Adobe had promised before that that ``all major upgrades'' will be Mac OS X native.
Unfortunately, Lighthouse Design, the company which ported FrameMaker 2 and 3 to NeXTstep got bought by Sun, so Adobe didn't even have that option of outsourcing the port.
For those searching for an alternative, LyX, http://www.lyx.org is _very_ nice, esp. the nifty new QT version for Aqua.
There's also a script to convert from FrameMaker's Maker Interchange Format (MIF) to LyX.
http://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~pablo/mif2lyx/
InDesign lacks the industrial-strength SGML stuff w/ FrameMaker has, so isn't an option. Pagemaker has also been buried (but at least InDesign is a viable alternative for it w/ the nifty script pack / additions Adobe announced recently).
xmltex is another good thing to use, or of course one can roll one's own XML publishing solutions w/ TeX.
and found examples of the ``Okudagrams'' since popularized on Star Trek: The Next Generation and later shows.
There're a fair number of programs using such an interface (even a couple of products licensed by Paramount such as ``Captain's Bridge'' a virtual tour of all the star ships), and even a project on Sourceforge to create a programming system and UI guide (look for LCARS, Library Computer Access and Retrieval System).
I've found such programs fairly useful on my pen slate and amenable to use w/o a keyboard....
I meant the collection of tools on my workbench in my basement....
William (who kind of regrets having given away a book on how to create a lathe by investment-style casting --- the idea was a lathe could replicate itself (the only tool in a shop which can), and be used to build a drill press &c.)
In that case, Leatherman is really missing out on an opportunity (and one which SOG has capitalized on).
To get back to the original discussion, well the solution would seem obvious:
- purchase a Leatherman
- take it to your machine shop
- cut off most of the blade
- grind the remainder of the blade down to make a Robertson screwdriver head
``et voila!'' a Leatherman suited not just for use in Canada, but also acceptable to the FAA (I think, maybe, perhaps, but you'd better check the regs on that).
I guess you're complaining about Phillips screws and drivers?
Remember, they're designed for being driven by a machine so that the head will pop out instead of overtorquing the connection --- that they're awkward to drive or remove by hand is a consequence of that feature.
Hardly ever see a Robertson screw hereabouts, so it's nice that SOG tools makes (in America for the most part) multi-tools suited for the Canadian market....
I bought my brother-in-law a Leatherman tool adapter for Christmas a couple of years back and it seems to've worked out well for him. Nice 'cause he can keep it in his briefcase for work, but not have the extra weight when recreating on the weekend where he's unlikely to find a torx &c.
Wasn't there a multi-tool which allows one to change the tools on it? If not, there out to be, or someone should make a small multi-tool which is certified for air travel. A Leatherman Micra sans knife blade (replace it w/ a nail file?) would be about right.
Failing that, buy a spare multi-tool and snap the knife blade off (terrible to do but...) --- last I checked the FAA regulations small eyeglass tool kits were okay, if pliers are as well, should work --- be sure to check the latest iteration of the FAA regs before travelling though.
For my part, the only time I didn't have my Leatherman w/ me was when travelling to Hawai'i last year --- normally I also keep a camera toolkit in a small leather ``Safety tool kit case'' which Levenger's was selling a few years back (way cool and highly recommended, has small wrenches and hex keys in addition to the normal screw drivers) but left that behind 'cause of the awl in it and since it goes beyond the afore-mentioned ``glasses repair kit''.
Actually, it's not just a lesson, but a complete transcription of an entire book, Ludovico Degli Arrighi's _La Operina_, known as ``the first writing book''. (I pointed out some (minor) typos a while back and list it on one of my book web pages). John Howard Benson did a wonderful translation of this text _and_ re-writing though which I highly recommmend if one can find it. Gunnlaugur's text is hard to beat for the price though.
That said, getting a fountain pen, esp. one w/ a broad nib will be essential for studying the text above --- no need to spend a huge amount, a Rotring ArtPen, Platignum or Osmiroid will work fine to start.
For use on the Tablet PC, Cross has just announced a line of aftermarket styluses which may help (though I've been able to write just fine w/ all the Wacom styluses I've ever tried _except_ for on my NCR-3125 w/ its too slick glass screen) --- if your Tablet PC has a glass screen you might want to consider a screen protector which'll make the ``feel'' more paper-like.
But Adobe et. al., don't have to port _all_ of the code, just the front-end for an application (they did code in a separation of the UI and the grunt work, didn't they?).
The thing which kills me is that Macromedia chose to stick w/ their foetid Carbon code for FreeHand, even though they had a NeXTstep version (Altsys Virtuoso 2 ~= Macromedia FreeHand 4) which they could've updated instead.
Doing so would've gotten them ``for free'' support for the NeXT-style font/type palette, Apple Advanced Typography, Unicode, and Services.
Oh well, at least now there's Cenon, http://www.cenon.info
There are however a _lot_ of patents for converting from colourspace to CMYK, a fair number of which are held by Adobe.
Pantone is primarily a spot colour standard (they provide a swatch book which shows what a given colour will look like on coated or uncoated stock), w/ a library of swatches for use on a display to approximate that. They also have a CMYK - equivalency list which shows which Pantone colours can be approximated by CMYK. And they've since branched out to offering a list of RGB swatches which allow one to pick an RGB colour which (in theory, on a colour callibrated monitor) will match a range of official Pantone libraries. These libraries are protected by trademark and copyright, and the methods used to get at the derivatives by patent.
That said, the big problem is that there's no way to do an ink representation in GIMP --- a generalized method of doing this would get one CMYK ``for free'', and allow one to do spot colour monotones, duotones, tritones &c. Possibly even Hexachrome (printing w/ six colours for an extend colour range). There's a British company (Cerilica) w/ a wonderfully cool system for this, Truism --- I _really_ wish Macromedia had listened when I suggested they license that tech.
I've a list of books in my bibliography on my web page which cover this sort of thing (ob. discl. I'm an Amazon Associate). Check out _Four Colors / One Image_ and _Duotones, Tritones and Quadtones_ for specifics.
Creaturehouse Expression (vector drawing program able to apply objects along arbitrary splines) and a handwriting recognition program (handwriting, not something like graffiti like xscribble or xstroke), preferrably one w/ ``ink'' handling (see recent RFCs by the W3C).
William (who tried Graffiti on his Newton ages ago, but prefers the flexibility of handwriting)
Take a look at GNUstep which draws from the NeXT tradition of picking an app to open an arbitriary file from a list of apps registered for that file type --- you know, the system which Mac OS X inherited from NeXTstep.
It's really unfortunate that GNUstep fell from its position of ``graphical interface for GNU projects'' because it was taking so long to do --- it's finally just about done.
William (and developers shouldn't see it as a straightjacket but rather a wonderful set of scaffolding and tools and blueprints which can be used to build any elements of anything you might wish to build)
I wasn't aware the context was still that of newbies.
Take a look at LyX then, http://www.lyx.org which is a ``what you see is what you mean'' document processor which uses LaTeX for formatting and TeX or pdfTeX for the actual typesetting (behind the scenes, no user intervention required).
Also, the http://custompub.aimsapp.com app should be suitable for anyone to use --- if not, let us know and we'll consider any usability thoughts you have.
Cenon is like to Sodipodi, a general-purpose vector illustration / drawing program. It's highly extensible though (free astrology module!), and is used a lot in a field (CAD/CAM) which also uses 3D, so your confusion is understandable.
pdfTeX, Latin Modern, and FontInst to name three opensource projects involving fonts and printing which are absolutely fabulous.
pdfTeX in particular is so robust it's used to do things like provide railroad timetables on-demand and to run commercial printing imposition systems. Take a look at http://custompub.aimsapp.com to see an interactive example.
Latin Modern is an excellent example of taking an opensource thing (the venerable Computer Modern), applying a new opensource application (MetaType1) and getting a new result (an up-dated and corrected and Type 1 font which is Unicode encoded so as to be suitable for use w/ a wide variety of the world's languages)
FontInst (a font installation utility for TeX written in TeX) is in a class by itself, and anyone who wants to be humbled should read _The TeXbook_, then look at its source code. Amazing. The only thing in the same class is the BASIC interpreter BASIX which was written in TeX (find both on http://www.ctan.org)
Other new and up-and-coming projects include: Scribus (page layout) and Cenon (drawing) and pfaedit (interactive font editing). If there were only alternatives to / equivalents of Adobe's TouchType.app, Fauve Matisse / Corel Painter / Alias Sketchbook (natural media painting) and Creaturehouse Expression (and a handwriting recognition program), TeXView.app (IPC.dvi preview and a TeX eq -> eps Service) I could switch to open source for all my work.
The want of something like to Creaturehouse Expression is especially painful since Microsoft bought out Creaturehouse last year, and despite a promise, purchasing of the program did _not_ come back on-line in November of 2003.
William (PS - and Latex3 should be in the works soon now that _The LateX Companion, 2nd Edition_ is soon to hit the presses)
The biggest problem with the Bradley was that so much got added to it, and it got so large that it became necessary to remove its side armor to fit it onto a C-130 --- even though the original spec was for a vehicle which could be driven on / off a C-130 and be ready for duty immediately.
There're some pretty cool design concepts on that page.
The title in the graphic is important to keep in mind: Resonantware::Near-Future Ubiquitous Networking Devices Visualized by Designers::
These aren't even prototypes, but rather concept explorations.
The duo-PC is something along the lines of an alternative tablet computing form factor I was thinking would be appropriate for Apple to do (short version, the ``itablet.com'' domain is taken, so an Apple tablet would probably be called the ``eBook'' to fit in-between the iBook and PowerBook as the eMac fits between the iMac and PowerMac). Essentially you'd have a clamshell laptop which would open up flat, but in place of the keyboard there'd be a second, touch sensitive display which could display a keyboard in laptop mode.
It's worth noting that a number of Dr. Knuth's books are available insofar as is possible --- look for _The TeXbook_ and _The METAFONTbook_ in particular, also his _Mathematical Writing_, and of course, one can typeset the (Literate Programming) source of tex.web to essentially get the book _TeX: The Program_ (only up-dated;)
Dr. Knuth has also published some _way_ cool commentary on programs as literate commentary on them, esp. look for his coverage of _The Colossal Cave Adventure_
Probably that's supposed to be funny, but for those who don't understand the context of the joke, Dr. Knuth is running behind (didn't I just write this up recently?) because
1 - the work itself is huge (when first asked to write it he delivered some six or seven _hundred_ pages of manuscript as the first _chapter_, causing his editor to ask, ``Don, just how long is this book going to be?''
2 - publishing switched from hot metal type set by a combination of casting machines and hand-work for mathematics typography to phototypesetters and after digital typesetters. Because of the limitations of the early typesetting systems, Dr. Knuth saw it as his obligation to set aside everything else and write a publishing / typesetting system for mathematics --- he thought it would be done over his sabbatical of that year, some decades later he announced TeX complete and frozen at version 3 (w/ a version number tending toward pi and a several hundred dollar reward for finding a bug).
Lest you think TeX is irrelevant in these graphical days, TeXinfo is the basis for the GNU documentation format, an awful lot of XML gets typeset programmatically by TeX (look up xmltex for one example), Adobe uses TeX's H&J as the basis for the ``multi-line composer'' in their InDesign page layout application (by way of URW's HZ), and there're wonderful new formats such as ConTeXt and documentclasses such as KomaScript and Memoir _and_ w/ the new edition of _The LaTeX Companion_ soon to be published, work on LaTeX3 should accelerate.
but you're right, AOL for Mac OS 9 or less, is still at v5.
So, update your Mac, then try out AOL for Mac OS X --- it's Carbon, not Cocoa, so no Services &c. but is serviceable enough --- I'm even able to use it to get a 'net connection on my wife's PowerBook for it to share over its AirPort card so that I can do the wireless web surfing thing on my pen slate.
And to get back on topic, AOL for Mac OS X offers the same ``Report Spam'' button on the incoming mail dialog list as the Windows version does. Sure wish the mail controls offered subject-based filtering though....
But NeXTstep _was_ available for x86 (and one can still find copies here and there if one looks) --- why didn't you run that? Oh yeah, it was $795 / seat w/ _extremely_ limited hardware support, and if one called in for tech support on install, one might get a tech who didn't know that (for example) ThinkPads need to have their memory size specified at boot so as to not interfere w/ APM. (Nothing personal mind, I'm just still kinda bumming I never managed to get NeXTstep running on my ThinkPad....)
If Apple had tried to make Mac OS X available for x86, they'd've been pilloried over limited driver support --- if you don't believe that, go try out Darwin on x86. What? You don't have the exact motherboard specified? Sorry.
Interestingly, it's looking like a _lot_ of what will be available for people using in Linux will be derived from things developed on NeXTstep (and I'm not talking about Doom, FreeHand and the World Wide Web) --- GNUstep has really improved by leaps and bounds in the past year, and a _lot_ of nifty software has come up, most notably a full-fledged PostScript / vector drawing program, Cenon available from http://www.cenon.info (so one no longer need regret GYVE being given up on, or a certain Japanese company not following through on an offer to donate their internally developed drawing program).
There's a new look, and a lot of new stuff available at http://www.gnustep.org --- check it out.
I first heard of LyX when someone asked if it could be made to run in NeXTstep, and was immediately quite impressed and taken by the concept (What You See Is What You Mean document processor, see www.lyx.org for details).
I'd _really_ like to see such things as Services handled within QT though, so that decently coded apps would automagically, ``just work'', as they do with the Cocoa toolkit. I suspect this would really require effort by Apple along the lines of their work on khtml for Safari --- I've argued that Apple should jump off the MS Office document bandwagon for a long while, and using LyX as the basis for a document processor would be a great way to do that.
Apparently you don't understand why Dr. Knuth needs his time --- he's _got_ to finish writing _The Art of Computer Programming_ before he passes away (and still keep up w/ errata for his books, other books he needs to write and the odd TeX update).
In case you're not familiar w/ TAoCP, when he was first asked about writing it, he knocked out ~600 pages of manuscript for the first chapter and submitted that --- his editor then asked in a humble and subdued voice, ``Don, just how long is this book going to be?'' (That first chapter then became most of Volume 1).
He's running behind on it, 'cause publishing changed from hot metal type to digital typesetting and the early systems were either clunky or awful (Penta wasn't too bad, but it was expensive, proprietary and there wasn't a reasonable means for authors to provide input). Dr. Knuth then saw it as his observation to provide a good solution to this (he thought he'd be finished over an up-coming sabbatical, ~20 yrs. and three versions / re-writes later we had TeX _and_ his ``Literate Programming'' system).
Lest you think TeX is moribund, its H&J (with extensions developed by URW w/ Prof. Hermann Zapf, their ``HZ'' system) is used as the basis for Adobe's InDesign page layout program. TeX then got much of these capabilities when Han The Thanh created pdfTeX (his studies were in part funded by Adobe Systems). In addition to pdfTeX there're Omega (Unicode-aware variant), e-TeX (more registers &c. needed for modern formats), Aleph (blending of the two) as well as NTS &c.
In addition to Plain TeX, LaTeX and TeXinfo (you may know the latter better as the basis for GNU's documentation format) there're new systems such as Hans Hagen's ConTeXt, Lollipop &c., as well as way cool extensions to LaTeX such as Memoir (v1.6 was just announced), Komascript (typesetting to the standards Jan Tschichold upheld at Penguin Books), NCC-LaTeX and enough more to almost fill a _DVD_ w/ free software and support tools. Plus Frank Mittelbach's second edition of _The LaTeX Companion_ is almost done, after which he'll be freed up to work on LaTeX3.
And all that came from a small detour in his writing of TAoCP --- the text itself is just as important.
I've d/l'd a couple of versions (see other posts for why) and started reading the first book, but just didn't find it that engaging, nor to have any new ideas.
Hasn't that story (future w/ immortal people who can do pretty much anything and are pretty much totally out-of-touch w/ the past) already been told in Roger Zelazny's _Elegy for Angels and Dogs_ (and reprised in Walter Jon Williams' sequel _The Graveyard Heart_)? (the twain were published as a Tor Double, but not in the way cool upside down / double book format since one was a sequel of the other).
I read through the first few pages of the other story, but just not finding much of interest there either.
Anyone want to reassure me that they're worth the effort to read, or warn me away from wasting any further time / effort?
I wasn't complaining, merely commenting / observing and ammending my suggestion of the.pdf as being suitable to print.
I'd be more interested in providing a more nicely formatted version if it weren't such a crap shoot of ``first come first posted'' as opposed to the author making an attempt to discern which version is nicer (or arranging for a way for users to have a choice or vote on what they prefer) --- actually, I have been meaning to add some things to my portfolio, so will probably look into designing a layout for this to at least post on my own website, but that's not going to happen too quickly (have to finish up my paper for TUG2003 and finish editing the other papers before anything other than work is done by yours truly).
William (whose.pdf is done distilling and who needs to get back to work;)
Slashdot Mirror
Adobe had promised before that that ``all major upgrades'' will be Mac OS X native.
Unfortunately, Lighthouse Design, the company which ported FrameMaker 2 and 3 to NeXTstep got bought by Sun, so Adobe didn't even have that option of outsourcing the port.
For those searching for an alternative, LyX, http://www.lyx.org is _very_ nice, esp. the nifty new QT version for Aqua.
There's also a script to convert from FrameMaker's Maker Interchange Format (MIF) to LyX.
http://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~pablo/mif2lyx/
InDesign lacks the industrial-strength SGML stuff w/ FrameMaker has, so isn't an option. Pagemaker has also been buried (but at least InDesign is a viable alternative for it w/ the nifty script pack / additions Adobe announced recently).
xmltex is another good thing to use, or of course one can roll one's own XML publishing solutions w/ TeX.
William
Also Atari's GEM as was noted previously.
The site apparently completely misses pen computing oriented UIs though.
No PenPoint, PenRight, Newton, Palm, WinCE
Rather a shame that, especially given that some pen programs have been _very_ innovative / influential.
FutureWave SmartSketch gave us Flash
Newton provides Mac OS X w/ InkWell
Go getting buried gave MS room for Windows for Pen Computing, and Taiwan a stick to beat them up w/ for licensing (Taiwan's MITI bought PenPoint)
Also misses HP's NewWave, which was note merely a shell on top of Windows, but also a UI in its own right (was to be the UI for Newtek's Mac clones)
William
Agreed. The movie from the '70s was great! Especially for a low budget production with cheesy effects ;)
Very true to the book, which is wonderful.
Rather a shame the movie got hung up on the rights to the Beatles' song, ``I get by with a little help from my friends''.
William
and found examples of the ``Okudagrams'' since popularized on Star Trek: The Next Generation and later shows.
a rs-terminal.net/: //www.lcars-am.org/
There're a fair number of programs using such an interface (even a couple of products licensed by Paramount such as ``Captain's Bridge'' a virtual tour of all the star ships), and even a project on Sourceforge to create a programming system and UI guide (look for LCARS, Library Computer Access and Retrieval System).
I've found such programs fairly useful on my pen slate and amenable to use w/o a keyboard....
Links:
http://www.lcarscom.net/
http://www.lc
http://www.bennisoft.com/
http
William
``local machine shop''?
I meant the collection of tools on my workbench in my basement....
William
(who kind of regrets having given away a book on how to create a lathe by investment-style casting --- the idea was a lathe could replicate itself (the only tool in a shop which can), and be used to build a drill press &c.)
In that case, Leatherman is really missing out on an opportunity (and one which SOG has capitalized on).
To get back to the original discussion, well the solution would seem obvious:
- purchase a Leatherman
- take it to your machine shop
- cut off most of the blade
- grind the remainder of the blade down to make a Robertson screwdriver head
``et voila!'' a Leatherman suited not just for use in Canada, but also acceptable to the FAA (I think, maybe, perhaps, but you'd better check the regs on that).
William
I guess you're complaining about Phillips screws and drivers?
Remember, they're designed for being driven by a machine so that the head will pop out instead of overtorquing the connection --- that they're awkward to drive or remove by hand is a consequence of that feature.
Hardly ever see a Robertson screw hereabouts, so it's nice that SOG tools makes (in America for the most part) multi-tools suited for the Canadian market....
I bought my brother-in-law a Leatherman tool adapter for Christmas a couple of years back and it seems to've worked out well for him. Nice 'cause he can keep it in his briefcase for work, but not have the extra weight when recreating on the weekend where he's unlikely to find a torx &c.
William
Wasn't there a multi-tool which allows one to change the tools on it? If not, there out to be, or someone should make a small multi-tool which is certified for air travel. A Leatherman Micra sans knife blade (replace it w/ a nail file?) would be about right.
Failing that, buy a spare multi-tool and snap the knife blade off (terrible to do but...) --- last I checked the FAA regulations small eyeglass tool kits were okay, if pliers are as well, should work --- be sure to check the latest iteration of the FAA regs before travelling though.
For my part, the only time I didn't have my Leatherman w/ me was when travelling to Hawai'i last year --- normally I also keep a camera toolkit in a small leather ``Safety tool kit case'' which Levenger's was selling a few years back (way cool and highly recommended, has small wrenches and hex keys in addition to the normal screw drivers) but left that behind 'cause of the awl in it and since it goes beyond the afore-mentioned ``glasses repair kit''.
William
Actually, it's not just a lesson, but a complete transcription of an entire book, Ludovico Degli Arrighi's _La Operina_, known as ``the first writing book''. (I pointed out some (minor) typos a while back and list it on one of my book web pages). John Howard Benson did a wonderful translation of this text _and_ re-writing though which I highly recommmend if one can find it. Gunnlaugur's text is hard to beat for the price though.
That said, getting a fountain pen, esp. one w/ a broad nib will be essential for studying the text above --- no need to spend a huge amount, a Rotring ArtPen, Platignum or Osmiroid will work fine to start.
For use on the Tablet PC, Cross has just announced a line of aftermarket styluses which may help (though I've been able to write just fine w/ all the Wacom styluses I've ever tried _except_ for on my NCR-3125 w/ its too slick glass screen) --- if your Tablet PC has a glass screen you might want to consider a screen protector which'll make the ``feel'' more paper-like.
William
But Adobe et. al., don't have to port _all_ of the code, just the front-end for an application (they did code in a separation of the UI and the grunt work, didn't they?).
The thing which kills me is that Macromedia chose to stick w/ their foetid Carbon code for FreeHand, even though they had a NeXTstep version (Altsys Virtuoso 2 ~= Macromedia FreeHand 4) which they could've updated instead.
Doing so would've gotten them ``for free'' support for the NeXT-style font/type palette, Apple Advanced Typography, Unicode, and Services.
Oh well, at least now there's Cenon, http://www.cenon.info
William
There are however a _lot_ of patents for converting from colourspace to CMYK, a fair number of which are held by Adobe.
Pantone is primarily a spot colour standard (they provide a swatch book which shows what a given colour will look like on coated or uncoated stock), w/ a library of swatches for use on a display to approximate that. They also have a CMYK - equivalency list which shows which Pantone colours can be approximated by CMYK. And they've since branched out to offering a list of RGB swatches which allow one to pick an RGB colour which (in theory, on a colour callibrated monitor) will match a range of official Pantone libraries. These libraries are protected by trademark and copyright, and the methods used to get at the derivatives by patent.
That said, the big problem is that there's no way to do an ink representation in GIMP --- a generalized method of doing this would get one CMYK ``for free'', and allow one to do spot colour monotones, duotones, tritones &c. Possibly even Hexachrome (printing w/ six colours for an extend colour range). There's a British company (Cerilica) w/ a wonderfully cool system for this, Truism --- I _really_ wish Macromedia had listened when I suggested they license that tech.
I've a list of books in my bibliography on my web page which cover this sort of thing (ob. discl. I'm an Amazon Associate). Check out _Four Colors / One Image_ and _Duotones, Tritones and Quadtones_ for specifics.
William
Sorry, didn't phrase that well.
Should've been something like...
Creaturehouse Expression (vector drawing program able to apply objects along arbitrary splines) and a handwriting recognition program (handwriting, not something like graffiti like xscribble or xstroke), preferrably one w/ ``ink'' handling (see recent RFCs by the W3C).
William
(who tried Graffiti on his Newton ages ago, but prefers the flexibility of handwriting)
Take a look at GNUstep which draws from the NeXT tradition of picking an app to open an arbitriary file from a list of apps registered for that file type --- you know, the system which Mac OS X inherited from NeXTstep.
It's really unfortunate that GNUstep fell from its position of ``graphical interface for GNU projects'' because it was taking so long to do --- it's finally just about done.
William
(and developers shouldn't see it as a straightjacket but rather a wonderful set of scaffolding and tools and blueprints which can be used to build any elements of anything you might wish to build)
I wasn't aware the context was still that of newbies.
Take a look at LyX then, http://www.lyx.org which is a ``what you see is what you mean'' document processor which uses LaTeX for formatting and TeX or pdfTeX for the actual typesetting (behind the scenes, no user intervention required).
Also, the http://custompub.aimsapp.com app should be suitable for anyone to use --- if not, let us know and we'll consider any usability thoughts you have.
Cenon is like to Sodipodi, a general-purpose vector illustration / drawing program. It's highly extensible though (free astrology module!), and is used a lot in a field (CAD/CAM) which also uses 3D, so your confusion is understandable.
William
And here I was all set to moderate. Oh well.
.dvi preview and a TeX eq -> eps Service) I could switch to open source for all my work.
pdfTeX, Latin Modern, and FontInst to name three opensource projects involving fonts and printing which are absolutely fabulous.
pdfTeX in particular is so robust it's used to do things like provide railroad timetables on-demand and to run commercial printing imposition systems. Take a look at http://custompub.aimsapp.com to see an interactive example.
Latin Modern is an excellent example of taking an opensource thing (the venerable Computer Modern), applying a new opensource application (MetaType1) and getting a new result (an up-dated and corrected and Type 1 font which is Unicode encoded so as to be suitable for use w/ a wide variety of the world's languages)
FontInst (a font installation utility for TeX written in TeX) is in a class by itself, and anyone who wants to be humbled should read _The TeXbook_, then look at its source code. Amazing. The only thing in the same class is the BASIC interpreter BASIX which was written in TeX (find both on http://www.ctan.org)
Other new and up-and-coming projects include: Scribus (page layout) and Cenon (drawing) and pfaedit (interactive font editing). If there were only alternatives to / equivalents of Adobe's TouchType.app, Fauve Matisse / Corel Painter / Alias Sketchbook (natural media painting) and Creaturehouse Expression (and a handwriting recognition program), TeXView.app (IPC
The want of something like to Creaturehouse Expression is especially painful since Microsoft bought out Creaturehouse last year, and despite a promise, purchasing of the program did _not_ come back on-line in November of 2003.
William
(PS - and Latex3 should be in the works soon now that _The LateX Companion, 2nd Edition_ is soon to hit the presses)
The biggest problem with the Bradley was that so much got added to it, and it got so large that it became necessary to remove its side armor to fit it onto a C-130 --- even though the original spec was for a vehicle which could be driven on / off a C-130 and be ready for duty immediately.
William
There're some pretty cool design concepts on that page.
::Near-Future Ubiquitous Networking Devices Visualized by Designers::
The title in the graphic is important to keep in mind:
Resonantware
These aren't even prototypes, but rather concept explorations.
The duo-PC is something along the lines of an alternative tablet computing form factor I was thinking would be appropriate for Apple to do (short version, the ``itablet.com'' domain is taken, so an Apple tablet would probably be called the ``eBook'' to fit in-between the iBook and PowerBook as the eMac fits between the iMac and PowerMac). Essentially you'd have a clamshell laptop which would open up flat, but in place of the keyboard there'd be a second, touch sensitive display which could display a keyboard in laptop mode.
William
It's worth noting that a number of Dr. Knuth's books are available insofar as is possible --- look for _The TeXbook_ and _The METAFONTbook_ in particular, also his _Mathematical Writing_, and of course, one can typeset the (Literate Programming) source of tex.web to essentially get the book _TeX: The Program_ (only up-dated ;)
Dr. Knuth has also published some _way_ cool commentary on programs as literate commentary on them, esp. look for his coverage of _The Colossal Cave Adventure_
William
Probably that's supposed to be funny, but for those who don't understand the context of the joke, Dr. Knuth is running behind (didn't I just write this up recently?) because
1 - the work itself is huge (when first asked to write it he delivered some six or seven _hundred_ pages of manuscript as the first _chapter_, causing his editor to ask, ``Don, just how long is this book going to be?''
2 - publishing switched from hot metal type set by a combination of casting machines and hand-work for mathematics typography to phototypesetters and after digital typesetters. Because of the limitations of the early typesetting systems, Dr. Knuth saw it as his obligation to set aside everything else and write a publishing / typesetting system for mathematics --- he thought it would be done over his sabbatical of that year, some decades later he announced TeX complete and frozen at version 3 (w/ a version number tending toward pi and a several hundred dollar reward for finding a bug).
Lest you think TeX is irrelevant in these graphical days, TeXinfo is the basis for the GNU documentation format, an awful lot of XML gets typeset programmatically by TeX (look up xmltex for one example), Adobe uses TeX's H&J as the basis for the ``multi-line composer'' in their InDesign page layout application (by way of URW's HZ), and there're wonderful new formats such as ConTeXt and documentclasses such as KomaScript and Memoir _and_ w/ the new edition of _The LaTeX Companion_ soon to be published, work on LaTeX3 should accelerate.
William
but you're right, AOL for Mac OS 9 or less, is still at v5.
So, update your Mac, then try out AOL for Mac OS X --- it's Carbon, not Cocoa, so no Services &c. but is serviceable enough --- I'm even able to use it to get a 'net connection on my wife's PowerBook for it to share over its AirPort card so that I can do the wireless web surfing thing on my pen slate.
And to get back on topic, AOL for Mac OS X offers the same ``Report Spam'' button on the incoming mail dialog list as the Windows version does. Sure wish the mail controls offered subject-based filtering though....
William
But NeXTstep _was_ available for x86 (and one can still find copies here and there if one looks) --- why didn't you run that? Oh yeah, it was $795 / seat w/ _extremely_ limited hardware support, and if one called in for tech support on install, one might get a tech who didn't know that (for example) ThinkPads need to have their memory size specified at boot so as to not interfere w/ APM. (Nothing personal mind, I'm just still kinda bumming I never managed to get NeXTstep running on my ThinkPad....)
If Apple had tried to make Mac OS X available for x86, they'd've been pilloried over limited driver support --- if you don't believe that, go try out Darwin on x86. What? You don't have the exact motherboard specified? Sorry.
Interestingly, it's looking like a _lot_ of what will be available for people using in Linux will be derived from things developed on NeXTstep (and I'm not talking about Doom, FreeHand and the World Wide Web) --- GNUstep has really improved by leaps and bounds in the past year, and a _lot_ of nifty software has come up, most notably a full-fledged PostScript / vector drawing program, Cenon available from http://www.cenon.info (so one no longer need regret GYVE being given up on, or a certain Japanese company not following through on an offer to donate their internally developed drawing program).
There's a new look, and a lot of new stuff available at http://www.gnustep.org --- check it out.
William
::applause::
I first heard of LyX when someone asked if it could be made to run in NeXTstep, and was immediately quite impressed and taken by the concept (What You See Is What You Mean document processor, see www.lyx.org for details).
I'd _really_ like to see such things as Services handled within QT though, so that decently coded apps would automagically, ``just work'', as they do with the Cocoa toolkit. I suspect this would really require effort by Apple along the lines of their work on khtml for Safari --- I've argued that Apple should jump off the MS Office document bandwagon for a long while, and using LyX as the basis for a document processor would be a great way to do that.
William
Apparently you don't understand why Dr. Knuth needs his time --- he's _got_ to finish writing _The Art of Computer Programming_ before he passes away (and still keep up w/ errata for his books, other books he needs to write and the odd TeX update).
In case you're not familiar w/ TAoCP, when he was first asked about writing it, he knocked out ~600 pages of manuscript for the first chapter and submitted that --- his editor then asked in a humble and subdued voice, ``Don, just how long is this book going to be?'' (That first chapter then became most of Volume 1).
He's running behind on it, 'cause publishing changed from hot metal type to digital typesetting and the early systems were either clunky or awful (Penta wasn't too bad, but it was expensive, proprietary and there wasn't a reasonable means for authors to provide input). Dr. Knuth then saw it as his observation to provide a good solution to this (he thought he'd be finished over an up-coming sabbatical, ~20 yrs. and three versions / re-writes later we had TeX _and_ his ``Literate Programming'' system).
Lest you think TeX is moribund, its H&J (with extensions developed by URW w/ Prof. Hermann Zapf, their ``HZ'' system) is used as the basis for Adobe's InDesign page layout program. TeX then got much of these capabilities when Han The Thanh created pdfTeX (his studies were in part funded by Adobe Systems). In addition to pdfTeX there're Omega (Unicode-aware variant), e-TeX (more registers &c. needed for modern formats), Aleph (blending of the two) as well as NTS &c.
In addition to Plain TeX, LaTeX and TeXinfo (you may know the latter better as the basis for GNU's documentation format) there're new systems such as Hans Hagen's ConTeXt, Lollipop &c., as well as way cool extensions to LaTeX such as Memoir (v1.6 was just announced), Komascript (typesetting to the standards Jan Tschichold upheld at Penguin Books), NCC-LaTeX and enough more to almost fill a _DVD_ w/ free software and support tools. Plus Frank Mittelbach's second edition of _The LaTeX Companion_ is almost done, after which he'll be freed up to work on LaTeX3.
And all that came from a small detour in his writing of TAoCP --- the text itself is just as important.
William
I've d/l'd a couple of versions (see other posts for why) and started reading the first book, but just didn't find it that engaging, nor to have any new ideas.
Hasn't that story (future w/ immortal people who can do pretty much anything and are pretty much totally out-of-touch w/ the past) already been told in Roger Zelazny's _Elegy for Angels and Dogs_ (and reprised in Walter Jon Williams' sequel _The Graveyard Heart_)? (the twain were published as a Tor Double, but not in the way cool upside down / double book format since one was a sequel of the other).
I read through the first few pages of the other story, but just not finding much of interest there either.
Anyone want to reassure me that they're worth the effort to read, or warn me away from wasting any further time / effort?
William
I wasn't complaining, merely commenting / observing and ammending my suggestion of the .pdf as being suitable to print.
.pdf is done distilling and who needs to get back to work ;)
I'd be more interested in providing a more nicely formatted version if it weren't such a crap shoot of ``first come first posted'' as opposed to the author making an attempt to discern which version is nicer (or arranging for a way for users to have a choice or vote on what they prefer) --- actually, I have been meaning to add some things to my portfolio, so will probably look into designing a layout for this to at least post on my own website, but that's not going to happen too quickly (have to finish up my paper for TUG2003 and finish editing the other papers before anything other than work is done by yours truly).
William
(whose