Adobe Systems Inc is preparing Illustrator version 5.5 for Sun Microsystems Inc Sparc workstations, aiming to have production versions of the illustration and page design package ready in time for the Seybold show in November. Currently in alpha form, the release is built from the same code base as Illustrator 5.5 on Macintosh and shares the same functionality, although Unix versions of the software, unlike Mac and Windows releases, incorporate full PostScript interpreters for importing any PostScript file. Adobe’s other Unix vehicle, Silicon Graphics Inc, is still driving on version 3.5, while Windows users are at release 4.0. Adobe has its eyes on the use of Sun boxes for producing technical publications and documentation with plenty of detailed technical drawings for commercial, corporate, government and retail markets. To back its two-horse Unix campaign it cites an R B Webber & Co report which suggests the Unix publishing market will grow to be worth $2,200m by 1995, from the $767m it was valued at in 1992. By then it expects colour pre-press publishing to account for 34% of that market, up from 22% in 1992, and document publishing to hold 66%, down from 78%. Adobe is aiming to create a common code base for each of its applications, a la PhotoShop 2.5 for Mac, Windows and Unix, though Illustrator will be a while longer getting there. Illustrator 5.5 runs under Motif in OpenWindows and will cost from $1,000 for a single user to $7,000 for 10 users; upgrades from $300 and $2,065 respectively. It requires a SparcStation 2 with an IPX processor or better, Solaris 2.3, 32Mb RAM and CD-ROM. Although Illustrator does provide some page design facilities, it is not aimed at the document layout, Quark Xpress-type user. In any case, Adobe will soon be able to count on its Aldus PageMaker acquisition to provide that class of product; it is likely to be up on Unix too. Adobe counts CorelDraw, Island Draw and Virtuoso as the Unix competition for Illustrator. It dismisses Island Draw as having no 24-bit colour support and Virtuoso as having no long-term future. It says its main rival, CorelDraw, is not PostScript-based, has no PostScript engine, lacks comprehensive text-handling and is offered in an ageing form, version 3.0, while Windows users get a much newer product, version 4.0. Unlike PhotoShop, Illustrator has not been rewritten specifically to take advantage of Sun’s multithreaded operating system and symmetric multiprocessing hardware, since the package uses existing floating point units. However, Adobe says it was able to improve PhotoShop performance on Sun symmetric multiprocessing boxes dramatically by rewriting the application using Posix user-level threads interfaces. The Silicon Graphics version of PhotoShop is not multithreaded as Silicon Graphics does not support Posix user-level threads interfaces, Adobe says. Neither Illustrator or PhotoShop run under Solaris x86, which according to Adobe requires a whole new recompilation and is not out there in the volumes it requires in any case.
