<Amy Blankenship> Hey Marc
<Marc Lee> Hello
<Amy Blankenship> Usually takes a bit for people to trickle in
<Amy Blankenship> BRB
<Marc Lee> BRB!!?! - you'll have to forgive my ignorance of chat terminology
<Amy Blankenship> Be right back ;-)
[Sat Oct 05 10:09:58 CDT 2002] Steve Howard: Lord and Master of all I see before me
<Marc Lee> Hello, Steve
<Amy Blankenship> Wow...that's some profile
<Steve Howard> Hey Marc, Amy
<Steve Howard> Thank you :D
<Marc Lee> Steve, aren't you in England? What time is it there?
<Steve Howard> I am - 4PM
<Amy Blankenship> I just realized I have not changed the chat page itself
<Amy Blankenship> wonder if people are trying to come here, then thinking they got the date wrong somehow
<Marc Lee> It was pretty well announced on the forum
<Amy Blankenship> It's a Murphy's law thing
[Sat Oct 05 10:12:16 CDT 2002] Michael R. Mizen has no profile.
<Amy Blankenship> Hi, Mike...
<Michael R. Mizen> good morning, afternoon/evening!
<Marc Lee> Hello, Mike
<Amy Blankenship> So far, we have you two experts, me in total ignorance, and Steve
<Michael R. Mizen> hello mark and Steve
[Sat Oct 05 10:13:34 CDT 2002] Steve Howard: Still Lord and Master of all I see before me
<Marc Lee> Amy, I should make the point that Mike was the one who helped me when I was struggling with my 1st x-platform
<Amy Blankenship> Hopefully we get some more ignorant people, or this will be a really short chat ;-)
<Amy Blankenship> I know Jamil is awake, because I already got an e.mail from him
<Michael R. Mizen> I appreciate the opportunity. Hopefully it will flesh out who is interested and thus help Jamil either make or break the case for future versions
<Amy Blankenship> Mike is the Mac's biggest advocate, if you don't count Joe Frances
<Amy Blankenship> Francis
<Amy Blankenship> He's just plain big
[Sat Oct 05 10:15:32 CDT 2002] Steve Howard: Lord and Master of all I see before me - aside from Amy's chat room
<Marc Lee> Mike - do you still use the Mac for a lot of things - non-AW things?
<Steve Howard> Yahooo - it let me in this time
<Amy Blankenship> welcome back, oh master
<Steve Howard> :D Thank you my dear ;-)
<Michael R. Mizen> yes-I've used Acrobat to publish books and CD's- I do some video editing but that is a new area
<Michael R. Mizen> the tools in OSX are very compelling. I got my first taste of Premier version 1 and it was too complicated then. It is simplified now
<Amy Blankenship> I haven't had my hands on a Mac since OS 8
<Marc Lee> Someone told me that the Mac specs are on the box for the new AW release; may mean the 6.5 Mac player is coming sooner than later...
<Michael R. Mizen> Also for the record Office has been a well behaved application. Most of my clients are PC based and exchanging documents in Word, Excel, PowerPoint has been very easy
<Amy Blankenship> Rumor has it very soon
<Steve Howard> Jamil already said on the List that the Mac player is not ready "yet"
<Steve Howard> this is the first time in a while he has admitted it even existed publicly before released
<Amy Blankenship> I am pretty disappointed...We have been getting so many questions on the ng and list about cross platform delivery, and now no one is here
<Steve Howard> Well -we are :D
<Marc Lee> Mike, one client has asked me about OSX support from the Mac Player. Do you know anything about that?
<Michael R. Mizen> but it is a double edged sword. Right now that Player has to serve two different operating systems-classic Mac which has been around since version 1 and OSX which is Berkely Software Distribute (BSD) Unix
<Amy Blankenship> Yes, but Marc and Mike don't need it
<Amy Blankenship> and you and I don't do X-platform
<Amy Blankenship> Let me post a reminder...
<Marc Lee> So, Mike, bottom line, will a PKG file built on the current Mac packager run on an OSX box?
<Michael R. Mizen> I've got an application that I sent to Tom Neubold-Huber that reads and writes a text file. It will blow up but not consistently. I thought it was the Unix versus Mac syntax (// vs. : as delimiter) but Tom does not think so.
<Marc Lee> Ouch!
<Michael R. Mizen> An application will run but if there is I/O then I am not confident that it will be stable.
<Amy Blankenship> Mike: do they do all their beta testing on the Mac packaging in house, or do they have folks like you help ;-)?
<Steve Howard> I am surprised that MM has not pursued this more vigorously ... I hear rumors form a number of places that they are planning to drop OS9 support
<Michael R. Mizen> For a long view strategy Apple is moving its base very quickly to OSX. In January it is expected to be announced that all units from the factory will boot OSX period.
<Amy Blankenship> But aren't most people doing Mac packaging delivering to the educational markets?
<Marc Lee> What does Tom think the I/O problem is then, if not file system syntax?
<Michael R. Mizen> Yes all OS9 development was halted at 9.2.2 and the team is being folded into the OSX dev team. There will be the "classic" emulation built into the OS but all of the major apps short of Quark are now native.
<Amy Blankenship> New equipment budgets there can be notoriously tight
<Steve Howard> yeah - but I was also meaning I hear MM is planning to drop OS 9 support
<Michael R. Mizen> Tom has some debugging tools that can watch what is going on. He explained it once to me but I could not follow what the problem means or how it is to be fixed
<Amy Blankenship> Quark? That's the only Mac only tool worth using....wonder why they have not ported it to OSX
<Michael R. Mizen> Quark is the company you love to hate. They are arrogant and their support is poor. However they have a major foot hold in printing/publishing.
<Marc Lee> Amy's absolutely right about Mac and the ed. market. My Mac client is an educational publisher. Macs are 30% of their market
<Amy Blankenship> About how many people do you think are using AW now that are doing Mac delivery?
<Michael R. Mizen> Quark has announced an OSX application (6 I believe) but they are way behind development. Last week it was reported that Apple was lending them engineers to get the port to work. Hopefully a demo version previewed in January at MacWorld
<Steve Howard> All I ever heard about Mac development was "very small numbers"
<Michael R. Mizen> Mark and I maybe Dick Silbar(sp?) at Whistlestop
<Steve Howard> but since MM won't tell us the figures it is hard to judge
<Amy Blankenship> There have been a lot of people asking questions about it
<Amy Blankenship> I know Grace does Mac delivery sometimes
<Marc Lee> Quark is here in Denver - Mike's basically right - they've gutted their engrg group
<Michael R. Mizen> The issue to me is where will Apple, the company be in 2 years. I think they will be a company with a tightly integrated OS/Hardware that runs Unix. You all know Unix versus Microsoft. That will be the game
<Amy Blankenship> Marc...ewww
<Steve Howard> In all the time I have worked with Authorware I have only once been asked to build something that would be delivered to Mac ... and the client insisted that they handled the Mac side
<Michael R. Mizen> MM is the other issue. Where will they be in 2 years. They have tools that work on either platform, play on either platform expect for AWARE.
<Michael R. Mizen> The question is why? And there are a boat load of reasons which to me are all speculation.
<Marc Lee> Mike- I still have trouble - as an old Unix guy from another life - seeing the synergy between Unix and the Mac universe
<Amy Blankenship> I think maybe extensibility
<Amy Blankenship> They have only a few engineers
<Steve Howard> Mike, aside from Mac delivery coz we don't know - it seems clear Macromedia are taking renewed interest in Authorware
<Michael R. Mizen> There is no synergy. OSX is Unix not an Apple OS layered on Unix
<Amy Blankenship> and the engineers who write the u32s and such are way more familiar with win API than how to duplicate it in the Mac
<Michael R. Mizen> I know MM has a new interest. I also know of Bob Tartar as of a few weeks ago. I also remember Christian has been gone since last fall
<Steve Howard> Amy you are right - the main creator of extended functionality for Authorware seems to be Stefan, and all he puts together is Windows only
<Marc Lee> But, Mike, why have they chosen this basically network oriented OS for a primarily graphics and media-oriented marketplace?
<Michael R. Mizen> there has been "auto pilot" on AWARE within MM but now we seem to have a voice speaking to management
<Amy Blankenship> MM would have to throw enough resources at the team for them to either hire or train some Mac experts
<Amy Blankenship> Marc...I know when we had Macs at the newspaper, the network was VERY important
<Michael R. Mizen> Because we all talk to each other like this. There is no place for proprietary systems. Take the standards, make them easy and the Mac users will love the abilities to move information
<Steve Howard> Marc I think they did that because they want a bigger market share, and they are NOT going to get into bed with Windows
<Steve Howard> Mac OS prior to 10 was a pain to network was it not???
<Michael R. Mizen> I think it is Unix versus Microsoft. Who will get scalability, durability, etc. Unix/Sun/others have some history and Microsoft is stubborn enough to keep trying to get it right.
<Amy Blankenship> BRB...
<Michael R. Mizen> Network in Pre OSX was AppleTalk and that works Apples to Apples and poorly with Windows although there was a good Novell client and NT had file services if the admins would go the extra step and install the feature.
<Steve Howard> Well it is hard to argue that MS got it wrong since they have the lion's share of the market.
<Marc Lee> It's hard for me to see Jobs basically casting his fate in with Scott McNealy and company
<Steve Howard> Win2000 supports Appletalk natively
<Michael R. Mizen> but what about all the patches, loopholes, etc. I think XP is a great improvement but I'm sitting in fear right now with 13 patches racked up for my system
<Steve Howard> Marc I think he must have decided to pick the best of a bad bunch ;-)
<Steve Howard> Mike take a look at Unix/Linux. They have just as many patches and updates. None of them are perfect
<Michael R. Mizen> Jobs is not tying into Sun but Apple is tying into Unix with an interface many can use yet terminal mode for any command line maneuvers you can think of.
<Steve Howard> I'd be more worried if I had NO updates
<Marc Lee> Mike, I understand, but this anti-MSoft cabal is being cheer-led by McNealy
<Michael R. Mizen> But it seems the security breeches are more prevalent. I think that is the criticism Microsoft is trying to respond to. They are stubborn enough to get it right but "trustworthy computing" is better implemented in Unix. The banks and financial markets see this.
<Steve Howard> the real difficulty facing us - Authorware developers - is that Authorware is a small niche market. MM commit few resources to it. Mac is a small niche market of a small niche market. If that changes, then I am sure MM will get the chequebook out
<Amy Blankenship> the problem is, Mike, in balancing security with usability
<Steve Howard> The security breaches are more prevalent because there is a spiteful minority determined to poke pointy sticks at the biggest targets
<Amy Blankenship> It's no good locking up all the information if no one (even the people that should have it) can get to it
<Steve Howard> where is the fun writing virii for BeOS? Nobody would ever know!
<Michael R. Mizen> Back to the bigger picture. The world is being delivered in a browser. OS's are marginalized. I need tools that play anywhere, anytime, anyhow. No one cares otherwise(my hypothesis).
<Steve Howard> That is why all the world is in lust with Flash today
<Marc Lee> Steve, exactly what I was thinking
<Steve Howard> Which bit Marc?
<Michael R. Mizen> With units starting at $500 and broadband at $45/month users are not as passionate at what it is being used to work but that it works.
<Marc Lee> Steve, I meant The Flash player being pretty good against all the browser flavors
<Amy Blankenship> Mike...you are right about that
<Michael R. Mizen> Because of this I think the "cross-platform" word is a safety net on RFQ's so a product manager does not have to point out "exceptions" to his product.
<Steve Howard> That's true Mike .. but so long as the TOOLS people use are OS specific, there are problems. Delivery is a whole other issue. But remember, most users do not spend their whole time browsing
<Amy Blankenship> Steve...But more and more for TRAINING the move is to the web
<Steve Howard> Yes
<Steve Howard> but that does not, in itself, have any effect on market share
<Michael R. Mizen> I think the word "browser" means content of any kind in a IE, Netscape, Opera window.
<Marc Lee> Mike, in the educational market there's a real need for Mac (30%) its not just a 'safety net'
<Steve Howard> the tools that people use daily have a greater effect on market share
<Steve Howard> and whilst the de facto tools remain Office Pro and IE....
<Amy Blankenship> I wonder if the impetus shouldn't be getting those educational market folx to switch to windows ;-)
<Steve Howard> .. of course things are changing - they always will. And Apple are looking to Unix to level the playing field. I think it was a wise move
<Michael R. Mizen> But there is an inflection point. We could use tools to drive share but now there are more "common" folk that will owe/have access to the Internet and they do not care
<Steve Howard> they do if they make a choice based on what tools they plan to use
<Steve Howard> otherwise Macs would already have 90% of the market share on the back of the gorgeous Cube :D
<Michael R. Mizen> Until Windows gets easier to use (and it has been getting there) teachers find Mac's easier to implement.
<Marc Lee> Amy- on training moving to the web. I also see a counter to that - corporate IT types being afraid to put heavy media for training on their nets
<Steve Howard> You don't think teachers find Macs easier because Apple give them the machines cheap?
<Steve Howard> .. bearing in mind that all this talk of Macs having a huge market share in education is only true in the US.
<Michael R. Mizen> no. Educational pricing is not an incentive. The cost of ownership which includes daily implementation is important. School Boards see this and it is not unit price but upkeep.
<Amy Blankenship> Marc: we've had to web deliver some of the training just because our IT types can't push the other media
<Marc Lee> Steve's right - they got the Macs years ago and they're still there. You'd be shocked at the number of Apple II's out there!!
<Amy Blankenship> Steve: Unfortunately the machines everyone else buys are about 50% more expensive than a comparable windows machine
[Sat Oct 05 10:50:08 CDT 2002] Chris Swenson has no profile.
<Amy Blankenship> Hi Chris
<Amy Blankenship> welcome :)
<Chris Swenson> hi
<Chris Swenson> Small group
<Steve Howard> once compatibility issues can be completely ironed out, then people can buy with hearts not heads ... so Mike, what you say about standards is right ... but it has already been done
<Marc Lee> Amy-pls explain - the IT types can
<Steve Howard> Hey Chris
<Amy Blankenship> Looks like the people asking Mac packaging questions on the list and NG went away satisfied
<Steve Howard> Amy : yes the Macs are more expensive to by from the high street
<Marc Lee> Amy-pls explain- the IT types can't push the other media so training must go to the web???
<Amy Blankenship> Marc: we've had some training that was supposed to be pushed to the machines with the software it was intended to train on
<Amy Blankenship> they could not get it pushed out so it just sat there, undelivered
<Steve Howard> via the network?
<Amy Blankenship> Steve: yes
<Michael R. Mizen> not necessarily; Take a PC and add the features and software to do digital video editing, sound, picture editing, etc. I think you will get to a $1500-1800 price point.
<Amy Blankenship> Mike: last time I bought a Mac I had to buy and install all those thing anyway
<Steve Howard> Most home owners do none of that. Plus XP means if they want to they can without buying any add-ons
<Amy Blankenship> are you telling me they now come with Illustrator and Premiere installed on Mac's?
<Michael R. Mizen> In fact the editor of e-Media did this and came up with the #. It was in the Sept issue
<Chris Swenson> imovie ipicture, etc.
<Chris Swenson> good software
<Steve Howard> Is eMedia a Mac magazine? ;-)
<Amy Blankenship> I think this ME computer has some basic image and video editing stuff on it...I've never used it, though
<Amy Blankenship> How many home users actually do video editing?
<Michael R. Mizen> OSX comes with iphoto (picture database with editing features, iMovie (mini premiere), iDVD, Acrobat reader, the ability to save any file as a pdf, mail, now ichat, calendar and syncing with Palm
<Michael R. Mizen> for the simplicity of imove, many many many more.
<Amy Blankenship> FW is pretty durned cheap, and it is absolutely the best graphics tool I've ever seen
<Michael R. Mizen> e media is a general news mag. I'll send you the link.
<Amy Blankenship> Would be nice not to need distiller on PC's...
<Steve Howard> I honestly don't think that matters. Seems to me that the public agree. People continue to buy PCs because they can use the same tools they use at work on it
<Steve Howard> Thanks Mike :-D
<Marc Lee> Amy- what is FW?
<Steve Howard> Star Office should have helped .. was there ever a Star Office for Mac?
<Amy Blankenship> Sorry...fireworks
<Chris Swenson> Steve, they are working on it.
<Michael R. Mizen> In 2002 there is not "can't do that because..." Microsoft, Adobe, and MM have taken care to allow files to move in either direction.
<Steve Howard> Cool :D That will address MOST of the computability issues that are against the Mac
<Amy Blankenship> The promise of the old Power Macs is that they were supposed to be able to run PC software
<Michael R. Mizen> Star Office theoretically could work since it is Unix based. I'd have to research this.
<Chris Swenson> MS Office for the Mac is a far better product then it is on windows, MS uses the Mac to test new features on.
<Amy Blankenship> If they had fulfilled that promise, there would be no need for this chat
<Chris Swenson> Sun has a group working on it.
<Steve Howard> which essentially are ... "how can I use MS Word on it?"
<Michael R. Mizen> PPC can run Virtual PC.
<Amy Blankenship> Mike...the Mac I bought was supposed to be able to just run Windows software
<Michael R. Mizen> There is a Virtual PC for OSX but the rumors are it is slow. They need to write a pure native application.
<Amy Blankenship> no virtual PC, no nothing
<Chris Swenson> Amy no
<Amy Blankenship> It was supposed to just work
<Steve Howard> I have a real distaste of using an ONE os AND EMULATING ANOTHER IN IT. why BOTHER ?
<Chris Swenson> That was never a feature
<Steve Howard> OOPS
<Steve Howard> Shouting, sorry
<Michael R. Mizen> With either a card installed (circa 1994-I had that. Or with Virtual PC ($100) and your own copy of Win 95,98,200,NT.
<Amy Blankenship> Yes it was...the docs said that if there is no Mac version of the software already, it should run on the Power PC
<Chris Swenson> Amy send me the docs
<Amy Blankenship> Chris: I gave that computer to my parents
<Amy Blankenship> they may still have it somewhere
<Chris Swenson> I had a Mac for years, I never recall seeing that
<Amy Blankenship> But the point is, if that was true, then AW training packages should have just worked with no Mac packaging necessary
<Amy Blankenship> Chris: I read everything in the box, and then some
<Michael R. Mizen> There was a time where porting Windows to a PPC chip was discussed. But it was long ago. The only way to get Windows on a Mac was a PPC equipped with either a add in card (1994) or Virtual PC
<Chris Swenson> Amy the PowerPC RISC chip has never contained an x86 instruction set. Apple worked on a product code named star trek that would of ...but it was never released
<Michael R. Mizen> I think there was a card from Orange Micro out of Ca.
<Amy Blankenship> I'm just telling you what claims were made for the machine I bought
<Chris Swenson> Orange Micro did have a PC on a card around 1996 or so, it ran about 1000 bucks
<Michael R. Mizen> I had the Apple product-Nubus card on a 6100/100 (first version of PPC)
<Amy Blankenship> And, to be honest, the machine did run some PC software with no problem
<Amy Blankenship> I never tried it with an AW program
<Michael R. Mizen> Ran slow but you could do good testing
<Chris Swenson> Amy did you have the add on card?
<Amy Blankenship> Nope
<Amy Blankenship> Just a straight Power PC Circa 1995
<Amy Blankenship> Don't remember the model
<Chris Swenson> which would be around the time of the 6100/100
<Chris Swenson> which contained a Pentium 100
<Amy Blankenship> I think that's pretty close to the model
<Michael R. Mizen> Probably was the 6100 because there was a special package that offered the Nubus Card, copy of Windows 95 and some extra memory.
<Amy Blankenship> Sorry...Power Mac, not PC ;)
<Amy Blankenship> Well, it did not have extra memory...that is for sure
<Amy Blankenship> I think it came with 8 or maybe 16 Mb RAM
<Chris Swenson> Nubus was apple's ISA like card slot, they released the 6100 with an optional PC on a card which had it's own chip and memory
<Michael R. Mizen> memory was on the card about 32MB I think.
<Amy Blankenship> No, because I upgraded to 40 MB with a 32 MB upgrade
<Steve Howard> 32Mb sounds like an AWFUL lot for 1995
<Amy Blankenship> I remember how proud I was of that
<Steve Howard> :D
<Amy Blankenship> But I only paid about $1500 for the whole system
<Chris Swenson> You probably upgraded the Mac's memory to forty. The PC card had it's own I believe
<Michael R. Mizen> It was a hoot to have an apple monitor with a windows interface. I've done this with Virtual PC on a laptop while flying. Gets a few stares and chuckles.
<Steve Howard> I always thought you were a sick man Mike :-D
<Amy Blankenship> I think the glowing apples on their laptops are hilarious
<Amy Blankenship> I mean, sure you have a Mac, but to ADVERTISE it? ;-)
<Steve Howard> well it helps keep the battery life down ;-)
<Michael R. Mizen> it is the nature of the culture. The user base is as passionate as the AWARE list as witnessed in the last TAAC
<Steve Howard> yup
<Amy Blankenship> The first time I put my hands on a PC, I kissed my Mac goodbye in my heart ;-)
<Steve Howard> LOL
<Michael R. Mizen> switching gears because Chris is here. Can rtf support be moved to the Mac player?
<Steve Howard> we don't need to hear about your love life thanks Amy ;-)
<Chris Swenson> Not in it's current form
<Michael R. Mizen> Does that mean "taking apart" the player big time?
<Chris Swenson> There is some basic RTF support built into windows, I believe Stefan has tapped into that.
<Amy Blankenship> Don't Macs have rtf support?
<Chris Swenson> Yes but it's different the the MS implementation
<Amy Blankenship> Hey, Chris, any word on whether they'll do something to make Xtras easier to make?
<Chris Swenson> DelphiXtras.com pretty darn easy
<Michael R. Mizen> Here is my point. RTF is "text for the 21st century" Quicktime supports wav and avi. Rich text seems the last frontier.
<Chris Swenson> course those won't run on the Mac....
<Steve Howard> I wonder if that is true. Why bother with RTF text with HTML there already a standard across all platforms
<Amy Blankenship> Chris...Isn't that the whole reason for making an Xtra rather than a u32 ;-)
<Chris Swenson> There is no reason somebody couldn't build a Mac Xtra to so it could use RTF on the Mac.
<Chris Swenson> Amy - well no
<Amy Blankenship> Which comes back to the idea of supporting native HTML in display icons
<Chris Swenson> There are a lot of reasons to build Xtras
<Chris Swenson> =+)
<Amy Blankenship> Chris: the word I have heard is that Xtras are really tough to make compared to u32
<Steve Howard> Yes Amy - but without using a Windows control to do it ;-)
<Michael R. Mizen> As an aside in OSX TextEdit (formerly Simple text) writes rtf files and supports Tabs.
<Steve Howard> (I don't mean WinControl!)
<Chris Swenson> Yes, Delphi makes it simpler but the there is no Mac compiler for Delphi like there is for Visual C++
<Amy Blankenship> Well get on it ;-) :-D
<Chris Swenson> umm yeah that's way over my head
<Steve Howard> <smack>
<Marc Lee> Mike, can you explain the problem with tabs and SimpleText. My friend is running into that problem with a client of his.
<Amy Blankenship> When you're 30, then
<Chris Swenson> It is pretty simple to write XCMDS on the Mac though
<Michael R. Mizen> SimpleText has no feature for using tabs it just prints
<Michael R. Mizen> There was a thread about Tabs/Mac last week. The only way around it is to have an application other than simpletext open the file to print
<Amy Blankenship> OK, the only question I have from Jamil about what people want in a Mac packager is this:
<Marc Lee> Mike, I'll have to check it out? What that thread on the AWARE listserv?
<Amy Blankenship> If you could get native OSX support, but it meant that you had to give ups support for < OS9, would it be worth it?
<Chris Swenson> yes
<Michael R. Mizen> Not for the next two years
<Marc Lee> Amy, for Jamil, it would NOT be worth it - there are too many old machines out there!
<Amy Blankenship> It might convince me to look at a Mac
<Amy Blankenship> So, it would not be worth it to say "if you want OS9, develop in AW 6, but if you want OSX, develop in AW 7"?
<Chris Swenson> apple is going to drop Os 9 I'd prefer to see work being done on the OSX player.
<Amy Blankenship> So, it would not be worth it to say "if you want OS9, develop in AW 6, but if you want OSX, develop in AW 7"?
<Chris Swenson> apple is going to drop OS 9 I'd prefer to see work being done on the OSX player.
<Chris Swenson> In fact soon the new machines wont even boot os9
<Marc Lee> Amy-It would be a partial solution, but that would mean we'd have to develop two versions - one for the older Macs and one for OSX
<Michael R. Mizen> I agree with Chris but OS9 will be around in "emulation" within OSX. Whatever current player exists needs to be happy in that space
<Steve Howard> Exactly ... but the point here is also that if there is OSX support, isn't it just a whisker away from UNIX/Linux too?
<Chris Swenson> Steve, maybe maybe not
<Michael R. Mizen> Maybe no so. The current Adobe Acrobat Reader is a simple application in OSX but it also is used in OS9. One player two systems.
<Chris Swenson> Apple has built it's display technology on top of display postscript which is leagues different then say Troll Tech's QT software which is what the majority of *nix us
<Chris Swenson> use
<Michael R. Mizen> Mike's mantra for all time. OSX is Unix; with a GUI for many but terminal mode for those interested.
<Chris Swenson> OSX is mostly Unix
<Amy Blankenship> So, a player for terminal mode ;-)
<Chris Swenson> if you are only using the terminal then yes it's posix unix and if it compiles for BSD and Gcc then it should work in OSX...if your messing with the shell then it's a different story
<Amy Blankenship> All this is way over my head
<Amy Blankenship> It must hurt to be a boy genius...all that information coming out your ears
<Michael R. Mizen> `OSX-current version-jaguar is FreeBSD 4.4-gcc 3.1for developer tools
<Chris Swenson> =+)
<Chris Swenson> Yeah I'd seen that
<Chris Swenson> gcc is a great compiler
<Steve Howard> so does that make it possible or impossible? :p
<Amy Blankenship> A little bird happend to chirp at me
<Steve Howard> what did it say?
<Chris Swenson> Steve anything is possible...but it will take time
<Amy Blankenship> and I think it said "the Mac packager and player should be available around the end of next week, barring unforeseen circumstances"
<Chris Swenson> That's good to hear
<Amy Blankenship> "nothing official..."
<Michael R. Mizen> And while I think of it the sharing panel sets up windows users and auto seeks windows servers via a component called Rendezvous
<Marc Lee> Awesome
<Steve Howard> OK, put it another way ... if MM decided to recreate a Mac authoring environment for AW, would it be possible to build a single version that is Mac, Linux/Unix compatible?
<Chris Swenson> Steve should be. There may have to be separate libraries for rendering but yeah should be.
<Michael R. Mizen> Based on the above and my novice understanding of tools I think yes.
<Steve Howard> OK ... then if they do support OSX it would be logical to go that extra mile :D
<Chris Swenson> It may have to be compiled on the target OS
<Chris Swenson> Steve...again maybe
<Steve Howard> Amy that is great news .. er ... for those other guys :-D
<Michael R. Mizen> That is where the money will be but not in a quarter or two quarters.
<Chris Swenson> I don't know what's all inside of the players. Each function that is on the PC has to be mapped to a Mac call. If they don't
<Chris Swenson> exist then the function has to be made
<Chris Swenson> it would be the same thing on Linux
<Steve Howard> :D It just makes sense to me .. that effectively doubles the possible penetration and blows out the "what cross platform " arguments
<Steve Howard> Since UNIX/Linux/OSX are all cousins there would not be a complete rewrite for each compatibility mode
<Chris Swenson> Except that you get into this Xtra doesn't work on NetBSD or hey I can't run a KO on the Mac (one of the big reasons I believe AW for Mac was canceled)
<Amy Blankenship> the bird suggests that there are no plans to extend the authoring environment beyond Win
<Marc Lee> Amy-I'm still wondering with that 6.5 mac packager will it still be OS 9x and down - no OSX anytime soon?
<Steve Howard> Hmmm ... well when they throw enough developers onto a tool like Flash or Dir 8.5 .. it can certainly be done if they want to ;-D
<Chris Swenson> No carbon based packager anytime soon
<Amy Blankenship> Marc...that I don't know
<Michael R. Mizen> MM stock is in the tank and they think (I believe) in quarters rather than years. They need revenue streams so that is wind against the sail
<Amy Blankenship> Well, guys, sorry we did not get more people out to take advantage of your expertise
<Amy Blankenship> I know at least 2x as much about Mac packaging as I did before, though
<Amy Blankenship> :-D
<Michael R. Mizen> Bandage approach. Get the Mac player to work I/O, support avi or QT or wave or aif and sneak some implementation of rtf (Xtra or whatever) and hold for a better day in the future to build a Carbon-based player (i.e. OSX native player)
<Michael R. Mizen> so that any Mac application launches the classic mode and behaves
<Amy Blankenship> I don't want to keep you guys too late.
<Amy Blankenship> Thank you VERY much for coming out
<Michael R. Mizen> have a great weekend everyone
<Amy Blankenship> I'll be sending the log to Jamil
<Marc Lee> Amy...Mac-PC xplatform is an interesting subject, but not one most people think about unless they're in some deep doo-doo and need help
<Amy Blankenship> Yes...I scheduled the chat because I saw a lot of deep doo-do posts in the past few weeks
<Steve Howard> :D Yes and it is of minority interest
<Marc Lee> nice talking to everyone, VERY enlightening
<Amy Blankenship> Have a good day, all
<Steve Howard> Yeah :D Catch you soon Marc
<Marc Lee> bye
<Chris Swenson> bye
<Steve Howard> Ever got the feeling Amy is pushing you out the door?
<Marc Lee> and, thanks for putting this up, Amy!
<Amy Blankenship> No, I'm not
<Amy Blankenship> but I know people have things to do with their Saturdays
<Marc Lee> bye, Steve
<Amy Blankenship> The log will be posted after the player is officially announced
<Steve Howard> See ya Marc
<Steve Howard> Ah :D
[Sat Oct 05 11:38:02 CDT 2002] Johann Fouche: jfouche@jfmultimedia.co.za
<Amy Blankenship> Hi...everyone is leaving now ;-)
<Marc Lee> Chris, haven't met you before-nice chatting with one so knowledgeable
<Steve Howard> Hey Johann
<Johann Fouche> Hi all - everybody leaving and I am just joining?
<Chris Swenson> Take care Marc
<Marc Lee> JF, yeah, we've been on for 1.5 hours
<Amy Blankenship> Sorry...small crowd. Did not seem much call to stay long
[Sat Oct 05 11:41:18 CDT 2002] Chris Swenson has no profile.
<Marc Lee> JF, did you have an actual Mac-PC xplatform question....otherwise, I've got to scoot.
<Johann Fouche> No - Linux related!
<Steve Howard> Linux? What?
<Chris Swenson> ask away
<Steve Howard> Ah well - seems like he decided it was a bad idea
<Chris Swenson> I guess he didn't want to ask
<Amy Blankenship> Oh, well...
<Amy Blankenship> I'm out
<Steve Howard> too shy
<Amy Blankenship> you guys have a good afternoon
<Steve Howard> OK ... me too
<Marc Lee> OK, thanks again, Amy
<Chris Swenson> could be...Ok taco bell is calling.
<Steve Howard> See ya
<Chris Swenson> later
<Steve Howard> :D
<Steve Howard> LOL
<Amy Blankenship> Thank you Marc
<Chris Swenson> thanks Marc
<Amy Blankenship> Glad you were able to come