OSNews on the LinuxWorld Exhibition Floor 166
Expo writes "OSNews reports on the second day of the LinuxWorld Expo. Highlights of the article is CodeWeaver's CrossOver Photoshop effort and the fact that OpenOffice.org is collaborating with _all_ the other major Linux office suites and word processors towards the creation of a new, open XML-based, file format. NewsForge also has a report."
Set the standards babe! (Score:3, Interesting)
If GNU/linux/Open Source can be a part in setting the standards instead of just following them it would be awesome. Then linux could be the developers platform that set the industry instead of just playing tag along with windows.
To get backing for this it needs support from all other than Microsoft to be able to pressure them into supporting it. A web standard for documents would be nice instead of plain txt or vendor locked Microsoft and Adobe format. Adobe has its place too but its not a real standard, and its not free.
Re:I really don't get the big deal. (Score:5, Interesting)
You hit it on the head. XML is a way of thinking.
Would you rather go to your boss and say, "Let's take a look at replacing MS Office with Open Office. They've started using a standard file format, so multiple vendors applications can read and interact with those files without any issues. This standard is available for Microsoft to implement also."
OR
"Let's take a look at replacing MS Office with Open Office. They've started using an XML-compliant file format, so multiple vendors applications can read and interact with those files without any issues. This standard is available for Microsoft to implement also, who is not yet using XML."
The Boss's brain stops at 'XML', and says "I know that word, everybody is moving in that direction*".
*all the guys on the golf course are talking about it - so they must already be using it.
Greate company (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:This is why linux is doomed to FAIL (Score:1, Interesting)
Industry standard Microsoft Word? Tell that to my mom who has problems opening up her Word documents from other people who use word. Its not even compatible with itself. This toy OS you speak of is about as industry standard as your are going to get. It is molded for compatibility around a 30 year old operating system. Try that with Windows, that kept breaking programs through each release, from Windows 286, 3.0, 3.11, 95, 98, NT, 2000, XP. Old unix programs never die, they just run on newer hardware.
Re:Microsoft Presence... (Score:2, Interesting)
You don't consider them running their free online mail service [hotmail.com] on FreeBSD for years "taking *nix seriously"? ;-)
Re:New format? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes,
First you discuss,
Then you form a standards group,
then you make the standard.
Other than being "Captain Obvious", the AC is correct. You need to get all of the cats into the same corral before you can herd them along.
At least they're attacking the root problem - a useable, patent free, open standard document format, rather than a de facto standard format that's closed, proprietary and difficult to reverse engineer.
Soko
Re:Photoshop on Linux is a good thing (Score:2, Interesting)
CMYK is a color model that only works on absorption media
(such as pigment on paper). On a luminous medium (such
as a CRT), things fundamentally don't (and can't) work that
way. As good as Photoshop is, speaking of its having "support
for CMYK" is marketroidese. All this means is that it can
convert from RGB formats (which *must* be used on your CRT
computer screen) to formats intended for printing. The
conversion is necessarily lossy, because ink on paper cannot
represent all of the same colours that the computer screen
can (and vice versa). Unless you're using phosphorescent
paint and viewing it under a blacklight, or some trick along
those lines, you can't represent the brightness of the sky
(for example) on paper. Similarly, your CRT can never show
a truly _flat_ (as in nonglossy, nonluminous) color.
You can throw buzzwords like "CMYK" at this all day long, but
an image will NEVER look the same on paper (no, not even on
glossy paper, although that's closer) as it does on a CRT
monitor, and that's a problem Photoshop can't solve.
LCDs (at their current level of tech) are even worse, because
they show colors inconsistently. Perhaps some future technology
will allow computers to display both luminous and flat colors on
the same display...
While we're on the subject of Photoshop, I agree that Photoshop
on Linux is a good thing. Photoshop is very entrenched in the
publishing community, and for good reason; it's quality stuff.
It also has a pricetag to match, so I surely hope Gimp continues
to develop (as it has been doing great so far), for those of us
with less expansive budgets. Photoshop may be (and probably is)
better, but my take on the matter is that Gimp is _comparable_,
which is a tremendous achievement. (I have a friend who does
graphics work for a living; he works at Eisenbraun's, a publisher
specialising particularly in ancient near-east stuff. He works
with Photoshop a lot. He'd been trying out Gimp, and was in
some ways (not all ways, but some) impressed with it, and had
noted that it had some really nice features Photoshop 6 did not
have. (He didn't specify which features.) Then he got the new
Photoshop, and they had it, he said, "in spades"). That says
to me that the two programs are in roughly the same league, a
huge accomplishment. But people who already know Photoshop and
have the budget for it will want to stick with it, rather than
learn Gimp which, although it's free, is not substantially
_better_ than Photoshop (at least, not at this time), surely
not better enough to justify a non-programmer to switch.
To me, Photoshop on Linux is a great thing, because it's
cross-platform technology, one more step toward separating
the decision of what OS to use from the decision of what
other software to use -- and THAT is a VERY good thing.