Re: Frame Linux what to do??

["Lee Richardson" <lhr@xxxxxxxxx>]

In an effort to avoid a stream of these emails over the next week, I'm going to respond to this private email publicly.

At 7:24 PM -0800 11/29/00, A Framer wrote:
>What large investment to port to Linux?
>
>Take the same source code.  Compile on a Linux box with a standard compiler.
>Done.  It would require only the will to do so. 

That's a nice fantasy, but isn't the reality. It took several months to make all changes necessary to get the core FrameMaker application to run correctly under Linux. There were issues with printing, fonts, and differences in glibc. Most Unix workstations live on a network, many Linux workstations do not, leading to licensing issues because of missing services.

As an detailed example of one issue discovered during development, most Unix video is 8bit or 24bit, most Linux installations are using cheap PC video cards running 16bit video; turns out FM didn't have code to draw graphics to a 16bit screen because it hadn't needed it before (FM6 now does).

An important part of releasing any large product, including FrameMaker and all other Adobe apps, is testing the product and features on all pertinent platforms. There are enough variations between RedHat, Suse, and the others, and dot releases of them all, to require extensive, ongoing compatibility testing on all of them and bug fixing (or release notes) as necessary.

We also didn't invest much time in figuring out how CJK was going to work, what input methods were available, or the level to which CJK locales are supported in different Linux releases.

Linux is NOT Unix. It mostly looks and feels like it, but there are enough subtle and not-so-subtle differences to make it a platform family unto itself.

...Lee


: Lee Richardson       : mailto:lhr@adobe.com : +1 408.536.6412     :
: Engr Mgr, FrameMaker : Adobe Systems, Inc   : +1 408.537.5113 fax :

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