cooper@beowulf.ucsd.edu (Kenneth B Cooper) (03/07/88)
I'm in the process of developing a program to get acquainted with the macintosh toolbox. I want to write something serious which I could expect to be used by many people in the public domain. After purchasing CIS Navigator, and oohing and aahing for awhile, I was inspired to write a similar mac interface to unix accounts. For those who haven't seen Navigator, it acts as an offline front end for compuserve, letting you specify in a maclike fashion what you want to do, and when you want the on-line session to take place. While UNIX doesn't usually have the cost factor that makes this such a desirable program, it does have a need for a simple, windowed environment (Sun users, please keep it down). Also, if anyone reads news/mail from home over a 1200 baud modem, they'll appreciate being able to do their editing/viewing offline at full speed. The project I envision will be multi-faceted, with facilities for reading, saving, and responding to mail, reading and posting news, downloading files from ftp servers, and up/downloading files from the host itself. It will be multifinder compatible, so sessions can take place while the user is doing something else. I plan on making it flexible enough to speak with most any brand of unix. Since human interface is really my passion (and the reason I got so fired up about the mac), I will be making this its highest priority. If anyone is interested in this idea, let me know via e-mail. I'm looking for input as to useful features from the average unix type, so if you have any special wishes that I haven't mentioned, let me know. And, of course, if this has been done (I imagine not at the level of ambition I envision), put me out my misery quickly. Thanks in advance, Ken Cooper ARPA: cooper%cs@ucsd.edu UUCP: ...!ucsd!sdcsvax!cooper COMPUSERVE: 71571,407 GENIE: XTH52577 ARPA: cooper%cs@ucsd.edu UUCP: ...!ucsd!sdcsvax!cooper COMPUSERVE: 71571,407 GENIE: XTH52577
buzz@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Mahboud Zabetian) (03/07/88)
In article <4725@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU> cooper@beowulf.UUCP (Kenneth B Cooper) writes: > (Some things about a Mac front end for UNIX logins) >(Sun users, please keep it down). Also, if anyone reads news/mail from home > >The project I envision will be multi-faceted, with facilities for reading, >saving, and responding to mail, reading and posting news, downloading files >If anyone is interested in this idea, let me know via e-mail. I'm looking I have been wanted to work on a similar project, but haven't had the chance. (Graduating in June is a bit more important) Have the mac hooked up to ethernet, and either have access to an account on a UNIX system, or have the /usr/spool/news mounted(like MacNFS). Then you have a window of newsgroups(the ones you are subcribed to). By selecting or doubleclicking on a newsgroup, you get a new window, with all the subject lines of unread news in that newsgroup. Then if you click or double click on a particular subject line, you get a new SCROLLABLE window with the article. Imagine having a scrollable window, and being able to read the article twice or looking back at the previous page! All this could be Ala ResEdit. I mean do the windowing like resedit where the first window is the newsgroups, the second window contains the subject lines and the third will contain the article. Or you can do it like Font/DA mover. The first scrollable box has the newsgroups, you pick one, and the second textdisplay area will have the subjects. After you select the subject the bottom half of the screen will be the article(where the font/da mover places font samples now. We can move everything up so there is more room. And make that part of the screen scrollable too) OR, you can do it like the Inside MAc DA. Know what I mean? -- Mahboud Zabetian buzz@phoenix.princeton.edu 183 Little Hall (609) 520-1271 Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544 (609) 734-7760 ****** Anyone need a soon-to-graduate hardware/software engineer? ********