Re: bigger, sexier, more phly debian...
From: Ean Schuessler <ean@dallas-cs-000.novare.net>
Subject: bigger, sexier, more phly debian...
> - Since GnuStep (Free NextStep, OpenStep, what-have-you) appears to be the
> GNU take on operating environments shouldn't that be the take of Debian as
> well? I think that this is a good idea since: OpenStep looks really cool,
> NeXT and the NeXT environment were and still are ahead of their time, Mr.
> Perens works for Pixar, etc. et all...
Pixar isn't really interested in Linux yet - I will try to change this
in the next year or so - I don't know if I will get anywhere. The next time
I see Steve Jobs, I'll ask him how he feels about OpenStep.
However, having OpenStep on the system would be nice. I wouldn't fix on it as
the One True Interface - that's not necessary.
> Should we, via some sort of converter or an extension of dpkg's
> intelligence, develop a method of making the Red Hat distributions useful to
> us, aka. installable?
Red Hat was agreeable to working on a package merge when last we
discussed this, which was over 4 months ago. I have plans in this direction,
which can not go ahead until after the 1.1 release. That must be our
first priority for now.
> Develop an Xwindows version of dselect.
That and other dselect enhancements won't happen unless someone volunteers
to write them.
From: "David L. Johnson" <dlj0@lehigh.edu>
> In addition, the network transparency of X is not (to my
> knowledge) available in NeXTStep, which would be a serious detriment.
Objective C's message-passing paradigm works just as well over a network
connection as it does in a single process. This was used to make NexTStep
network-transparent. It was so simple that it was done as an afterthought.
I think it was disabled in later versions because they did not want to deal
with the security issues, and the performance was of course lower than a
local connection.
> NeXTstep did win on a few things:
> 1) remote execution of code on the server, for tight feedback loops
You mean PostScript code, or Objective C? Display PostScript doesn't
understand input devices, partially because Adobe never cared to duplicate
the functionality of NeWS - in fact Adobe didn't care about Display PostScript
at all - they let a guy at NeXT design it for them. Of course Java is the
successor to NeWS - few people seem to realize that yet.
> 2) *device independent graphics* which X does not have!
Yes, PostScript does this well. Rendering can be a 1-way pipe, which isn't
really the case for X.
> Of course, this indicates nothing about the acceptance or usefulness
> of GNUstep... which, if it depends on the use of Objective C the way
> NeXTstep did, is probably not going anywhere :-)
It does. Objective-C isn't a bad language - it simply didn't catch on because
StepStone did such a bad job of marketing it and did their best to ignore NeXT
when NeXT could have been their savior. I found it easy enough to write in the
language.
From: "David L. Johnson" <dlj0@lehigh.edu>
> I don't understand this. How can an OS made to run on only their own
> computers have had device-independent graphics?
The vehicle for client-server communications was the device-independent
PostScript language.
Jim Robinson <jimr@simons-rock.edu>
> it would be nice to package the bowman window manager (links to the
> unoffical page are on my homepage).
License terms? Volunteers?
Thanks
Bruce
--
Pixar Animation Studios: Reality is not our business.
Pixar's "Toy Story" $184.79M domestic, $101.7M overseas and counting.
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