Macromedia etc

I asked my colleague (not a Linux devotee) who uses macromedia to comment on the ideas which have been coming up on this topic. I am forwarding his reply verbatim. _____________________________________ Giles Nunn - Network Manager Carms Schools ICT Development Centre Tel: +44 01239 710662 Fax: 710985 ____________________________________ ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2000 15:52:51 +0100 From: Lloyd Walters To: Giles Nunn Subject: Re: [suse-linux-uk-schools] Mutilmedia (was: PostgreSQL and Linux / Windows) (fwd) Giles, There is a free Flash Player for Linux available from Macromedia : http://sdc.shockwave.com/shockwave/download/alternates/ That doesn't cover Shockwave - but I'm not clear on the distinction between Flash and Shockwave. Corel seem (or plan) to "bring Macromedia Flash technology to Corel LINUX" - see 9th Feb 2000 press release : http://www.macromedia.com/macromedia/proom/pr/2000/mm_corel.html Macromedia do seem to be slowly dipping their toes into Linux. Their latest flagship product, for large scale web site development, is being made available for SunOs and Linux. But I'd be surprised if they're putting any effort into putting their whole product line onto Linux, if only because they're not making any noises about any such development. Meanwhile, they are rending towards a more open approach. They've long since published the Flash file format, Dreamweaver is totally open and extensible - at least to those with expertise in Javascript and/or XML. I also believe that a C source code API library for creating Flash files is available for free. Lloyd Giles wrote:

You might like to comment on this thread which has just started on the suse linux schools mailing list.

_____________________________________ Giles Nunn - Network Manager Carms Schools ICT Development Centre Tel: +44 01239 710662 Fax: 710985 ____________________________________

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2000 10:36:17 +0100 From: Mr Murdoch To: suse-linux-uk-schools@suse.com Subject: RE: [suse-linux-uk-schools] Mutilmedia (was: PostgreSQL and Linux / Windows)

Macromedia is the company that produces the software used to the CDs - the package used is probably Director. The latest version of Director uses the Shockwave player to play back the completed files, although the company doesn't supply a Linux version as far as I know.

John ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mr J. Murdoch Email : j.murdoch@rgc.aberdeen.sch.uk Network Manager Tel. : +44 1224 646346 (switchboard) Robert Gordon's College Aberdeen AB10 1FE Fax : +44 1224 630301 ----------------------------------------------------------------------

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-----Original Message----- From: kevin.taylor@powerconv.alstom.com [SMTP:kevin.taylor@powerconv.alstom.com] Sent: Thursday, July 13, 2000 9:39 AM To: suse-linux-uk-schools@suse.com Subject: [suse-linux-uk-schools] Mutilmedia (was: PostgreSQL and Linux / Windows)

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The aim should be any application for any platform, which is becoming the goal for the corporate world.

Many CD Rom titles that my kids use, support Windows 3.1, 95, NT and Macs. They tend to use Macromedia - so I would guess that there would not be a large investment in their time to provide the "viewing software" for Linux too - after all the same data is already used for various flavours of Windows and Macs - but I have asked various people (DK, Tivola, etc) about Linux support and always draw a blank.

Again, this sort of thing could do with a bit more muscle to show that this could be a useful way for the publishers to go - could Becta do this too ?

I do not know anything about how 'Macromedia' works, but presumably if they started to support Linux, then Linux versions of the popular CDs would follow.

Kevin.