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"LW: Your own design stack, is it all Open Source or a mix?
CLP: For my work laptop, I run KDE. Image manipulation is a large part of my work, and there is GIMP and Krita for that. However, the one thing I just can't live without is Acture, a specialized interaction design tool. It's pretty new, but it's a .Net 3 application, and there isn't full .NET 3 support yet for Linux."
OK people. Can someone step up and help her out? Either a Qt or GTK app she can use; preferable Qt since she's primarily KDE user. I know nothing about this area of software, but am one of the hordes of folks who doesn't want .Net stuff on Linux. I'll put my money where my mouth is if someone is interested.
CLP: For my work laptop, I run KDE. Image manipulation is a large part of my work, and there is GIMP and Krita for that. However, the one thing I just can't live without is Acture, a specialized interaction design tool. It's pretty new, but it's a .Net 3 application, and there isn't full .NET 3 support yet for Linux."
OK people. Can someone step up and help her out? Either a Qt or GTK app she can use; preferable Qt since she's primarily KDE user. I know nothing about this area of software, but am one of the hordes of folks who doesn't want .Net stuff on Linux. I'll put my money where my mouth is if someone is interested.
Axure RP
http://www.axure.com/
In my opinion she doesn't need it at all. This is what I call "buzz-software". The discription says enought "a specialized interaction design tool". The movie on the site is worst. It's a buzzword machinegun with a deadly accent.
It seems that she thinks opensource software is important. So yes you whould help her by directing her to an opensource version of her last proprietary software. I know I whould appreciate it.
But if she doesn't care and is happy, you are right.
The first three words and the last sentence make it clear that I'm not telling anybody what they ought to use. For some reason if there is an article about a good looking lady, people defend the person without a need. I don't care what she uses. I just think that this is one of those software pieces people get dependent on without a real need. But if some-one is happy with it, by all means continue.
I have a strong personal opinion on that matter. I think learning a special language or program to make a non working prototype of something that still has to be developed is a waste of time. Same goes for UML. Instead of turning a problem into code, it becomes.. turning a problem into a abstract problem using objects or what might not so it can be turned into code. In my opinion a useless step. But I don't care about people taking that step.
She'd like to run this tool on Linux. However, she currently can't.
Two choices:
1) We help her get it running on Linux
2) We help her find an alternative that works just as well for her.
Since I'm not gonna offer to help get .Net working on Linux I'm left with one choice to promote.
We really should be having this conversation with her rather than amongst ourselves, but oh well.
You're not going to get it. This is a specialist bit of software that is not the sort of general functionality you're going to find in a piece of open source software.
If she wants this to run on Linux, then the normal prerequisites apply for an ISV to consider this:
1. An installed base large enough to be of interest.
2. Development tools and development libraries.
3. A way to easily install their software on customer machines.
Given the nature and feel of their web site, and especially given that their software is written for .Net 3 already, I'd say that non-Windows platforms, let alone Linux, are not exactly top of their priority list.
She could, of course, get creative and run VMware, or better yet, run the application on a Windows machine and run it remotely as a single application via Terminal Services, rdesktop and SeamlessRDP on her Linux machine. This means no annoying dual-booting.
Greetings:
Yeah, it's true, I botched the application name.
Axure (http://www.axure.com/) is what it is.
Ciao!
Jeffrey Bianchine
Author & Journalist






