Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 11th Feb 2008 22:41 UTC
KDE "Free/Open Source software has grown considerably from its roots in the UNIX tradition of the command line interface and early X Windows-based graphical environments. As desktop use has increased concurrently with advances in desktop development, serious user interface and experience issues have arisen. Celeste Lyn Paul of User Centered Design, Inc. and the KDE Project presented, 'A Quick and Dirty Intro to User Centered Design in Open Source Development', Saturday at SCaLE 6X. Her talk emphasized the importance of including designers in the development process."
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OSS Acture alternative
by OpenGuy on Tue 12th Feb 2008 01:26 UTC
OpenGuy
Member since:
2007-08-20

"LW: Your own design stack, is it all Open Source or a mix?

CLP: For my work laptop, I run KDE. Image manipulation is a large part of my work, and there is GIMP and Krita for that. However, the one thing I just can't live without is Acture, a specialized interaction design tool. It's pretty new, but it's a .Net 3 application, and there isn't full .NET 3 support yet for Linux."

OK people. Can someone step up and help her out? Either a Qt or GTK app she can use; preferable Qt since she's primarily KDE user. I know nothing about this area of software, but am one of the hordes of folks who doesn't want .Net stuff on Linux. I'll put my money where my mouth is if someone is interested.

RE: OSS Acture alternative
by camo on Tue 12th Feb 2008 03:18 in reply to "OSS Acture alternative"
camo Member since:
2007-10-08

the one thing I just can't live without is Acture, a specialized interaction design tool.


Never heard of it, anyone got a link?

Edited 2008-02-12 03:20 UTC

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 1

RE[2]: OSS Acture alternative
by leos on Tue 12th Feb 2008 03:49 in reply to "RE: OSS Acture alternative"
leos Member since:
2005-09-21

Yeah I did a quick search and couldn't find anything about this program. Maybe it was misspelled.

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 2

RE: OSS Acture alternative
by tyrione on Tue 12th Feb 2008 09:58 in reply to "OSS Acture alternative"
tyrione Member since:
2005-11-21

"LW: Your own design stack, is it all Open Source or a mix?

CLP: For my work laptop, I run KDE. Image manipulation is a large part of my work, and there is GIMP and Krita for that. However, the one thing I just can't live without is Acture, a specialized interaction design tool. It's pretty new, but it's a .Net 3 application, and there isn't full .NET 3 support yet for Linux."

OK people. Can someone step up and help her out? Either a Qt or GTK app she can use; preferable Qt since she's primarily KDE user. I know nothing about this area of software, but am one of the hordes of folks who doesn't want .Net stuff on Linux. I'll put my money where my mouth is if someone is interested.


Axure RP
http://www.axure.com/

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 3

RE: OSS Acture alternative
by MaxKlokan on Tue 12th Feb 2008 11:16 in reply to "OSS Acture alternative"
MaxKlokan Member since:
2007-12-04

Can someone step up and help her out?


Why would you think she needs help? She seems happy with using Axure. Does she really need an alternative?

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 2

RE[2]: OSS Acture alternative
by righard on Tue 12th Feb 2008 12:04 in reply to "RE: OSS Acture alternative"
righard Member since:
2007-12-26

In my opinion she doesn't need it at all. This is what I call "buzz-software". The discription says enought "a specialized interaction design tool". The movie on the site is worst. It's a buzzword machinegun with a deadly accent.

It seems that she thinks opensource software is important. So yes you whould help her by directing her to an opensource version of her last proprietary software. I know I whould appreciate it.

But if she doesn't care and is happy, you are right.

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 1

RE[2]: OSS Acture alternative
by OpenGuy on Tue 12th Feb 2008 20:34 in reply to "RE: OSS Acture alternative"
OpenGuy Member since:
2007-08-20

She'd like to run this tool on Linux. However, she currently can't.

Two choices:
1) We help her get it running on Linux
2) We help her find an alternative that works just as well for her.

Since I'm not gonna offer to help get .Net working on Linux I'm left with one choice to promote.

We really should be having this conversation with her rather than amongst ourselves, but oh well.

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 2

RE: OSS Acture alternative
by segedunum on Tue 12th Feb 2008 16:01 in reply to "OSS Acture alternative"
segedunum Member since:
2005-07-06

OK people. Can someone step up and help her out? Either a Qt or GTK app she can use; preferable Qt since she's primarily KDE user.


You're not going to get it. This is a specialist bit of software that is not the sort of general functionality you're going to find in a piece of open source software.

If she wants this to run on Linux, then the normal prerequisites apply for an ISV to consider this:

1. An installed base large enough to be of interest.

2. Development tools and development libraries.

3. A way to easily install their software on customer machines.

Given the nature and feel of their web site, and especially given that their software is written for .Net 3 already, I'd say that non-Windows platforms, let alone Linux, are not exactly top of their priority list.

She could, of course, get creative and run VMware, or better yet, run the application on a Windows machine and run it remotely as a single application via Terminal Services, rdesktop and SeamlessRDP on her Linux machine. This means no annoying dual-booting.

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 4