Any MacWorld Attendees On This List

[Judy Perry]

On Fri, 10 Jan 2003, Troy Rollins wrote:
> Not to throw water (or petrol) on it , but I do think that there have
> been an application or two made with Director. Also, Director is on
> version 9, RR has yet to deliver version 2. Questioning Macromedia's
> commitment to the product, and comparing it to that of a rather young
> company would seem to be a bit of self delusion.

True, but how long has that rather young, small, company had an OSX-native
version?  For the class I am taking in which Director was required, Mac
users had to buy the product not once but twice within a 16-week period to
get OSX-runnability (buried deep in their tech notes was the
recommendation that the user NOT run it in Classic mode -- big pain.)
And,  even with educational pricing, Director ain't cheap.  Moreover, I'd
wager that Director and Flash have much more in common than areas in which
they functionally differ.  How can this possibly make continued business
sense?

>
> Don't get me wrong, I like RR a lot - but Director is not a tool to look
> down upon. Many people have made entire careers on that tool, and it
> continues to represent a large portion of my company's income. Director
> MX on OSX is really quite a nice tool, and the scripting does not come
> off as an afterthought.

But it was.  Plus I think it's on its second language (I read somewhere
after Video Works became Director, its first scripting language was
BASIC-like).  And as an article in the Communications of the ACM noted,
its scripting language looks like a 'mish-mash of C code with Director's
Lingo."

 And, in the event that an application needs to
> run inside a browser, there is nothing anywhere near as powerful as
> ShockWave.

True.
>
> Both Director an RR have a place. In many ways they play in completely
> separate leagues.

Agreed entirely.  But Director's probably a better animation tool and RR's
probably a better application builder.

Judy