Considering that Microsoft couldn't seem to port Internet Explorer to OS X, it must be insurmountable.
Scott At 5:12 PM +0000 3/1/07, Paul Findon wrote: >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 ><http://www.fm4osx.org/>
