Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!brunix!reb
From: reb@cs.brown.edu (Robert E. Brown)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: NeXT Limitations?
Message-ID: <57369@brunix.UUCP>
Date: 24 Nov 90 04:02:50 GMT
References: <61300046@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Sender: news@brunix.UUCP
Reply-To: reb@cs.brown.edu (Robert E. Brown)
Organization: Brown University Department of Computer Science
Lines: 80


Wow, where should I begin . . .  There are Next / Unix-ish ways to do most
of the things on gillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu's list of Macintosh features.  Some,
however, are completely unnecessary on real computers.

Can the Next . . .

        1.  Change the template for window creation (window looks)
            system-wide?

The visual look of a windowing system should be designed by skilled graphic
artists and industrial designers.  Most users of computers are completely
lacking in the skills and artistic ability necessary to create a new window
look that is superior to one properly designed.  Still, a skilled programmer
could undoubtedly hack the Next software and change the look of buttons and
icons.  Software is inifinitely malleable.

        2.  Write GLOBAL patches to sense actions in the systems (like when
            a particular file is written to disk, or . . .

Since Unix machines support multiprogramming, it is easy to set up background
processes that hang around looking for things like files to appear.  Since
each process runs in its own address space, however, it is hard for one
process to detect a particular key press or menu action by another.  If this
sort of thing is deemed useful, the application kit that Next provides could
be extended to provide this sort of feature in a well-defined way.

        3.  Add functions keys (FKEYs) to the system (special keyboard patch).
        4.  Sense inactivity of keyboard/mouse and launch a screen saver

Yes.

        5.  Completely supercede some graphics primitives for fast animation
            in certain special cases, YET, still continue to function in
            harmony with the toolbox (for instance, MS-Word seems to
            use special screen-scroll algorithm when the text window . . .

This is just the sort of crap that breaks Microsoft applications every time
Apple announces a new version of the Macintosh OS.  Applications should use
clear interfaces to interact with the operating system and windowing
environment.  The Next is not a game machine and its hardware is sufficiently
powerful to scroll windows without bypassing the windowing system.

        6.  Do weird things like make the mouse wrap around on the
            screen, make eyes follow mouse on screen, muck with color table
            arbitrarily, do fast animation of up to 50 small (32*32 pixel)
            objects, etc.

Same answer here.  Eyecon is a program that draws eyes that follow the mouse.
The mouse should not wrap around.  Animation with color table rotation is a
cheap hack that has no place on the Next.  The Next CPU/dma hardware is
sufficiently powerful to animate small objects via the toolbox interface.

        7.  Force a redraw of the screen and capture all the postscript.
        8.  Put a real-time clock somewhere useful (in menu bar or in icon).

Yes.

        9.  Take over the hardware at lowest level (i.e. ethernet) and do
            something neat / fast / different (this is a bane of UNIX).
            I.e. make the machine transmit XNS packets, or INIT a floppy
            disk in 5 seconds (without verifying blocks are good), etc.

Take over the hardware at the lowest level?  No!  Operating systems were
invented to keep user programs from screwing up the hardware and each other.
This is something Apple still does not understand.  Initilizing a
floppy can be done with a user program by performing I/O and I/O
control operations to a SCSI device.  Capturing XNS packets can in
principle be done with an installable device driver or a user-level
program that is fed ethernet packets by the kernel.

        Does the NeXT have the concept of an "INIT" (user-installed
        boot-time patch)?

One can load drivers into the kernel at run-time on demand.  Using a music
program can result in a Midi driver being loaded into the kernel . . .

        The Mac's control panel is a great step forward.

The Macintosh control panel and its INIT system is a huge hack.