9 replies to this topic

[patdunlavey]

My old machine died and I sprung for a HP xw8400 (Intel Xeon) workstation, and I've been playing with Windows Vista, 64-bit. Before I decide to stay with the 64-bit version and start reinstalling software, I was wondering if anyone happens to know if MAPublisher 6 and Illustrator CS2 are functional in Vista x64? If not, are the current versions fully functional in 64-bit (CS3, MP7.5) and worth the upgrade cost?

Thanks, Pat

[Sky Schemer]

My old machine died and I sprung for a HP xw8400 (Intel Xeon) workstation, and I've been playing with Windows Vista, 64-bit. Before I decide to stay with the 64-bit version and start reinstalling software, I was wondering if anyone happens to know if MAPublisher 6 and Illustrator CS2 are functional in Vista x64? If not, are the current versions fully functional in 64-bit (CS3, MP7.5) and worth the upgrade cost?

I ran both on Vista x64. You will probably want to upgrade Illustrator because it's less irritating, but you don't have to.

CS2 is the big issue: the palette windows don't play nicely with Vista's Aero interface and are a real PITA. They don't dock correctly, and window dragging is painfully slow. If you configure CS2 to run in XP compatibility mode (or at minimum just disable the advanced Aero features) it runs much, much better. Having Windows switch back and forth between the two visual themes when you run/quit CS2 is annoying, but that's a small price to have it run properly.

Whether that is worth the $$$ to you is something I can't answer.

[Unit Seven]

Also as has been said in the xp64 thread Postscript fonts activated through windows aren't visible to Illustrator (or InDesign and Photoshop and maybe a few other Adobe apps).

These fonts can be manually activated seperatly through the C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Fonts\ private fonts folder but then they won't be availible to other apps—unless you placed them both in there and the Windows fonts folder but having two identicle fonts activated in two places by two systems scares me.

What about other apps and printer drivers.

[patdunlavey]

I ran both on Vista x64. You will probably want to upgrade Illustrator because it's less irritating, but you don't have to.

Thanks! I upgraded to CS3, but MP6 will not install, failing to detect a copy of AI10 or CS. So I just tried copying the MAPublisher Plug-In folder. Upon starting, it complained about a missing fme.dll file, which I managed to find in my old install, and copy over to the corresponding place. Now it's complaining about missing "qt-mt333.dll", which I can't find in my old installation at all. It has something to do with fonts.

Do you have any suggestions for a process for getting MP6 installed and working in this setup?

Thanks, Pat

[Sky Schemer]

I actually never tried the CS3/MP6 combination. I went to MP7 for CS2 before going to CS3.

[patdunlavey]

I actually never tried the CS3/MP6 combination. I went to MP7 for CS2 before going to CS3.

I was afraid of that - ain't software obsolescence a wonderful thing? It appears that if I want to give Illustrator and MAPublisher more than 2gb of RAM (i.e. on a 64-bit OS), I must not only upgrade my machine, but also MAPublisher, to the tune of $500. Crikey!

[Rick Dey]

Avenza notes on their website that MAPublisher version 7.5 and Geographic Imager 1.5 are the only versions of the respective products
which are compatible with Adobe Creative Suite 3.

At the risk of sounding like a salesman for Avenza remember that a maintenance subscription keeps you in upgrades whenever they happen.

[Ted Florence]

In a perfect world, perfect for the customers like Pat and perfect for developers like us, an upgrade of any Adobe product, whether it be Illustrator or Photoshop, would not require redevelopment of any related plugins. Unfortunately it seems that Adobe has this terrible habit of rendering existing plugins inoperative every time they issue a new version. We have suffered from this going all the way back to Illustrator 8, if not earlier.

Whatever under-the-hood changes Adobe made in CS3 required major redevelopment of the entire MAPublisher product. We spent the better part of 10 months on this alone and worked extremely hard to co-incide the MAPublisher 7.5 release with the Adobe CS3 release and even then we were 2 months behind in our release.
Believe me, we would much rather focus our time and energy on new features rather than just making existing ones work in whatever new version of Adobe is most current.

That being said, whenever such a situation occurs (usually every 18-24 months) we try to put in some new features as well so these so-called compatibility updates usually include more.

[frax]

I can't speak of MAPublisher, but my other plugins seems to have migrated nicely, without any kinks or upgrades, to CS3 (from CS2).

[Ted Florence]

Consider yourself lucky, Frax. I mean that. I suppose that not 100% of all plugins would fail with a new Adobe release. This depends on what calls are being made to the API and ultimately how complex the plugin is. MAPublisher is probably the single most complex plugin for Illustrator in existence and relies on hundreds of API calls. All Adobe has to do is change one call between releases and we have to go back to development. CADTools is another one that I know gets affected every time. I just did a quick Google search and found dozens of cases of Illustrator plugins that needed to be updated to work in CS3 so again, consider yourself lucky.
And as I said before, believe me that we'd much rather spend our time on new features and functions rather than just keeping up with Adobe.