Everybody has the right to receive mail in a comfortable way. mailbox bombarding harms the medium, not the person.
And click through posts or forms are not really identified.
Lettres impress more, even if there is only one sentence in it, if it comes from the heart.
I've found many answers to my quests on Slashdot, or via identical initiatives, or Google or whatever.
But the problem is: what I find is rarely in my native language, nor reflections of issues relative to my local situation. And when i do, the quality is low, and the technological treshhold high.
Specifically in Europe, where commerce dominates or even dictates community (in the IT disciplines) there is a need of independent authorities, with professional pride instead of sheepish braindead egocentrism.
I feel (I hope I'm wrong) that most of the content I find in Europe is there because of commerce gains, and pushed technologies - not because there is a spirit of sharing intellectual property. This makes content close to worthless in my eyes.
We lag behind in content because we now finally have all the technology, but lack many of the needed techniques, simplicity, incentive or common sense.
I definitly would like to add http://www.stepwise.com to the list. The people maintaining this site have left us with a very interesting chronicle of ex-NeXTers moving over to MacOS X, and the reaction of the media to it. Stepwise kept the spirit up, in an ever shrinking NeXTSTEP community.
Some of the older articles contain the obviously outdated or dead links but are in fact revealing the hope from the developers - and size of the challenges facing Apple (both design and corporate) in slipping Mach, BSD and OPENSTEP under MacOS's dusty carpet.
But most of all these people gave us very nice tutorials and HOWTO's that will give interested people a reality-view on the technology and the developer community.
And GNUStep is everything but unknown to them.
I guess everybody out there is getting their apps and schnapps ready for the Mac OS X release next Saturday.
my opinion is that the web is about content. People with sites where content dominates have something to say, where visitors leave richer. Sites where layout dominates have something to sell, where visitors leave poorer.
hey, only the former make me smile.
I wonder if I can make music, scramble it, and offer it - or do I have to pay BIG BUCKS like the BIG COMPANIES in order to protect my work? Am I even entitled to use this technology to my own protection? Is this monopolizing the Media Mogulls as well?
There is much more than Mach/BSD to the operating system in Mac OS X. One of the most usefull ones to the user, yet part of the operating system is the systemwide "Services" menu, not to mix up with classic OS services.
I don't know if it's part of Carbon, but it definitly is part of Cocoa based apps.
And I don't know if Apple has yet drawn attention to it, but as a NeXT user (on of the few left) I could insert or transform or enhance parts of one document with systemwide services offered by other apps, small and large. What windows offers with "Insert Object" is still a poor mimic of a feature that could be more "opendoc" than opendoc ever could have achieved, with simplicity and usability as a bonus.
A small(!) example? With the NSTextPasteboardType (plain text) as medium, you can type an expression in any document widget that is able to select, cut and paste text, and ask the 'Terminal" application to replace the command with its terminal output.
Just go the the systemwide menu, choose Services->Terminal->evaluate (eval).
These Terminal services are completely controlable, customizable, enhancable, even completely optional, just waiting to serve any application, old or new. The same with images, dictionaries, translations, mail, URLs... any data that the two applications could understand or willing to offer (RTF, JPG, TIFF, text, sound)
You could even select the title of a folder, and check Webster for its meaning, or check its spelling.
It was 1992 then.
Wat is more: the developer needed to type three lines or less to implement the service, and another one to make the system see the service.
All thanks to the Objective-C runtime, and the exploitation of this through-out the operating system - also via non GUI contructs.
Does the open source community have similar contstructs, as elegant as this to both the user AND developer? Did I miss something, while growing a beard? Any Nexters outthere to correct or help me?
I'll try to be short. And I'l try to answer most of the posts here with a simple thought.
The language one uses on a project isn't as half important as the API's you are writing to.
For most of the cases - exept for some handy scripting - the hardest part is to get to know the APIs. The most productive programmer uses the cleverest API for the job, with the suitable language.
Once you know C, Objective C seems just a little effort to learn. Once you know Objective C, you can make a small step to Java.
The biggest trouble is learning the frameworks and the platform APIs, rather than learning Smalltalk or Objecive-C or whatever language you choose to do your thing.
I don't even know.NET enough to go into detail, but my guess is that if it's not a specific language, its the control over the API's or the specs that scares me. Be it called open or closed. And extensible it is, if you can implement all the specs to start with. And who will be first, allways if not the only one, do you think?
This is maybe where it resembles Java: it tries to be The API, but then with many skins, the same actor still.
There are more and more sites that tells us nicely we are not welcome to a few of there bells&whistles until we come back from a IE5 browser on a Windows platform.
I experience this *every* day form a IE5 on the Mac.
I don't care, because most of this content is commercial carrot for my donkey.
I do care, because it quietly turns the Net into.Net - with the same strategy the Nazis used to infiltrate the silent majority.
"Wir haben es nicht gewusst."
Don't tell me people come here to lie. They are worried.
And really... you should even be worried. Owing the printing press gives the power that corrupts.
This is a nice roundup of what compares Delphi to Interface Builder. Jbuilder or Delphi is IMHO one of the tools that comes the closest to IB, but still... nothing compares to....
The notion of working with the actual compiled objects, and the serialized MVC-setup is so amazing that it might be very hard to understand that power to those who are used to "code generators", and remember, this "revolutionary way" of creating apps, is about TEN YEARS OLD.
But what I recently read in the annotations from ESR in the Halloween I document precisely describes what happened to a lot of Unix tools and task-concepts, when NeXTSTEP hit the - mostly Open Source - BSD developerworld - I quote:
The other way is the Unix/Internet/Web way, which is to separate the engine (which does the work) from the UI (which does the viewing and control). This approach requires that the engine and UI communicate using a well-defined protocol. It's exemplified by browser/server pairs -- the engine specializes in being an engine, and the UI specializes in being a UI.
With this second approach, overall complexity goes down and reliability goes up. Further, the interface is easier to evolve/improve/customize, precisely because it's not tightly coupled to the engine. It's even possible to have multiple interfaces tuned to different audiences.
This is exactly where the first power of the NeXT GUI and Interface Builder showed up: Unix utilities plummed to a GUI front-end. Great stuff, DRY(*) compliant stuff!
(*)DRY : Don't Repeat Yourself - from the Pragmatic Programmer (a great book BTW)
Technology has always been thought of as something cold and lifeless, contrary to art, nature and agriculture.
Not that attractive.
But when that technology is able to carry, control, manipulate and transform data into knowledge, (mis)information or Art, it becomes a very powerfull medium. So the craftmanship to create a complex medium as this, rapidly raises philosophical, political, and ethical questions, whether you want it or not, and undeliberate associations with occultism, mysticism are easily made.
For this seems, but is *not* a microclimate we live in. This is not a simulation.
This "geeky" environment touches almost every aspect of life. So why not religion?
My guess is that MSFT must have IE ported to as many "platforms" as possible because IE is meant to become a platform of it's own, used to "rent" downloaded Windows(read:IE (read:.NET)) - applications and components. Think of IE as a C# Virtual Machine with an integrated internet dashboard, and a.NET steering wheel. whatever.
Whatever judgement may fall over a product that appears to have failed to reach its market, most important is that job done by the people involved with NextSTEP inspired me and many others.
The technology ignited Java, mainstream OOD, distributed computing, was imitated to an extreme superficial level, and still is ahead of its time.
The hype created around OO design and programming, by an incompetent industry, at that time, is partly responsible for strangling the real thing.
The potential, the development paradigm, at that time was too different, too rich, too good, too soon.
The elegance of the OO-frameworks, and the way apps and objects could talk to each other over the network, AFAIK, is still not matched neither in Open Source projects - besides maybe GNUStep - neither in Java's AWT. While NeXTSTEP / OPENSTEP objects are running around in a sweater, Bill's "objects" still need a wizard to get dressed(!), CORBA objects move around in armor, and others buy expensive tuxedo's to show off. And I fear.NET will be so sticky as a spiders web.
But things evolve, money buys the looks, while the rest of us try to have the most fun at doing what we do best. Learn, play and work hard.
And hope that we're doing the right thing right.
BTW, for the french-speaking readers, this site is four you: http://perso.wanadoo.fr/levenez/NeXTSTEP/index.htm l
Microsoft itself lets you download the specifications without asking you to agree on a trade secret about this document.
I followed your MSN link before, only to see a blank page.
In order to find out why I could not read the document, I saved the source of the downloaded htmlpage. The source contains the Kerberos specifications, and some statements about trade secrets, and about having downloaded this an about me agreeing not to tell anyone, except bla,bla,bla....
But I didn't agree, they didn't even ask me to before downloading, their webserver gave me the file without restrictions.
--- Could this be because my browser does not understand Javascript?---
Is this the reason why Microsoft gave me the specs unconditionally?
"Please review this Specification copy only if you licensed and downloaded it from Microsoft Corporations website" - Can they give it to me and ask to license it afterwards, or else order me to destroy it?
Slashdot Mirror
God sure knows when and how to plug a CD-ROM ribbon...
Everybody has the right to receive mail in a comfortable way. mailbox bombarding harms the medium, not the person.
And click through posts or forms are not really identified.
Lettres impress more, even if there is only one sentence in it, if it comes from the heart.
I've found many answers to my quests on Slashdot, or via identical initiatives, or Google or whatever.
But the problem is: what I find is rarely in my native language, nor reflections of issues relative to my local situation. And when i do, the quality is low, and the technological treshhold high.
Specifically in Europe, where commerce dominates or even dictates community (in the IT disciplines) there is a need of independent authorities, with professional pride instead of sheepish braindead egocentrism.
I feel (I hope I'm wrong) that most of the content I find in Europe is there because of commerce gains, and pushed technologies - not because there is a spirit of sharing intellectual property. This makes content close to worthless in my eyes.
We lag behind in content because we now finally have all the technology, but lack many of the needed techniques, simplicity, incentive or common sense.
In the land of the blind, one-eyed is King.
Some of the older articles contain the obviously outdated or dead links but are in fact revealing the hope from the developers - and size of the challenges facing Apple (both design and corporate) in slipping Mach, BSD and OPENSTEP under MacOS's dusty carpet.
But most of all these people gave us very nice tutorials and HOWTO's that will give interested people a reality-view on the technology and the developer community.
And GNUStep is everything but unknown to them.
I guess everybody out there is getting their apps and schnapps ready for the Mac OS X release next Saturday.
we use color pencils, they're cheap, fun to use and they force you to think hard before you draw a line.
BTW, my kids watercolor them. bjootiful!
my opinion is that the web is about content. People with sites where content dominates have something to say, where visitors leave richer. Sites where layout dominates have something to sell, where visitors leave poorer.
hey, only the former make me smile.
I wonder if I can make music, scramble it, and offer it - or do I have to pay BIG BUCKS like the BIG COMPANIES in order to protect my work? Am I even entitled to use this technology to my own protection? Is this monopolizing the Media Mogulls as well?
Is their opinion as humble as mine?
There is much more than Mach/BSD to the operating system in Mac OS X. One of the most usefull ones to the user, yet part of the operating system is the systemwide "Services" menu, not to mix up with classic OS services.
I don't know if it's part of Carbon, but it definitly is part of Cocoa based apps.
And I don't know if Apple has yet drawn attention to it, but as a NeXT user (on of the few left) I could insert or transform or enhance parts of one document with systemwide services offered by other apps, small and large. What windows offers with "Insert Object" is still a poor mimic of a feature that could be more "opendoc" than opendoc ever could have achieved, with simplicity and usability as a bonus.
A small(!) example? With the NSTextPasteboardType (plain text) as medium, you can type an expression in any document widget that is able to select, cut and paste text, and ask the 'Terminal" application to replace the command with its terminal output.
Just go the the systemwide menu, choose Services->Terminal->evaluate (eval).
These Terminal services are completely controlable, customizable, enhancable, even completely optional, just waiting to serve any application, old or new. The same with images, dictionaries, translations, mail, URLs... any data that the two applications could understand or willing to offer (RTF, JPG, TIFF, text, sound)
You could even select the title of a folder, and check Webster for its meaning, or check its spelling.
It was 1992 then.
Wat is more: the developer needed to type three lines or less to implement the service, and another one to make the system see the service.
All thanks to the Objective-C runtime, and the exploitation of this through-out the operating system - also via non GUI contructs.
Does the open source community have similar contstructs, as elegant as this to both the user AND developer? Did I miss something, while growing a beard? Any Nexters outthere to correct or help me?
I'll try to be short. And I'l try to answer most of the posts here with a simple thought.
The language one uses on a project isn't as half important as the API's you are writing to.
For most of the cases - exept for some handy scripting - the hardest part is to get to know the APIs. The most productive programmer uses the cleverest API for the job, with the suitable language. Once you know C, Objective C seems just a little effort to learn. Once you know Objective C, you can make a small step to Java.
The biggest trouble is learning the frameworks and the platform APIs, rather than learning Smalltalk or Objecive-C or whatever language you choose to do your thing.
I don't even know .NET enough to go into detail,
but my guess is that if it's not a specific language, its the control over the API's or the specs that scares me. Be it called open or closed. And extensible it is, if you can implement all the specs to start with. And who will be first, allways if not the only one, do you think?
This is maybe where it resembles Java: it tries to be The API, but then with many skins, the same actor still.
Scary really, this .NET
There are more and more sites that tells us nicely we are not welcome to a few of there bells&whistles until we come back from a IE5 browser on a Windows platform. .Net - with the same strategy the Nazis used to infiltrate the silent majority.
I experience this *every* day form a IE5 on the Mac.
I don't care, because most of this content is commercial carrot for my donkey.
I do care, because it quietly turns the Net into
"Wir haben es nicht gewusst."
Don't tell me people come here to lie. They are worried.
And really... you should even be worried. Owing the printing press gives the power that corrupts.
Real competition
(thanks Dell - good move...)
The notion of working with the actual compiled objects, and the serialized MVC-setup is so amazing that it might be very hard to understand that power to those who are used to "code generators", and remember, this "revolutionary way" of creating apps, is about TEN YEARS OLD.
But what I recently read in the annotations from ESR in the Halloween I document precisely describes what happened to a lot of Unix tools and task-concepts, when NeXTSTEP hit the - mostly Open Source - BSD developerworld - I quote:
The other way is the Unix/Internet/Web way, which is to separate the engine (which does the work) from the UI (which does the viewing and control). This approach requires that the engine and UI communicate using a well-defined protocol. It's exemplified by browser/server pairs -- the engine specializes in being an engine, and the UI specializes in being a UI.
With this second approach, overall complexity goes down and reliability goes up. Further, the interface is easier to evolve/improve/customize, precisely because it's not tightly coupled to the engine. It's even possible to have multiple interfaces tuned to different audiences.
This is exactly where the first power of the NeXT GUI and Interface Builder showed up: Unix utilities plummed to a GUI front-end. Great stuff, DRY(*) compliant stuff!
(*)DRY : Don't Repeat Yourself - from the Pragmatic Programmer (a great book BTW)
Technology has always been thought of as something cold and lifeless, contrary to art, nature and agriculture.
Not that attractive.
But when that technology is able to carry, control, manipulate and transform data into knowledge, (mis)information or Art, it becomes a very powerfull medium. So the craftmanship to create a complex medium as this, rapidly raises philosophical, political, and ethical questions, whether you want it or not, and undeliberate associations with occultism, mysticism are easily made.
For this seems, but is *not* a microclimate we live in. This is not a simulation.
This "geeky" environment touches almost every aspect of life. So why not religion?
My guess is that MSFT must have IE ported to as many "platforms" as possible because IE is meant to become a platform of it's own, used to "rent" downloaded Windows(read:IE (read:.NET)) - applications and components. Think of IE as a C# Virtual Machine with an integrated internet dashboard, and a .NET steering wheel. whatever.
Just the road NS wants to take with Java.
Innovation, right?
Yes, in case: how few posts with low karma at this topic. Think!
Whatever judgement may fall over a product that appears to have failed to reach its market, most important is that job done by the people involved with NextSTEP inspired me and many others. .NET will be so sticky as a spiders web.
m l
The technology ignited Java, mainstream OOD, distributed computing, was imitated to an extreme superficial level, and still is ahead of its time.
The hype created around OO design and programming, by an incompetent industry, at that time, is partly responsible for strangling the real thing.
The potential, the development paradigm, at that time was too different, too rich, too good, too soon.
The elegance of the OO-frameworks, and the way apps and objects could talk to each other over the network, AFAIK, is still not matched neither in Open Source projects - besides maybe GNUStep - neither in Java's AWT. While NeXTSTEP / OPENSTEP objects are running around in a sweater, Bill's "objects" still need a wizard to get dressed(!), CORBA objects move around in armor, and others buy expensive tuxedo's to show off. And I fear
But things evolve, money buys the looks, while the rest of us try to have the most fun at doing what we do best. Learn, play and work hard.
And hope that we're doing the right thing right.
BTW, for the french-speaking readers, this site is four you: http://perso.wanadoo.fr/levenez/NeXTSTEP/index.ht
informative?
I'll give the moderator here a score of 5:funny
I followed your MSN link before, only to see a blank page.
In order to find out why I could not read the document, I saved the source of the downloaded htmlpage. The source contains the Kerberos specifications, and some statements about trade secrets, and about having downloaded this an about me agreeing not to tell anyone, except bla,bla,bla....
But I didn't agree, they didn't even ask me to before downloading, their webserver gave me the file without restrictions.
--- Could this be because my browser does not understand Javascript?---
Is this the reason why Microsoft gave me the specs unconditionally?
"Please review this Specification copy only if you licensed and downloaded it from Microsoft Corporations website" - Can they give it to me and ask to license it afterwards, or else order me to destroy it?