Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!aplcen!aplpy.jhuapl.edu!cfw
From: cfw@aplpy.jhuapl.edu (Chuck Waltrip)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: 2.0: Initial Reactions
Message-ID: <1990Dec17.171011.26203@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu>
Date: 17 Dec 90 17:10:11 GMT
References: <4490@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> <371@heaven.woodside.ca.us>
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Organization: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab
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In article <371@heaven.woodside.ca.us> glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us (Glenn Reid) writes:
>In article <4490@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> simsong@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU (Simson L. Garfinkel) writes:
>>* Icon is *gone*.  I don't know how to make an icon now.  Make a
>>backup of your program before doing the upgrade.
>
>No it's not.  /NextDeveloper/Demos/Icon.app
>
>Maybe your dock just has /NextDeveloper/Demos/Icon (I think the .app is
>a recent development) and it just "seems" to be gone when you try to
>launch it from the dock.  In fact, not only is Icon still there, it has
>become quite an amazing program, capable of all sorts of things (if you
>can only figure out the interface).  You should see it in color.  It
>never really was just an "Icon" program, but now it's even further from
>that.  Image processing program is more like it.
>
>>A question to the net: how many people use Emacs and how many use
>>Edit?  *don't post what you use, and please don't start a flame war!*
>>Just send me e-mail and let me know.  I have a suspicion that emacs is
>>far more popular.
>
>I use Edit unless I'm hacking around in the shell and need to quickly
>edit a file without taking my hands off the keyboard, in which case I
>launch emacs.
>
>>In other news, I've gotten my News reader to the same level of
>>completion that Will Shipley's is.  Oh, I've got posting almost
>>working too, Rich Text and all!  The idea that I like best about
>>dealing with the Rich Text / non-rich-text problem was suggested by
>>Will: do a writeRichText: and a writeText:.  Post the normal text, a
>>^l, and then a uuencoded, compressed, binary diff of the two.
>>
>>The only problem is that, well, I've done testing, and the overhead of
>>doing a uudecode, an uncompress, and a binary ed is just, well, too
>>high.  So I think that well just post both the rich text.  It's not
>>*that* unreadable.  If you can't read RichText on your Sun, buy a
>>NeXT.  Or I'll give you a copy of my Rich Text spec, and *you* can
>>implement all of the tools from scratch that come as part of the
>>package on the NeXT platform.
>
>I think that the best idea about Rich Text got lost in the shuffle.
>I think it was from Mike Dixon at PARCplace.  The idea was to put the
>plain text first, then have a trailer with the RTF commands and some
>byte offsets into the plain text where they should be applied.  This
>enables a single post of length equivalent to an RTF file that can be
>read as plain text by normal people, but software could pick up and
>apply the RTF commands from the end of the file before the file is
>viewed.  Give that some thought; I think it's an excellent idea.  There
>is one glitch I can think of, though, which is what you do when you
>want to include somebody else's post in yours, and you add > characters
>and all the offsets change.  I guess you just generate a completely
>new RTF file with only a single trailer at the bottom.
>
>Anyway, I think that is the perfect solution for the RTF newsreader,
>and it will hardly add any bandwidth.  Anybody else remember that posting?
>Could its original author amplify the volume and perhaps give us another
>example?  I think it would work perfectly, with a little software thrown
>at it.
>
>/Glenn
>
>-- 
> Glenn Reid				RightBrain Software
> glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us		PostScript/NeXT developers
> ..{adobe,next}!heaven!glenn		415-851-1785