or Linux because they will get payed by you regardless. 

Given this issue isn't important enough to you to put any pressure on Adobe to be part of the solution and the fact you seem to expect nothing less than support for the latest version of PS shortly after it is released, I personally think CW's time could be better spent elsewhere.  Anyone willing to shell out $650 or more is probably more than happy to pay for Windows as well (if they haven't already).  And people that crack PS instead of paying provide even less incentive for Adobe to help them run it on CX. 

I predict there will be more people that would be willing to buy CX based on it supporting iTunes 7 or Windows Media Player 10 or 11 in the future than the number of PS CS3 users looking to run their expensive application in an configuration that Adobe provides no official support for. 

The other thing you can do is get more involved in the user mailing lists of the graphical applications available for GNU/Linux.  Realistic ToDo lists and product comparisons will help give developers a better idea of what their users expect of them.  Once free software projects start cutting into Adobe's bottom line, they will take trying to please that user base that much more seriously. 

>>> Derek Fountain <derekfountain at yahoo.co.uk> 05/10/07 2:02 PM >>>

> >> Given the importance of 
> >> Photoshop to many people, and the fact there's nothing like it in the 
> >> free software world, 

> Um, no, really, there's nothing like Photoshop in the free software
> world. You might be able to do most of the lower-end things that
> Photoshop is capable of using free software tools, but there's no
> integrated system that comes anywhere near it. 

> Ah well, the second machine will clearly be staying put on my desk for a
> while yet! 
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