sho@maxwell.physics.purdue.edu (Sho Kuwamoto) (12/16/89)
In article <22438@ut-emx.UUCP> chari@ut-emx.UUCP (Christohpher M. Whatlyey) writes: >Really, my roomate is one of the most ignorant people you could find >when it comes to computers and he uses WriteNow, PrintManager, Webster >Librarian and Quotations quite effectively. He never asks questions and >he never complains. He cannot use a Mac and Word. Period! Hmmm... Why not compare WriteNow on the NeXT and WriteNow on the Mac? Word (v3, anyway) is one of the worse offenders of the mac philosophy, and even so, it's very usable. And which is in the room already so he can just screw around on it when he feels like it? And which did he learn first? I'm *not* neccesarily defending the mac on this point (although my opinion is that they are about as easy to learn, with the mac being slighly easier) just saying that there are many factors. >[...] >What on earth are you talking about? The only time I find my NeXT slow >is when I happen to be taking in stuff at 19.2k over the modem >and unbatching news onto an optical when I'm trying to do something else. >Text scrolling is faster than IIcis I have used for sure. And disk access. >Don't even try to argue that one. Heh? Maybe by the last statement you're saying that the optical is so slow that it's not worth arguing about... Oh, the hard disk. Anyone can make a fast hard disk. Perhaps there is some hardware improvement that makes the NeXT hard disk faster. And I imagine that if the text scrolling is faster on a NeXT, it must have a hardware blitter. How about rendering speed with a complex clipping region? Now, some legitimate questions about the NeXT system: 1) I know most of you on USENET who have a NeXT are probably UNIX gurus (at least fluent) to begin with, but put yourself in Joe User's shoes. Have you ever had to muck about with UNIX? If so, could this have been avoided, or would J. User have to have done the same for his system? Running this interface over UNIX is fine, as long as you don't have to go entering a UNIX shell to do anything critical. A concrete question: would the fact that the interface sits on UNIX make you nervous about reccommending this machine to your sixth grade teacher who you still write to, etc.? 2) People like to point out Display Postscript as both a feature and a fault. How is the rendering speed? I asked this of a NeXT guy and he showed me a demo where they blitted something around the screen. That's not exactly what I meant. How is it to program? I imagine there is some function/method/whatever like circle(x,y,r) that you can use instead of sending things in Postscript to some process/device/whatever. 3) Programming: I like the concept of the interface builder, but upon reflection, it seems like it would only save a page or so of code-writing. Less, if your windowing system uses callback procedures. Instead of connecting five buttons to five methods, you would include code to insert five function pointers to five button structures or something. How useful is this thing? The class library. Mr. NeXT demo man reminded us that while there are hundreds of Mac Toolbox calls, and only thirty primitive NeXTStep classes (or something. this was a year ago, you know.) Slighly unfair, but I can see how it would be somewhat easier to program a NeXT. However, I imagine that an additional knowledge of UNIX programming would also be needed for some things. How does the NeXT class whatever they call it compare with things like MacApp? From what I've seen of MacApp, it's kind of klunky, but at least you get source code. What about Objective-C vs. C++? Ok. The main point: how easy is it to use the class library? How robust is it? How easy is it to modify (presumably by subclassing)? Me, I find that SunView is much easier to program in than the Mac Toolbox, X, etc., but no one uses it, plus it's hard to do something nonstandard. Thus, the question about flexibility. My feelings about the bundled software, and buckets of hardware philosophy: when things get bundled with a system, there are two main pros. One, if you needed the feature/software, it's a lot cheaper, because they can spread the cost over a lot of people who don't need it. Two, having the feature/software come with the system raises the level of the standard minimal system that software authors must remain compatible with. While 32 bit color is good, and most Mac programs will comply with 32 bit color, most will do so passively, i.e., you can add in 32 bit images created elsewhere, but most drawing programs do not allow you to use the colors directly. Hell, a lot of programs are still stuck in 8 bit color. This is also the reason why no one uses anti-aliasing. Too many machines are just black and white, so they don't bother. In either case, you can't be guaranteed that you will have these gray levels to play with once a window from another program gets put above yours. Ok. The NeXT has a DSP chip. It has ethernet. It comes with Shakespeare and Bartlett's. How many people use this? You can point at it and say, "look! it's free!" What if they got rid of the DSP, a lot of the software, etc., and sold it for $1000 less? I do admit, though, the NeXT is competitively priced as it is. So. While I like a lot of the features of the NeXT machine, I don't think I'd go buy one right now if I could only have one computer. A lot of the features are nice, but there are a lot of problems just because the thing is so new. Lack of software, to name one. And I imagine that there are some user interface problems that weren't anticipated. People say in two or three years the NeXT machine will be amazing. But the Mac OS will probably be quite different as well, and I'd like to stick around to see what happens. -Sho -- sho@physics.purdue.edu <<-- mostly curious. also have too much time on my hands now that finals are done.
chari@nueces.cactus.org (Chris Whatley) (12/17/89)
sho@maxwell.physics.purdue.edu (Sho Kuwamoto) writes: >In article <22438@ut-emx.UUCP> chari@ut-emx.UUCP (Christohpher M. Whatlyey) writes: >>Really, my roomate is one of the most ignorant people you could find >>when it comes to computers and he uses WriteNow, PrintManager, Webster >>Librarian and Quotations quite effectively. He never asks questions and >>he never complains. He cannot use a Mac and Word. Period! >Hmmm... Why not compare WriteNow on the NeXT and WriteNow on the Mac? >Word (v3, anyway) is one of the worse offenders of the mac philosophy, >and even so, it's very usable. And which is in the room already so he >can just screw around on it when he feels like it? And which did he >learn first? I'm *not* neccesarily defending the mac on this point >(although my opinion is that they are about as easy to learn, with >the mac being slighly easier) just saying that there are many factors. >about rendering speed with a complex clipping region? >Now, some legitimate questions about the NeXT system: >1) I know most of you on USENET who have a NeXT are probably UNIX > gurus (at least fluent) to begin with, but put yourself in Joe > User's shoes. Have you ever had to muck about with UNIX? If so, > could this have been avoided, or would J. User have to have done > the same for his system? Running this interface over UNIX is fine, > as long as you don't have to go entering a UNIX shell to do > anything critical. A concrete question: would the fact that the > interface sits on UNIX make you nervous about reccommending this > machine to your sixth grade teacher who you still write to, etc.? I actually got the NeXT because I wanted UNIX and all of the hell and pleasure that can come from it. I was a total novice to begin with when I got and I am definitely not anymore. >3) Programming: I like the concept of the interface builder, but upon > reflection, it seems like it would only save a page or so of > code-writing. Less, if your windowing system uses callback > procedures. Instead of connecting five buttons to five methods, > you would include code to insert five function pointers to five > button structures or something. How useful is this thing? Very useful. You can do callbacks very easily if I understand what you mean. I typically have a number of buttons message with the same selector and then have the messaged object determine the proper action from a quality of the button. It is a bit more flexible that way sometimes. > Slighly unfair, but I can see how it would be somewhat easier to > program a NeXT. However, I imagine that an additional knowledge of > UNIX programming would also be needed for some things. Not really. NeXT has a large C library that is a NeXTified version of standard UNIX functions etc.. Ex: NXPrintf prints to a NXStream and works like fprintf. In general, a knowledge of UNIX is not really necessary to do basic programming. -- Chris Whatley Work: chari@pelican.ma.utexas.edu (NeXT Mail) (512/471-7711 ext 123) Play: chari@nueces.cactus.org (NeXT Mail) (512/499-0475) Also: chari@emx.utexas.edu