[cw-discuss] Photoshop CS[23]?

[Hetz Ben Hamo]

Hi Ben,

Allow me to say few things:

> 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.

Adobe's record with Linux (prior to aquiring Macromedia, at least) is
pretty poor. Their latest PDF reader (for example) got a GTK UI after
so many years using the MOTIF crap, but even with their latest reader,
it has tons of problems on today's distributions (CentOS 4/RHEL-4,
SuSE 10 in my case): starting from simply not running, and few issues
with their Firefox plugins. Sure, they can be fixed quite easily if
you google the error, but such a big company not trully supporting
their own PDF reader is a bad sign IMHO.

> 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.

Good luck with that :) - there are actually TONS of stuff inside
photoshop (for example) that they are not allowed to publish, most of
it belong to 3rd party who don't give a damn about Linux.

> 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.

Guess who sponsored the work of making PS 7 work on cxoffice? a film
studio. Are they trying to "get cheap" on XP licenses? hardly. There
are various reasons why people as well as studios are willing to run
PS CS2/3 under Linux (OS support issues, "floating" licenses [simple X
forwarding to use Mike's PS on Chris's machine, for example], easier
integration with other 3D apps who runs nativly on the Artists's Linux
machine, e.g. Maya etc.., as well as other reasons).

> 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.

Thanks,
Hetz

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