Outside The Box blogs, Autodesk University anecdotes, articles, blog digests, and product news in chronological order. See Writing for the same material by subject.
Autodesk Discussion Group Facelift Offer
My participation in the Autodesk discussion groups (http://www.autodesk.com/discussion) has been severely curtailed since the notorious “upgrade” a few months ago. One of the many problems introduced by the upgrade is the loss of formatting. It’s now virtually impossible to post messages that include inline AutoLISP or ObjectARX code without them being reformatted into unreadable garbage. Even attaching the code as a file is difficult (the “solution” is to rename files with a .txt extension!) As a result, many queries for programming help go unanswered. Autodesk has made an attempt to provide a fix (http://discussion.autodesk.com/forums/ann.jspa?annID=125), but a survey of the posts in any of the programming groups shows that it’s not working. [Thread has been removed by Autodesk, so link was changed to point to archived thread.] The recently announced layoffs and related cost cutting measures at Autodesk have dimmed my hopes for a resolution. Therefore, I’ve decided to offer my services to fix the problem. Autodesk, I’m offering to donate my time to fix your discussion group software. Just give me access to a development and testing platform, and the right to modify or rewrite the code. Readers, can I get an “Amen”?