Digital Workshop

Over the past many years it seemed to have been convential wisdom - amongst my friends - that the majority of US schools were committed to the use of Apple computers.

Is anyone on the forum in a position to comment on the current position vis-a-vis Apple/PC ratios in US schools?

John

John --

Years ago Apple donated computers to all US schools, so there were quite a few then, but with the passage of time, those boxes have become outdated, and have largely been replaced with Windows machines.

As soon as you mention "Apple" on this forum you'll start a discussion of how good Apple's are, and how much better they are than Windows computers, then the rants will ask "When is OPUS going to work on Macs?" So I'll agree Macs are great machines, and they are becoming more popular. Micro Soft wants to keep them alive so they won't get into trouble as a monopoly with the US Government. MS still has a "lock" on the number of computers using Windows. I believe the percentage is over 95%. The other 5% is split with Macs plus Unix, plus ????.

I believe it would be an expensive effort to try to make OPUS work on Macs. Since the overwhelming majority of business people use Windows, I believe DW is correct in spending their resources in the MS world. The "work around" has been to Publish as a Flex publication, which I believe will run on Macs, but with limited capabilities compared to a normal OPUS Windows pub.

Hi Fred,

Thanks for response.

You are quite correct. People will mis-read my mail as a request for an 'Apple Opus'. And no - I'm not interested in going down that line. I just wanted to establish that Apple does not dominate the US schools' market.

As you suggest, and it is pretty obvious in the various forums I've visited, many posters never bother to read the original query, let alone attempt to reply to it!

Best wishes,

John

Aha ! But if you have a new Intel Mac and run Boot camp - ie the prog that lets you choose between OSX or WinXP - then you might be able to run Opus on a Mac! - of course its actually still under windows!

Publishing to Flex could be the solution for Mac-users (and for Linux-users too!). The assumption to do this is to make the Flex (Flash) export more powerful.

Besides the possibility to publish for Mac and Linux the customers reluctance to use other plugin besides the Flash-plugin is another reason to pay more attention to Flex export.

I hope that this will be the case in Opus 6.

T.

It should be said here that most of what you find as limitations in the Opus Flex export are really limitations in the Flash format itself.

What limitiations are you talking about? I think there are not many limitations in the flash format itself. Our flash programmer can do nearly everything you like with flash.

Currently we are developing some very complex applications with Flash and we found no serious limitations in the flash format itself.

So I think it is to easy to say that the reason for all limitiations of Flex are the limitations of Flash itself.

T.

Come on, you're not really trying.
For example, until the very latest Flash update you could not do drop shadows directly in Flash like you could in Opus. There is a whole list of unsupported features that Opus does that cannot be exported when working in Flex and those are the things that Flash did not support. Do you need to see the list?

Yes, please show me a list of things that cannot be done because of limitations of the Flash format itself. I think it will be a very short one.

Actually nobody expects that Opus can replace Flash (if it could DW would have no money needs any more

But currently the Flex output has not the top ranking value that it could possibly have.

Eventually I think that Opus with a powerful Flash output would be a great tool and even better than it is already.

T.

This is from an older post.

The following features of Opus are not supported when publishing with Opus Flex. This might seem like a long list but it is much shorter than the list of things that do work!

Publication
· Password Protection
· Busy cursor
· Layouts that use dividers, resizing or percentage sizes
· Databases

Chapters
· Chapters in external windows
· Non-resizing pages. All pages are resizable and maintain their aspect ratio
Graphical Objects
· Drag and drop appearances. Drag and Drop itself does work but not the extra object appearances.

Text

These features are not supported by text at any time:
· Background and shadow colours
· Display one section/paragraph at a time
· Do not display partial lines
· Read from disk file
· Hypertext highlights and click styles
· AutoNarrate

These features are not supported by static text:
· Inserted variables
· Hypertext
· Text input

These features are not supported by dynamic text: · Vertical alignment (always top)
· Tabs
· Subscript and superscript
· Bullets
· Full justification

These features are not supported by dynamic text with device fonts:
· Rotation, skew and animation

Video
· Only animated GIF files work
· Always on top option

Effects
· Blend Alpha Effect
· Flare Effect
· Texture Effect
· Shadow Effect

Transitions
· 3D Transitions (for page)
· Fade Transitions (except Simple)
· Flame Transitions
· Jigsaw Transitions
· Kaleidoscope Transitions
· Pixel and Grid Transitions
· Special Reveal Transitions
· Water Transitions
· Page show transitions appear over the publication background colour and not over the top of the previous page

Triggers
· Right-mouse click

Actions
· Print action
· Close window action
· Show next object action
· Move object to cursor action
· Clipboard actions
· Midi and CD audio actions
· Roll, spin and skew animation actions
· Count words/lines actions
· Storage actions
· Launch file/search actions (launch web page works)
· Browser actions
· Database actions
· Clock actions
· File management actions
· MultiFrame actions

Miscellaneous
· All files option in Slideshow
· Browser objects
· DocView objects
· Scrollbars not proportional for dynamic text
· Vector join styles (all become rounded)

Hm, I thought you wanted to send a list of things that cannot be done because of the Flash format itself.

The list of things Flex cannot do is already well known.

T.