On Mon, Apr 18, 2005 at 08:25:58AM -0300, bulia byak wrote:
http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/invrelations/adobeandmacromedia.html
"Through the combination of our powerful development, authoring and collaboration tools – and the complementary functionality of PDF and Flash – we have the opportunity to drive an industry-defining technology platform that delivers compelling, rich content and applications across a wide range of devices and operating systems."
The FAQ mentions merging FlashPlayer and "the Adobe Reader". This suggests a future of people distributing proprietary files where today they would distribute quasi-proprietary pdf.
"Is the combined company committed to Flash as a development platform? Yes. Macromedia has made tremendous progress in attracting developers to Flash, and the Flash platform will be a key component of the combined company's strategy going forward.
"How does this affect Ado be's support of SVG (scalable vector graphics)? Both Adobe and Macromedia have been involved in defining SVG and both were part of the W3C working group that defined SVG. The combined company will continue to work with customers and partners to define a future roadmap for our products."
There is a noticeable absence of commitment to future support for SVG in that answer, contrasting with their stated commitment to Flash.
I think it's good news for us. There will be people scared or disgusted by the forming monopoly and looking for alternatives.
Let's hope so. My reading so far is that Adobe is moving away from open standards and towards proprietary formats. Even in pdf, later versions of the format aren't documented.
Also, it seems likely that Freehand will be either discontinued or at least downplayed so as to not hurt Illustrator,
It isn't clear to me that Illustrator will be the outright winner: Freehand does have certain features/properties that the new Adobe will want, such as integration with Flash, and is more suitable for desktop-publishing tasks (as appropriate for authoring typical pdf files).
This may result in a combined product and a steep upgrade price.
(However, note that I've used neither Illustrator nor Freehand, nor for that matter any Adobe/Macromedia/Aldus product to my knowledge (other than a few minutes with PageMaker a few years ago).)
which means a lot of users will have to migrate. All this gives us a certain opportunity.
We can emphasize the importance of open standards.
Our http://www.inkscape.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?MacromediaFreehand page is currently empty but for a couple of links.
pjrm.