declan@remus.rutgers.edu (Declan McCullagh/LZ) (12/13/90)
I finally got a chance to sit down with NeXTstep 2.0, and discovered some interesting things. * There doesn't seem to be any equivalent of 1.0's 'blit' program, used in the rc.* scripts during the boot process. Instead, there's /usr/etc/fbshow, which takes as arguments the text displayed in the spinning-disk panel. For instance: fbshow -A -B -E -s 3 "Checking" "System" "Files..." * There's a _very_ nice way of creating icons for directories. Just get a 48 x 48 pixel TIFF file, rename it to ".dir.tiff", and your directory will have that icon in the File Viewer and Digital Librarian. * One minor squabble: one can no longer reorder the various "panels" in Preferences. * Icon is vastly improved, even over the early copies of 2.0 that have been making the rounds. It isn't as stable as Icon 1.0 was, but - hey - it's in ../Demos, after all. There's a TIFF utility (tiffutil) included, which recognizes various forms of compression formats: LZW, PackBits, LZW w/horizontal differencing, and JPEG. Interestingly enough, only Icon seems able to handle JPEG compression - Scene couldn't and neither could the Workspace Manager's Inspector panel. Here's some results for a 640x480 greyscale 8 bits/pixel image: 307374 Dec 12 15:11 Declan.tiff (Uncompressed) 252352 Dec 12 15:00 Declan.LZW.tiff (Compressed with Icon's LZW option) 231821 Dec 12 14:57 Declan.tiff.Z (Compressed with 'compress') 70958 Dec 12 14:55 Declan.JPEG.tiff (Compressed with Icon's JPEG option) And for the same image at 2 bits/pixel: 14869 Dec 12 15:05 Declan.2b.tiff.Z (Compressed w/'compress') 15460 Dec 12 15:01 Declan.2b.LZW.tiff (Compressed w/LZW) 76974 Dec 12 15:05 Declan.2b.tiff (Uncompressed) JPEG image compression only works on an image 4 bits/pixel or higher. * There are four Ensemble files in /NextLibrary/Music/Ensemble. Excellent sounding, too. * In /usr/lib/NextStep/Workspace.app/WorkspaceStrings, there are nine files containing the strings used by the Workspace Manager: "Background processes active. Unmount disk anyway?" = "Background processes active. Eject disk anyway?"; "Do you really want to kill %s?"; "Background processes active. Rename disk anyway?"; And so on. * The online documentation is truly superb. Plus, I've only found about three places (in the Music Kit documentation, I believe) in which the annoying <<not currently available online>> phrase popped up. * There are lots of nice features added. Things like including support for banner pages, lots of color icons in /NextDeveloper/Demos, the ability to boot using only a specified amount of memory (say 8 MB on a 16 MB system), and so on. -Declan McCullagh Independent NeXT Developer
glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us (Glenn Reid) (12/17/90)
In article <Dec.13.00.56.01.1990.6720@remus.rutgers.edu> declan@remus.rutgers.edu (Declan McCullagh/LZ) writes: > >I finally got a chance to sit down with NeXTstep 2.0, and discovered >some interesting things. >* One minor squabble: one can no longer reorder the various "panels" >in Preferences. Yes you can. Hold down the Control key when you drag the panels. >* There are lots of nice features added. Things like including >support for banner pages, lots of color icons in /NextDeveloper/Demos, >the ability to boot using only a specified amount of memory (say 8 MB >on a 16 MB system), and so on. How do you turn on banner pages? Why would you want to boot with only 8MB of memory on a 16MB system, out of curiosity? You have "dvorak keyboard mapping" in your Keywords: line in the posting, but there's nothing about Dvorak mappings in your posting :-) Maybe you meant to mention the new demo program called "Keyboard" that lets you visually remap the keyboard any way you want to (presumably including a Dvorak layout) and store it so it is selectable from Preferences, which looks pretty cool (and a great way to confuse your friends when they're not looking). I actually use the File Viewer for copying files and other kinds of maintenance now that it supports background copying and moving. I had long since given up on the 1.0 workspace manager in favor of typing obscure UNIX commands into shell windows; the new workspace is much, much nicer to work with. -- Glenn Reid RightBrain Software glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us PostScript/NeXT developers ..{adobe,next}!heaven!glenn 415-851-1785
declan@remus.rutgers.edu (Declan McCullagh/LZ) (12/17/90)
In article <368@heaven.woodside.ca.us>, glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us (Glenn Reid) writes: > In article <Dec.13.00.56.01.1990.6720@remus.rutgers.edu> declan@remus.rutgers.edu (Declan McCullagh/LZ) writes: > > > >I finally got a chance to sit down with NeXTstep 2.0, and discovered > >some interesting things. > > >One minor squabble: one can no longer reorder the various "panels" > >in Preferences. > > Yes you can. Hold down the Control key when you drag the panels. Thanks. I thought it was possible since Preferences does have a LayoutOrder default, but I didn't see an easy way to do it. > How do you turn on banner pages? Taken from ReleaseNotes/Printing.rtf: --- npd now supports banner pages for the local NeXT 400 dpi laser printer. This works in the following way. The optional properties *BannerBefore: and/or *BannerAfter: in the printer database specify the path to a file containing a PostScript prologue for the banner. This prologue must define an operator *Banner:: printer user job date Banner 1 npd provides each of the arguments to Banner as strings. Printer will be the name of the printer, user the name of the user printing the job, job the job name, and date the current time and day. If the *BannerBefore: exists, npd will use the file it points to to print a banner before the job is started. If *BannerAfter: exists, npd will use the file it points to to print a banner after the job has completed. A default banner file can be found in /usr/lib/NextPrinter/banner.pro. The typical entry used on the NeXT 400 dpi laser printer would be to use the default banner file as *BannerAfter:. --- > Why would you want to boot with only 8MB of memory on a 16MB system, > out of curiosity? For testing purposes. Most developers have >8 MB in their NeXTs. Most users, especially new users with NeXTstations, are going to have just 8 MB in their systems. It's nice for developers to see the performance of their applications (or set of applications) on the "standard" NeXT system configuration. Declan McCullagh Independent NeXT Developer
rca@cs.brown.edu (Ronald C.F. Antony) (12/18/90)
In article <Dec.17.00.51.02.1990.16430@remus.rutgers.edu> declan@remus.rutgers.edu (Declan McCullagh/LZ) writes: >In article <368@heaven.woodside.ca.us>, glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us (Glenn Reid) writes: >> Why would you want to boot with only 8MB of memory on a 16MB system, >> out of curiosity? > >For testing purposes. Most developers have >8 MB in their NeXTs. >Most users, especially new users with NeXTstations, are going to have >just 8 MB in their systems. It's nice for developers to see the >performance of their applications (or set of applications) on the >"standard" NeXT system configuration. That's not the only reason. As you should no longer open the new systems (i.e. slabs) as you were/are allowed to do with the cubes, you possibly still can use a slab even is some memory went bad until you got a technician to look after the problem. Just shut down some of the memory and you might be lucky... Ronald ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." G.B. Shaw | rca@cs.brown.edu or antony@browncog.bitnet