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In Search of the NeXTSTEP Look
GUNTHER asks:
"I've fallen in love with the NeXTSTEP style interface. I would love to have a NeXT machine but they are rather hard to come by these days, so I have been looking for programs and libraries to emulate its look and feel. I am familiar with GNUStep, Afterstep, TKStep, and GTKStep but what else is available to emulate the NeXTSTEP look and feel?"
If buying the crap people sell on usenet "ain't your thing", then hop on over to:
http://www.orb.com/
Since this is the basic goal of the Window Maker effort, most of the links you'll want can be found via www.windowmaker.org
Dig around and you'll find a link to FSViewer, the only NS-like file manager (except for TKDesk), that I'm aware of.
Perhaps most importantly, check out the mail program Postilion at www.postilion.org
Perhaps the biggest lack is a good terminal program - rxvt is okay, but none have the Terminal.app features of searching for text/regexps, low memory cost of arbitrary scrollback buffers (basically unlimited).
The other problem is NS's nice cut/copy/paste user interface, compared to X's dumber one (text only - no support for multiple data types, no keyboard cut/copy/paste, tying of selection to window focus...).
luke
And the mouse sensitivity under NextStep really sucks.
Okay, enough of my opinions, let me offer some real info. "I would love to have a NeXT machine but they are rather hard to come by these days...." Actually, that's wrong. NeXT machines are easy to get these days, because nobody wants them. Check out these sites:
Spherical Solutions (www.orb.com)
Black Hole Inc. (www.blackholeinc.com)
Deep Space Tech (www.deepspacetech.com)
Any of them would be happy to sell you a NeXT box for a few hundred bucks. Also, look at the software at Black Hole, Inc. If you're a student, you can get NextStep for under a hundred bucks, if I remember right.
Here are a couple more links that you might find useful:
http://www3.pair.com/mccarthy/nextstep/
http://people.ne.mediaone.net/jkheit
I hope something in here was helpful
ccg
chad at glendenin dot org
... must have grabbed this from me and forwarded :) /. and see :) :)
it to you.
Just yesterday I was poking around. I had just
done an apt-get upgrade (I run Debian, unstable)
and noticed that gtk-engines-gtkstep had been
updated. See, before, the theme had been almost-
NeXTish but not quite; the scrollbar buttons were
at the ends instead of both at one end. Well this
new update fixed that, so I was quite happy.
Glowering in my fully NeXTiszed GTK apps I began
to ponder on my environment. I run WindowMaker
(always have.. remember d/ling and compiling it
back in my RH days..) and I've got the mandatory
ASClock running. "How nice it is" I thought.
Then the thought occured to me, to write a page
telling people what they should do to recieve
NeXT enlightenment in X. Then I check
this. How appropriate
I don't know if there are any other pages like
this but I thought I'd write a "How to NeXTify
your X" page. What to get and where, how to set
it up.. mainly the former though
If anyone is interested in helping, or has any
information on NeXT apps, please drop me a line.
James
Lighthouse designs released a toolkit for Solaris a few years ago that lets you NeXT-ize your Sun box. It's out in the open now at:
o ns
ftp://ftp.peanuts.org/pub/OpenStep/implementati
or something like that.
Cheers,
m
You know what to remove for e-mail. Don't you?
Hi, I've used NeXTStep quite a bit. Windowmaker
acts closer to NeXTStep than any other X WM I've
seen, but it's still not *very* true to the
original. However, many of the differences are
based on the way that Workspace.app was
integrated into NeXTStep, integration that would
be difficult (but not impossible) to achieve
under X on a Linux system without modifications
to both.
One thing I really miss is the built-in
file-manager present in NeXTStep --
FSViewer.app kind of reminds me of it, but
it's not nearly close enough at this point.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
It's the 'official' GNUStep window manager.
...
Design goals are
It tries to emulate the elegant look and feel of the NeXTSTEP(tm) GUI. It is relatively fast, feature rich, and easy to configure and use.
At this point I'd like to say thanks to Alfred K.
Kojima and everybody else involved in make Wmaker
so cool.
There's still plenty available out there. I used to frequent the comp.systems.next.marketplace (i think that's it). Also I see many on ebay everyday under the computers:unix section. I haven't gotten one there, but I would recommend deepspacetech.com, especially if your on the east coast. That's where I got my NeXTstation color. As a side note, you can go to the Apple Enterprise Y2K page and download a pdf form to request a y2k copy of NEXTSTEP/OpenSTEP (it depends on the serial no. of your computer). I'm planning on doing this so I can get NS 3.3 Dev (right now I have user). As far as X windows goes I use WindowMaker, and in some ways like it even better than NS. It even has a built in fiend (i.e. the clip).
Aren't you proud, Ryan? Your question got posted.
-- A hacker is a machine for turning caffeine into code. G: GU d-(--) s:- a--- C++++(++)$ UL++(+++) P+(++) L++(+++)
--Danny, not helping much
I've noticed quite a few of them on eBay, and they're pretty cheap, so there seems to be no reason not to get the original.
Or you could just wait. MacOS X, supposedly out late this year, has the authentic NeXT genetic code, and I suspect a NeXT-like development environment would be available. You could also buy NeXTStep for the PC, although I believe it's a bit pricey.
I haven't actually used a real NeXT, so I can't really comment on how good the various Linux-based imitations are.
D
----
--
Midgard Project - Open Source CMS
About an year ago I used an "alternative windows manager" for windoze called litestep. It's customizable, open source, and relatively stable. Litestepe runs on 95/98/NT, http://www.litestep.org
First post!
had to do it
It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
enlightenment comes with two step themes. To it add GTKStep. Start up Gnome. Put the panel in the upper right hand corner. Now with all the gnome and GTK stuff all your applications will have a step theme. If you wan't a word processor, Get abiword. For ftp (wxftp, gftp, IglooFTP) These will all load up the Step theme. Web browser: Mozilla. Just about any application you need you can get done with gtk and therefore looking Stepish. Window Maker is also a good Step like Window manager.
It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
Litestep is a explorer.exe replacement for Windows 9x that looks & acts like AfterStep. It's freeware ... some Windows apps (mostly installers that create desktop icons) hate it, but I've had very few issues with it.
Try http://www.litestep.net for information