Next big app(s) to try?

[L. Rahyen]

On Sunday February 17 2008 09:15:24 Dan Kegel wrote:
> Now that Adobe Photoshop CS2 is running kind of
> well (there are bugs that need fixing, but I'm trying
> to look ahead a bit), what big app(s) are worth focusing on next?
>
> Using http://wiki.winehq.org/LinuxApplicatonRequestSurvey,
> skipping Photoshop (which we should continue to fix up)
> and the ones that are either too hard, have native versions,
> or are probably something Codeweavers might already be
> doing, and adding in good old Framemaker (so close to working
> we might want to go for it just for the goodwill from all
> those tech writers),  I think that leaves about seven big
> ticket apps, in rough order of popularity:
>
> http://wiki.winehq.org/AdobeDreamweaver
> iTunes
> http://wiki.winehq.org/AdobeIllustrator
> http://wiki.winehq.org/AdobeFlash
> http://wiki.winehq.org/AdobePremiere
> http://wiki.winehq.org/AdobeAcrobatPro
> http://wiki.winehq.org/AdobeFramemaker
>
> I've created wiki pages with trial download URLs for all but iTunes,
> and done a bunch of triage on them.
> Most of these could all use more triage and bugs filed.
> At some point the dust might settle, and it might become
> clearer which one(s) deserve to be focused on.
> I think Maarten is going to try iTunes, which would be great.
> - Dan

	What about support for Autodesk products (such as AutoCAD and 3ds max)? As 
far as I know there is two group of problems preventing them from working: 
copy-protection related and .NET related. This is true for most recent 
versions.
	However for not-so-new versions there is no .NET issues (just copy-protection 
problems). For example this is true for 3ds max 4, 5, 6, 7 (but I didn't check 
this personally). I heard that it is possible to get 3ds max 3 working on 
WINE but it's so old that this is useless today but it gives hope that newer 
versions of 3ds max will work if proper support for copy-protection used by 
Autodesk will be implemented.
	This is true for AutoCAD too (as far as I know AutoCAD and 3ds max are using 
same protection called C-Dilla).
	Unfortunately, I'm not an expert on this topic so I don't know how difficult 
to implement proper support for C-Dilla. But if it's implemented, it is very 
likely that both AutoCAD and 3ds max will work (as I said, because of .NET 
issues, most recent versions may not work but at least not so new versions 
will work; in future, when .NET support will be better, new versions will 
probably work too).
	In other words, proper support for C-Dilla is most important thing for 
AutoCAD and 3ds max support so it is possible to temporary ignore .NET bugs 
related to most recent Autodesk products for now.
	By the way, AutoCAD and 3ds max are very popular applications. It's easy to 
check how they are popular by using Google. For example, for AutoCAD alone 
you will get 43,800,000 results [1]. So there is a really a lot of people who 
depends on Autodesk products such as AutoCAD.

[1] http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=AutoCAD&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f

	*	*	*

	(Everything below is just my personal experience as a person who depends on 
Autodesk products so you can skip it if you don't like such stories).
	Because of above problems many people (who depends on these applications) 
just forced to use Windows. In fact, I wasn't able to "convert" to Linux some 
of my friends because of AutoCAD being unsupported in Linux.
	For now, I'm stuck with VMWare. But it doesn't support DirectX or OpenGL so 
working with many projects is a pain (therefore it's difficult to call use of 
VMWare "Linux support for Autodesk products", even worse, use of VMWare not 
only means use of Windows but it also means BAD performance in even not very 
big projects) but I currently havn't other choices. I depend heavily on Linux 
applications/environment/daemons so dual-boot isn't an option for me - 
virtual machine in Linux host is the only choice. I really tired from bad 
performance and bad integration of the VMWare, I really hope that WINE will 
support Autodesk products someday...
	However, I use WINE for many other application such as Photoshop CS, AVR 
Studio, XnView and many others, so I'm really happy that WINE exists and I'm 
really thankful to all WINE developers.
	AutoCAD and 3ds max are two last programs that force me to use virtual 
machine with Windows...