Frame's future @ Mac/UNIX

[Dov Isaacs]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Paul Findon
> Sent: Thursday, March 01, 2007 9:13 AM
> To: Frame Users; Free Framers List; Steve Rickaby
> Subject: Re: Frame's future @ Mac/UNIX
> 
> Steve Rickaby wrote:
> 
> > >"Although MacOS X has UNIX underpinnings, the difficult
> > >stuff relating to user interfaces, font access, output,
> > >etc. is all exclusive to MacOS X"
> > >
> > >In other words, the difficult stuff has all been dealt with for  
> > GoLive, Illustrator, InDesign, etc. etc. So Adobe employs people  
> > who know how to get a document to print on a Mac, even under the  
> > formidably taxing OSX. It just chose not to put them to 
> work on FM,  
> > because there was little demand for its previous, non-OSX, new- 
> > feature-thin FM upgrades. Terrific.
> >
> > There may be other factors at work here. To create universal  
> > binaries that will work on OS X across MacIntel and PowerPC  
> > platforms, Adobe has to migrate their code base to XCode, 
> the Apple  
> > development system. That process is, as I understand it, 
> well under  
> > way for the CS 2 applications.
> >
> > However, FrameMaker has a much older code base, so the effort to  
> > migrate it to XCode would be proportionately greater. For all I  
> > know, some parts of FrameMaker might be coded in Assembler for  
> > speed. If this is the case, moving such code to a multi-platform  
> > production base such as XCode would be all the more complex, and  
> > might involve a major re-coding effort. All this ups cost and  
> > reduces margins.
> 
> Who's side are you on, Steve ;-)
> 
> In the early '90s, I made many a manual with Adobe FrameMaker 
> 3.0 for  
> NeXTSTEP.
> 
> Hang on. Aren't NeXTSTEP and Mac OS X both built on BSD?
> 
> Hang on. Aren't NeXTSTEP and Mac OS X both built on the Mach kernel?
> 
> Hang on. Aren't NeXTSTEP and Mac OS X both object-orientated  
> environments?
> 
> Hang on. Don't NeXTSTEP and Mac OS X both support Objective-C?
> 
> Hang on. NeXTSTEP used Display PostScript, Mac OS X uses PDF. Isn't  
> PDF based on PostScript?
> 
> Hang on. Don't NeXTSTEP and Mac OS X both support Type 1 fonts?
> 
> Hang on. Weren't NeXTSTEP app developers some of the first to port  
> their apps to Mac OS X?
> 
> How difficult could it be?
> 
> Paul


It is quite difficult because the "similarities"
you describe are totally irrelevant to the situation
at hand.

	- Dov