kiss@flab.fujitsu.co.jp (Mitsuhiro Kishimoto) (04/05/91)
Hi all. Including is a NeXus Memo #6. You can get the WriteNow version from ETL (etlport.etl.go.jp 192.31.197.99) or SRA (srawgw@sra.co.jp 133.137.4.3). Mitsuhiro Kishimoto ---------------------------------------------------- NeXus Memo NeXT User Society in Japan Vol. 1 Issue 6 91.2.27 _____________________________________________________ CONTENTS 1. About NeXus 2 2. Extra Charge for Kanji Font 3 3. Summary of the Seventh NeXus Meeting 4 4. SIG Reports 6 5. GUIde Introduction 7 A. NeXus Membership Application 8 _____________________________________________________ To Contact NeXus (1) e-mail: Internet: NeXus-office@etl.go.jp juice: ohashi@sunrise.ocean.juice.or.jp Nikkei-MIX: shioya NIFTY: PFC02015(Ogawa), PDG03047(Yamada) (2) Facsimile: +81-03-351-0880 (Shioya, SRA, Inc.) (3) Snail mail: NeXus Office c/o Ohashi Clinic 4-4-2, Ebara, Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo, 142 JAPAN **** NeXus Memo: The English version of the NeXus Memo (what you are reading) is formatted on a NeXT cube using WriteNow and is printed on the NeXT Laser printer. The Japanese version is produced on a NeXT cube with a 330 MB hard disk using XNeXT, kterm, nemacs and JLaTex (ASCII version) and printed on a LaserWriter II NTX-J which has Kanji fonts. The equipment is networked by Ethernet and Appletalk bridged with FastPath4. English version Editors: Mitsuhiro Kishimoto, Kaoru Ozawa, Masana Harada and Teruo Utsumi. The NeXus Memo is copyrighted by NeXT User Society in Japan and each article is copyrighted by its author. Copying and distribution of NeXus Memo are permitted with no charge. 1. About NeXus NeXus is a non-profit organization to facilitate collaboration among members and to collect and exchange NeXT and NeXT related information. The main topics we cover are: - Easy-to-use, superior human interface - Integrated network environment for interpersonal computing - Graphical and multimedia applications - Advanced object-oriented programming environment. Our mother ship is a NeXT computer (NeXT station and cube). We, however, do not restrict our activities to NeXT. Other advanced high-tech computers are also of interest. We are the first NeXT user group in Japan and Asia. One of our principal interests is using Japanese on the NeXT computer. We have local activities in mainly the Tokyo area and our meetings are open to the public. We place our newsletters on worldwide ftp sites to distribute them freely. NeXus is not affiliated with any company. Enthusiastic volunteers support NeXus. We welcome your contributions. ****NeXus Activities: *Meetings: Monthly meetings are held on the 4th Wednesday of each month starting from 7:00 p.m. The meetings are open to the public. The guest fee is 1,000 Yen, including the latest NeXus Memo. Newsletter: We publish a monthly NeXus Memo and quarterly Newsletter. NeXus Memo is distributed at every monthly meeting. You can also ftp NeXus Memo from ETL (etlport.etl.go.jp 192.31.197.99) or SRA (srawgw@sra.co.jp 133.137.4.3). The second issue of NeXus Quarterly is due in April. *Special Interest Groups: We have several SIGs: Japanese, Mathematica, Graphical Human Interface, Mach OS, Programming, Object-oriented Programming, Networking, and others. If you are interested in any of these, please contact the executive staff. *Software Library: We have a publicly distributable software library on MO disks and a Video library. *Networks: Currently we run mailing-list (NeXus-mail@sra125.sra.co.jp) on JUNET. We are talking on a NeXT news group of JUNET named 'fj.sys.next' and 'FCSALON' forum of NIFTY-Serve. *Other Activities: We contact and exchange information with overseas user groups, contact with NeXT Computer Inc., Canon group (distributor in Japan), and other third party developers. We are planning to have seminars and symposiums. ****Executive Committee: Volunteers Kazunori Shioya: President Shouichi Hachiya, Katsuhiro Ohashi: Newsletter editor Taketosi Mori, Syuichi Tashiro: Software library admin Norimasa Yamagichi, Yoshio Yamada: SIG coordinator Kaoru Ozawa, Mitsuhiro Kishimoto: International liaison Kazuyuki Inoue, Hironobu Suzuki, Kenichi Yanase, Masana Harada ****Membership: A one year NeXus membership includes four issues of Newsletter, NeXus Quarterly, and 12 monthly NeXus Memos. You can pick them up at monthly meetings or, if you miss any meeting, you can receive them by snail mail. The first fiscal year started in October '90 and will end in September '91. Members joining NeXus in the middle of the fiscal year will get back issues of NeXus Memos and Quarterlys. You also get our software and video library with only shipping and handling charges. There are four types of memberships: regular, student, overseas, and corporate. An application form for regular, student, and overseas membership can be found at the end of this memo. 2. Extra Charge for Kanji Fonts NeXus Executive Committee This is an open letter to CANON Inc., NeXT distributor in Japan and developer of Japanese version NeXT OS. Dear CANON Inc. First we would like to thank you for your support of NeXus. We very much appreciate your making available your conference room for our meetings, providing technical and sales information, and answering our questions. You have also spent much effort developing the Japanese version of NeXT OS. It is still in beta testing and will be delivered in June. There is no doubt that Japanese handling capability is the key to making NeXT popular in Japan. We admired you for your marketing plan when one of the directors mentioned in an official statement to supply Japanese OS at a low cost (almost S/H charge) and bundle Kanji Fonts without any extra charges. To our surprise we heard you are now considering a charge of 150,000 yen (more than one thousand dollars) for Kanji fonts. It means that, coming from your short-sighted marketing policy, you have changed your mind, breaking an official promise. NeXus believes there are at least five obvious reasons to supply Kanji Fonts without extra charge. - CANON claimed that the extra charge is a royalty paid to Adobe Inc. It's nonsense for customers. A customer pays money for a NeXT system, not for fonts, CPU, hard disk or any other component. The cost is YOUR problem. Don't shift it to customers directly. The important point is that the royalty for Adobe's fonts is not increased after the official director's price statement. CANON's policy has been changed, not its cost. - Use your public relations budget to make Kanji Fonts free. This is a more effective way of advertising than spending large amounts of money to buy space in popular papers. NeXT is not yet a consumer product, you, CANON, is familiar with. NeXT is still goods for fanatics??. You gain or loose reputation by word-of- mouth. - Japanese NeXT users are forced to pay more money for less functional machines compared with users in the U.S. CANON's exchange rate is higher than 200 yen to one dollar**. There is also no Japanese WriteNow, Japanese FrameMaker, Japanese equivalent of Webster or Shakespeare. Japanese OS is the first small step toward the ideal Japanese NeXT system. You are going to make the first step more difficult. - In Japan, the number of NeXTs has not yet reached the critical mass. There is no, absolutely ZERO, third party software or hardware for NeXT. Higher prices makes it difficult to increase the number of customers and third party products. - In the official statement, CANON's director promised to supply Japanese OS at a low cost and bundle Kanji Fonts with no extra fee. Please make the right decision to realize Job's and your dream. Stop charging for Kanji Fonts! 3. Summary of the Sixth Seventh Meeting Written by Katsuhiro Ohashi Translated by Kaoru Ozawa and Masana Harada Date: Jan. 23. 1991, 19:00-21:00 Place: Canon Software, Tamachi, Tokyo Attendance: about thirty **** Video Tape of Steve Job's presentation We watched the first 15 minutes of Steve Jobs' presentation of the new NeXT systems on the video display in the meeting room. We had planned to show the video at the last meeting, but the presentation was omitted because the video equipment was not available. **** Presentation of Multi-Media by Shioya and Ohashi Dr. Sato of SRA personally provided the video on multimedia. This video is based on the lecture at the MacWorld Expo. Since it was a fairy long one, we showed only a part of it. As we expected, the contents were mainly related not to NeXT but Macintosh. The video included the presentation on the video compilation system. It created the scene, as an example: (I) Insert a cut in which something exploded in the air at the scene of hitting a volleyball from the opposite side of the court. (II) Then the volleyball exploded as soon as it was hit. This scene was created by first taking in an animation as digital images, then compiling each cut as a component. A member on the floor said it was to some extent difficult to create the components which appear to connect naturally at each cut. You can borrow these video tapes from NeXus, like software MO library. **** NeXus Quarterly issue second by Ohashi We plan to issue NeXus Quarterly (NQ) Issue Two as the spring (March) issue. We would like to complete and distribute it by the end of February. We plan to insert the articles on "The NeXus Activities Report" and "The Topics Relating to NeXT" as we did in Issue One. In addition, we very much wish to include the articles on "SIG Activities" which was not included in the previous issue. Since SIG activities have not been active yet, we request the coordinator of each SIG to write about the types of subjects each SIG wants to pursue and what approach it will take. At the previous meetings, we confirmed that there were the following SIGs: 'Interface Builder (coordinator Mr. Yamada)', 'Network', 'MACH (Mr. Muneyoshi Suzuki)', 'Mathematica (Mr. Jitou and Mr. Narita)', 'User Interface', 'Japanese environment (Mr. Mori at The University of Tokyo)', 'Hardware Environment (Dr. Sato at sra.co.jo)'. Further, we will provide "NeXT Answers" and "The Installation Guide to Various Hardware and Software", the reports regarding 'Nemacs (by Mr. Mori)', 'uucp (by Dr. Ohashi)', 'wterm (by Mr. Yanase)'. We welcome your reports on the installation of other hardware and software as well as requests for information on installation of specific products. In the previous issue, only some of the opinions of the NeXus secretariat were included as "Voice from NeXus Members." We welcome all members' comments and opinions for the next issue. You can write any kind of comments. We also welcome even very short message. **** Demo of CliniBase by Mr. Aoyama Mr. Aoyama explained about Sybase and showed the demonstration on an actual application by using the NeXT machine at the meeting room. Since the tools to link Sybase with Interface Builder has not been provided by vendors, we should prepare the routines or tools to develop Sybase applications on Interface Builder by ourselves. Thus he presented the tools to make a database application combining Sybase and Interface Builder, which were developed by third parties. These tools include one which can handle TIFF format files. He showed a demonstration of CliniBase, a database application for doctors' clinical use. The hierarchical class libraries which control screen, database, memory and SOL were prepared. A database application is developed by utilizing these libraries. **** Network within NeXus by Shioya We are going to construct a UUCP network system among NeXus members by linking NeXT machines through telephone communication lines. For the time being, Mr. Ohashi's NeXT is supposed to be the gateway machine for this network. We are going to discuss this project further in Communication SIG. (See also 4.1 on next page) **** X-windows on NeXT by Shioya Apart from XNeXT, which is now in distribution, Canon Inc. is working on another implementation of X-windows. Perhaps it will be available and can be distributed in February. This is different from XNeXT and is supposed to have a different name. Note: Please give more detail explanations if you are more familiar with it. **** NTT-jTeX NTT's JTeX (an enhanced version of TeX for Japanese) has also been ported by Canon Inc. It already works on OS 1.0, but it cannot, however, be compiled on OS 2.0. Mr. Suzuki said that ASCII version of jTeX was not dumped so that we could avoid system specific problems. **** Binary compatibility around new OS. There are considerable changes around the DSP driver. Many applications must be modified. Animation programs such as MediaStation will have trouble running on the new OS. Mathematica works as is. You can get the upgrade to OS 2.0 with an extra fee. **** Reflection Under the present meeting style, few members express their comments or opinions. As a result, only the secretariat tends to speak. We would like to improve the meeting so that each person can express his or her opinion freely and the mood of the meeting is warm and harmonious. We guess that: (I) It may be difficult to speak frankly before we get to know one another better because of typical Japanese shyness. (II) New members may feel uneasy asking a beginner's question. Still, we would like to revise our meeting style so that active and free discussions are encouraged. 4. SIG Reports Written by Kazunori Shioya Translated by Mitsuhiro Kishimoto 4.1 RFC NeXus Network (Communication SIG) Following is a request for comments of NeXus official network. Purpose: The currently available BBSs are build so even the low-end PCs can access them. They cannot support advanced features such as multi-media. They, commercial BBSs, are also restricted by governmental regulations. NeXus network is an experimental non-profit network to provide advanced features. We will research its protocols, software, human interface and application. We are going to develop, use, and distribute them to the public. Practical use will reveal problems which must be resolve. If successful we will use it as our official network to exchange NeXT information. Plan: First we build multi-media communications based on the most advanced computer system, the NeXT Computer System, and will add the other PSs and WSs. We are also considering: - Developing NeXT Mail reader on the other PSs and WSs and multi-protocol communication programs. - Building another uucp and IP connected network and bridge to exist networks. 4.2 NeXus Bibliography (Information SIG) We are going to make a bibliography of NeXT. The format of the bibliography is "bibtex." If you are interested in this project, please contact Hironobu Suzuki (hironobu@sra.co.jp) or Norimasa Yamagishi (norima-y@ascii.co.jp). Please tell us magazines which have articles on NeXT. We believe magazines are the main sources of NeXT information. The bibliography will be made available to the general public. We will post the list in the news group "fj.sys.next" and publish it in the NeXus Quarterly. 4.3 Contact NiftyServe (NeXus office) We have started an experimental information exchange between JUNET (Japanese branch of InterNet) and NIFTY Serve (Japanese cousin of CompuServe). The volunteers relay NeXus announcements on JUNET to FCSALON forum on NIFTY Serve. This exchange service will be made once a day at lunch time, so at most there will be a one day delay. The service, however, is unavailable on Sundays or holidays. 5. GUIde Introduction Written by Arther Kyle GUIde is another NeXT user group in Japan. This is a memo of GUIde introduction. They hold monthly meeting on the second Thursday at Canon Shin-Kawasaki office starting from 6:30 P.M. To contact GUIde: Arther C. Kyle Canon Inc. NeXT Group Tel: 044-549-5295 Fax: 044-549-5462 (There is no relation between GUIde and CANON Inc.) GUIde For Users of the NeXT machine Introduction Welcome to GUIde, a group for those interested in the NeXT Computer System. This paper will briefly describe the group and its purpose, and I hope give you an idea of what we want to accomplish. David Thompson, Dag Klingstedt, and I, Arthur Kyle, purchased our cubes around the same time in the fall of 1989. David and I met irregularly to discuss the machine and trade information (the first GUIde meetings), but we wanted to reach more people and learn more from others. So around the same time I joined Canon Inc.'s NeXT Group, we began to publicize the group and meet in Canon's Shin-Kawasaki NeXT office. There are now about 15 "members," with perhaps six to ten attending an average meeting. We hope that with better planning and promotion, we can attract more people. We meet to discuss the NeXT computer, in basically and aspect, and we hope not only to spread the word about the NeXT computer's power and capability but also to learn more about technology and its influence on computers and the way we use them. Lofty ideals, but actually rather practical ones. We have no formal Dues system, mostly because our expenses are essentially zero and we offer no services to each other beyond information exchange and NeXT comradeship. Perhaps we may charge dues in the future, if we ever coalesce into something more than a band of people interested in the NeXT. I do feel that we are a dynamic group of people. We come together to exchange, not just to listen, and I encourage you to speak up and really communicate with the people around you. No question is too simple, no opinion too outrageous. We are here to learn from each other. A. NeXus Membership Application Welcome to NeXus! Please complete the following application. 1. Name :_______________________________________________ 2. Address:_____________________________________________ City:_________________________ State: __________ ZIP CODE:________ Country: __________________ 3. Method of contact (please prioritize, 1 = highest): ( ) E-Mail: network_____________address_____________________ ( ) Snail Mail:_________________( ) Facsimile:__________________ 4. Membership type: ( ) Regular 7,500 Yen/Year, ( ) Student 4,000 Yen/Year ( ) overseas 10,000 Yen/Year (air mail delivery, include Students) 5. Method of payment: ( ) Pay dues to NeXT User Group, Fuji Bank Yotsuya branch (241) Saving account:1642210 NeXT User Group, 4-4-2 Ebara, Shinagawa-Ku, Tokyo 142 (office address needed for deposit) ( ) Pay at the NeXus user meeting. 6. Do you have a NeXT? ( ) Home ( ) Office ( ) Do not own, Model:________ Hard disk:____ MB, RAM: ____ MB, Printer: ____________ Daily applications: ______________________________________ 7. What other computers do you use besides NeXT? 8. What would you like to do in NeXus? SIG: ________________________________________________________ Volunteer work: _______________________________________________ 9. Profile Privacy I agree to disclose my personal information to corporate members. ( ) Yes. ( ) No. 10. How can we improve the user group? 11. Comments and Suggestions: