archGFX

current tune: nine inch nails - home

Massachusetts has been making the news lately over their threatening to remove microsoft office from all the state computers. Is this just Massachusetts trying to squeeze a better deal out of microsoft by threatening to switch? no. this is a big deal. here's an example of why open formats are important:

Chicago Office of Underground Construction
created after the flooding of lower wacker, OUC exists to make sure that if you're building anything, it's not going to go through someone else's infrastructure. this used to require delivering 35+ hard copies of your drawings, for OUC to redistribute to anyone who might have something running under your site. OUC recently changed this requirement:

for Electronic Plan Distribution, the OUC will require the following:

• One (1) copy of Plans - Full Size - Folded
• One (1) Disc with AutoCAD Drawings Published in DWF Format (Disc should include one (1) DWF File with multiple pages)
• Transmittal Letter (hard copy) detailing scope of work and including name, telephone number and fax number of contact person.

No big deal right? except that the format they are requiring is an Autodesk proprietary format. fortunately, autocad is directly competing with Adobe's PDF format, so there's an FTK available. That's probably what graphisoft used to write the "publish" feature of plotmaker. nonethless, plotmaker spits out one DWF per page, not the multipage DWF the OUC is requiring. so after some digging, i find that out of the kindness of their hearts, autodesk has written a merge tool. oh, wait. that's windows only. well, no problem, it's just a compiled version of sample code in the FTK, right? i'm on a mac, i have my choice of using the GCC at a command line, or the Xcode tools, right? i've compiled plenty of applications on linux, this can't be much worse.
wrong again. Autodesk hates mac. the sample code for the merge program is only included in the win32 binary version of the FTK. the source version and the PPC OS X version lack the script.
the end result here is that the city of chicago is requiring offices to use autocad, and by extension (although it's up to the whim of autodesk) windows. autodesk and microsoft are two of the worst companies at playing fairly with competition.
now, autodesk's literature makes it sound like there's no difference between using a PDF or a DWF, except for the DWF allowing you to do cooler stuff, faster. but even though you don't have to pay autodesk a royalty for writing software that uses DWF, it's still not an open format. autodesk could change their mind at any time, and start charging because they own the format. PDF on the other hand, has been accepted as an ISO standard. if autodesk wants wide support for their format, they have to let it go.