Anthony Frausto-Robledo (afrausto@architosh.com)

8 August 2001

Part 1 - Exclusive interview on VectorWorks for Mac OS X

Part 1 - Exclusive interview on VectorWorks for Mac OS X

Part 2 - Exclusive interview: Future Nemetschek Product Direction

Sean Flaherty, CTO of Nemetschek North America

Anthony Frausto-Robledo, Editor of Architosh.com

Continued from Page 2

SF We put out a dual QuickDraw-Postscript file. So what happens in OS 9 right now—say when you go to an Epson ink-jet—is that it interprets some combination of those two pieces and puts that into the Epson printer language. Drivers for printers in OS X are really kind of immature right now, in general.

There are a lot of manufactures working on drivers right now. Printing to small printers is not what our customers are really worried about but rather having large format support.

You had an interview with Robert Coulling of Microspot a few weeks ago and all eyes are on Microspot, I think, and that is one of our bigger concerns right now: how do we have large format support? [Editor's note: To hear about Microspot's future products and OS X support plans read the following interview.]

Working with Epson an HP? I am less concerned about that right now. They are progressing right along with their driver support. I mean, I don't know. What was your feelings from talking to Robert?

AFR Well, my feelings from talking to Robert [Microspot UK managing director] were that they might not be delivering new OS X driver products until January. That was just a sense that I got from his unwillingness to spill the beans, sort of speak, on unannounced new products.

I think they have some exciting new products in the works and they want to keep that stuff pretty close to their chest at this point. But Robert seemed very excited about their prospects with OS X.

SF They got really burned on a few dead-end Apple technologies.

AFR That's right and, a lot of things along the way...

SF They really should get a medal from Apple for being war-veterans in the Mac community because Microspot, in particular, I think, has really done a tremendous effort to try to support the latest and greatest from Apple.

AFR Right. I believe that is absolutely right.

SF I think the only thing they didn't bite into which died was OpenDoc...

AFR Right.

SF ...and they are probably counting their blessings. But I have to admit that we approached this very cautiously because we were one of the first applications to ship for the PowerPC [back in 1994-5] and that was very difficult. That was not a smooth transition and in many ways was a simpler transition than what needs to be done in the Carbonization process.

In fact we were one of the very first people to use the PowerPC compilers. And it's a tough place to be in. And this time we wanted to wait a little longer for the things to be more mature.

I think we did some good timing here because I am not sure if we were more actively working on the Carbonization process, say last summer, if we would be any further along than where we are today.

AFR I see. Would it have been faster just to rewrite the whole application from the ground up in say Cocoa?

SF No. No. Not at all.

AFR Too much effort. I see.

SF VectorWorks 9 is essentially a rewrite. We took the entire application and split it in half to create the interface shell—we talked about this in the last interview—a ground up completely new application that looks just like VectorWorks 8, but written in PowerPlant.

And one of the big reasons we did this is to handle exactly these types of operating system changes. So if Microsoft one day says they are going to pitch MFC [Microsoft Foundation Classes] and replace it with a brand new development environment, we would be ready for that.

Regarding Cocoa? I don't know what you hear talking to developers but there is a lot of us here that really wonder about the wisdom behind picking Objective C as your standard language. You have a language that exist on no other platform. You standardize that as your development language of choice and you have a problem.

I think Apple is doing the right thing by continuing to push Carbon. They are much much more likely to get people to port to another C++ environment or to a Java environment because you can hire programmers that know those languages well.

AFR That makes a sense.

SF Cocoa is appropriate for some needs but for a big cross-platform application like VectorWorks I don't think you can rely on having a good steady stream of people without having a massive training initiative

AFR I was under the impression that with Cocoa you have the option of Objective C or Java as your language?

SF Yes. You can do Java. So why aren't we rewriting in Java? You are really getting down to the specifics on development tools. The big reason for us not to consider it is that the only target for Cocoa is the Mach O kernel, and that only runs on OS X.

So as long as we want to bridge this gap here. I think having a CFM target is a better way to go. Which is the target which runs on OS 9 and OS X.

AFR I see.

SF Are you running OS X?

AFR I have been but most of my applications that I use for Web development and publishing, like Dreamweaver, are not ready. So I can't really be on it all the time. I would, especially after September because I think the update will run much faster, even faster than OS 9—so I'm very anxious personally and I know a lot of Architosh readers are as well.

I think what a lot of readers are saying is that the 3D apps, like LightWave and Cinema4D and others, are ready now. They seem to be ahead of the curve. I even think that the Strata 3D folks may deliver an OS X version in the near future as well.

SF Did you see the Lightworks announcement today that they have delivered an OS X version of the Lightworks library?

AFR Oh, Lightworks, Yes. I didn't read that. I was referring to the LightWave.

SF That's a key component we have been waiting for as well because RenderWorks rendering engine is all Lightworks-based. If you read their announcement you will see some of the other developers who rely on this as well. I think this was a really positive announcement for the OS X community. You know FormZ is also based on this. We wouldn't be able to wrap our RenderWorks without this library being available.

AFR Right.

SF But back to the Cocoa Carbon thing. That's why I stressed this Carbon thing. Because you are really asking a developers' tools question. Not a platform question. It's in the question about the tools, what they are capable of and how well you can develop with them, rather than in the capabilities of the operating system.

This ends Part 1 of our exclusive Nemetschek N.A. interview series. Return here next week for the continuation with Part 2, and hear about some of Nemetschek's exciting future products and strategies.