[rescue] ECC [was: Re: WOT: Ebay changes to IBM from Sun

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Fri, 11 Jul 2003, Mike F wrote:

> Not likely from me, considering I know nothing about OpenGL, C,
> assembly language, or anything that would be necessary to embark
> on such a project.

I'd suspect that the bulk of the work AutoCAD does has nothing to do
with OpenGL.  Everything I've seen of AutoCAD makes me think it's
primarily a list/data manager that happens to be able to draw pictures.

I suppose that's why its extension language is LISP.  In fact, Scheme
probably wouldn't be a bad language to write the whole thing in, since
Scheme supports arbitrarily-precise numbers.

Seriously, though, AutoCAD's power isn't in its slick GUI or heads-up
display, its in the precision with which it does geometry and trig and
that it maintains diffs of the file all the way back to its creation, so
that -anything- can be undone/redone.

> It's really depressing, considering that Autodesk software is the only
> software I use that is only available on Windows and does not have an
> equivalent open-source replacement.

Every time I've mentioned that, someone's shoved Dia in my face, to
which I can only reply "Ewwwww".

> Obviously, Pro-E, Catia, Unigraphics, etc. are available for various
> flavors of Unix or Linux, but my employer has myself and my colleagues
> locked into Autodesk products.

And Autodesk is worse than Microsoft in terms of file formats.  Just
-try- importing drawings from two or three releases back into a current
version of AutoCAD.

-- 
Jonathan Patschke   )  "Leave your lawsuits at home.  I have guns."
Elgin, TX          (                      --"Kountry" Mike Lundgren