X-edit General questions

[Richard Ferrell]

This is for any questions regarding the different version of X-edit

[trent the thief]

Hi Rick,

Heya, we need a linux/solaris version of X-Edit. About half my contributors run *NIX desktops. Even if the user could only do a review it'd be great.

[bbuchko]

Anyone know if this works on Macs? I'm skeptical since it includes authoring functionality (and Flare is Windows-only), but nearly all of my dev team uses Macs, so it'd be extremely useful if they could review my work in X-Edit.

[Richard Ferrell]

It currently only runs on , Windows XP or Windows Vista, only.

http://kb.madcapsoftware.com/default_CSH.htm#iar1001X

[RamonS]

Which are two OS that are either no longer fully supported or just suck. Guys, there is other stuff out there and in use besides Windows!

[doc_guy]

(I know I'm going to get hammered for saying this, but....)

I have bought a new computer about a month ago, and it has Vista Ultimate Home on it (320 GB HD, 4GB RAM), and I haven't had any problems. From my perspective, I almost want to say that I like it.

I'm not developing for Vista. I'm not dealing with a lot of the problems that other Vista users are dealing with. I'm just using it like a normal computer user, and it has been fine for me.

<Braces for onslaught />

[SteveS]

doc_guy

DUCK....

[bbuchko]

Yeah actually, on my new work compy it runs fine. I think a lot of the reputation comes from when Vista was first released almost two years ago and they were loading it on computers with 512MB RAM. My wife bought a laptop and, even after we upgraded to 1GB RAM, Vista was REALLY slow. It's a monstrous resource hog. We ended up "downgrading" to XP and her computer has flown ever since. However, as I said, my work compy with a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor and 4GB of fast RAM runs Vista just fine.

[LTinker68]

I have bought a new computer about a month ago, and it has Vista Ultimate Home on it (320 GB HD, 4GB RAM), and I haven't had any problems. From my perspective, I almost want to say that I like it.

Did you leave the security warnings/nagging/whatever-it's-called enabled?

[SteveS]

Did you leave the security warnings/nagging/whatever-it's-called enabled?

The UAC!
Find I disable it while I'm installing everything, then re-enable after about a week. I don't mind being warned that something potentially harmful is happening.

[RamonS]

A good systems stops harmful code from causing damage. UAC in Vista does none of that. It still stands by watching while the overwhelmed user clicks Yes and sees the system implode. Just adding many prompts does not make a system more secure, it only makes its use more annoying.
I found UAC to be the core reason for many application issues. Turning UAC off makes many apps just work fine. I use Vista here at work for testing and after configuring it so that it does what I need it to do I find that I have to turn off a lot of things, yet get worse performance compared to XP while using more resources. To this day I don't get what is so great about Vista other than the hefty price tag that prevents many from switching.

[doc_guy]

Did you leave the security warnings/nagging/whatever-it's-called enabled?

Yep. I leave UAC enabled. It doesn't really pop up all that often, and I don't mind it when it does.

But I've only been using it for a month. Maybe it will get more annoying the longer this goes on.

[SteveS]

To this day I don't get what is so great about Vista other than the hefty price tag that prevents many from switching.

Vista's searching is vastly improved. We have a catalogue of 1200 training publications (not counting customised and versions), all in Word and a pdf, containing an average 75 pages.

If I need to find some material, for example I want to find something about hazard register and investigation from a trainer guide that isn't split for a new publication I can search in Vista using the phrase "hazard register" AND investigation name:*TG*.doc NOT split. Vista will find and filter as quick as I add the parameters.

We are still using XP, but I take my own Vista notebook to do the searching. They've just given us a shared Vista box, but the rest of the resource development team are hanging out for Vista.

Some people do want Vista and Office 2007. Their choice. You don't. Your choice.

[RamonS]

And the vast majority of people don't want Vista or Office 2k7 and have to use it anyway as they don't have any choice. Microsoft products are designed to be anti-choice, otherwise I could still buy a new box with XP and MSO 2k3 on it.
Besides that, my point was that spot changes such as a faster search don't really warrant a 300$ plus expense while breaking a bunch of other stuff. And is the search faster because the search is faster or the hardware you run it on is better? I have a Vista/XP dualboot and running the exact same applications on both systems off the same hardware quite nicely shows that Vista is still about 1/3 slower than XP while using almost twice the amount of resources.

So you say some people actually like underperformance like that?

[Andrew]

Hi Rick,

Heya, we need a linux/solaris version of X-Edit. About half my contributors run *NIX desktops. Even if the user could only do a review it'd be great.

If you have licenses, I'd run them in a VM as a workaround. Hopefully MadCap will support *nix versions at some point -- guess it all has to do with the market. Mono keeps getting better, and perhaps MadCap can eventually target that.

(I know I'm going to get hammered for saying this, but....)

Saying anything good about a Microsoft product will result in scorn from certain people.

Regarding UAC: one could say that it is not implemented well in the sense that there are UAC prompts in some silly places (i.e., when I click resource monitor, which is for *viewing* resource usage, not for changing anything, or when I want to see tasks from all users -- ask me when I try to end a process, not when I want to see it). However, the entire concept is good, because it enables one to fairly easily run Windows with a user in the non-Administrator group. Basically, it brings the ease of limited user accounts we see in *nix to Windows.

You guys do know you're not supposed to run as an admin, right?

(The other goal of UAC was, of course, to ensure that even if you run as admin, you get prompts so that software developers have some incentive to fix their stupid applications that require admin privileges for no apparent reason. Windows 7 supposedly will have improved implementation of UAC that will include the ability to fine-tune when it pops up and how.)

[RamonS]

UAC also comes up when one wants to change the screen font, which also requires a reboot. Totally needless aggravation. The problem with UAC is that it pops up everywhere and does not have a "Don't ask me again for this task" option. What happens is that users just click Yes or Accept or Allow (they named the OK button differently depending on the UAC message - totally insane) without even bothering to read what they just accepted. I think that not only makes UAC useless, it even makes the system less secure since people just hammer the button as soon as the messages come up.

In regards to Mono, the latest version now has support for DotNet 2.0....just as all the MadCap stuff switched to 3.x. And I am very sure that Microsoft will keep Mono as much legacy as possible. I think that was one of the reasons they made that sickening deal with Novell. Yea, sure, now Microsoft sells Linux support licenses, but in return they can pull the plug on Mono any time. In this day and age there is really no point in basing software on a single platform framework like DotNet.

[trent the thief]

X-edit needs floating licensing.

I don't see MadCap selling 100 X-edit seats to a shop with 100 contributors.

However, I can easily see you selling a 20-25 seat floating license to that same shop.