Posted by Robert Sandkam on November 14, 2003 at 20:17:32:In Reply to: DWF vs PDF posted by Joe Calabrese on November 07, 2003 at 10:09:29:
The issue is not AutoDesk blasting Adobe or vice versa. Companies compete. Competing involves blasting other companies. And blasting other companies involves overly obvious marketing ("never mind reality, my product is simply better than your product, because I say so").
The real issue is that Adobe made the PDF format available to other developers for inclusion in their products and therefore built up enough use that it is a "standard." DWF is late to the game and has not yet built up enough use to become a "standard." But, it is just as available to other developers for inclusion in their products.
AutoDesk has announced that they will be releasing an OSX version of Express Viewer for viewing and printing DWF files. In addition, they will be publishing a DWF Developers Toolkit for OSX that will allow software developers to create utilities that use the DWF format.
Rather than criticizing their marketing techniques, we should be glad that AutoDesk is making DWF available to software developers. And the developers should be looking very, very hard at how to build in functionality.
I'm not saying that I think DWF is better than PDF. As with everything, I am sure that each has it's strengths and weaknesses. But, I am saying that AutoDesk has the right to produce competing tools.
Usually I would lament the situation, because AutoDesk is so big, and who could possibly compete, and we will have another bad "standard" crammed down our throughts. But, who are we kidding. This is Adobe we are talking about. A force in the graphics world that is as big as Microsoft is a force in the office world.
It will be interesting to see who comes out on top, but I think DWF is going to have hard hill to climb. If I have to choose a document sharing format that only works for other AEC users, or one that works for AEC user plus the publishing users, then I am going to choose the latter, because it provides me with more options. And no matter how hard they try, AutoDesk won't convince publishing users to adopt DWF.
As with all things, time will tell. But in the end, some people will do one thing, and some people will do another. I'm just glad that we have been invited to the party. And, I look forward to using some really nice MacOS DWF tools. So, start coding.
Bob.
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Robert B. Sandkam
Computing Instruction Coordinator
College Of Architecture
UNC Charlotte
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