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I feel an enormous amount of sympathy for those suffering from this issue, but part of the problem is that these are closed source programs and document formats
by lalaithion 6y ago
I feel an enormous amount of sympathy for those suffering from this issue, but part of the problem is that these are closed source programs and document formats.
> I opened PageMaker 4 files in PageMaker 6, opened the PageMaker 6 files in InDesign CS6, and opened the InDesign CS6 files in InDesign 2020.
If these applications (or even just the file processing parts of them) were open source, it would be much easier for someone to port them to the new platform than for someone to write an emulator for intel macs.
- lallysingh 6y agoThey have to get out of these file formats. PDF (or epub?) seems reasonable.
- ineedasername 6y agoThe files are the actual design files, not just a static version. You can edit, move things around, completely redo the entire composition, etc. Even the full version of Adobe Acrobat is severely limited by comparison. In effect, these design files are the source code. InDesign/PageMaker/Quark are the compilers with a target output of PDF or some other supported doc type.
- redisman 6y agoRight - this should be completely aimed at Adobe (not Apple) for having piss-poor backwards compatibility and their aggressive deprecation of fully paid software people want to keep using because it's good enough.
- Apocryphon 6y agoAgain, the article is not aiming at Apple, they are talking about a new development from Apple that illustrates a predicament.
- flomo 6y agoYeah, this isn't exactly a new problem either - the DTP industry has been coping with this for decades. There's probably still some old G4s stashed around just to open old pagemaker/quark files. OTOH, there's probably plenty of old open source apps where the file formats are inscrutable memory dumps. It's more an open format issue than open code.