Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!csdev!ll1a!spl1!laidbak!att!rutgers!ucsd!ucsdhub!esosun!seismo!sundc!potomac!jtn From: jtn@potomac.ads.com (John T. Nelson) Newsgroups: comp.sys.next Subject: Re: NeXT not revolutionary enough? Summary: text on unix and NeXT Message-ID: <8767@spl1.UUCP> Date: 1 Nov 88 03:23:07 GMT References: <471@wucs1.wustl.edu> <354@auspex.UUCP> Sender: news@spl1.UUCP Organization: Advanced Decision Systems, Arlington VA Lines: 63 In article <354@auspex.UUCP>, guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris) writes: > >He sees the NeXT as trying to impose a visual, object-oriented overlay > >("a Smalltalk-like environment") onto a text-oriented UNIX base. > >These he contended are incompatible notions--they mix like "oil and > >water." The UNIX base insures that the visual and sound-oriented > >capabilities can't be used in any truly revolutionary way. > > 1) What does he mean by "a text-oriented UNIX base"? What is the "UNIX > base"? > > Does he mean what small set of routines you might think of as "user > interface" routines are in the OS intrinsics set? Well, the NeXT > machine comes with a window system toolkit, just like the Mac, so > you're not stuck with "printf". Umm.... is that windowing toolkit part of Mach or does it just exist in that fancy interface? To get back to the previous poster's comment about Unix being text-oriented... weren't the tty driver, sh and csh all written with ttys in mind? "Okay, you say ... we just remove the sh and csh and tty driver and replace them with a new kind of interface that handles mice and bitmapped screens, but keep the kernel relatively intact." Sounds good. Is this what NeXT is doing or are they going the route of Sun Microsystems, where every window interface they've built so far was built to run on top of the shell? Kindof a kludge if you ask me. What NeXT and the world needs is a true windowing shell to replace the tty-style shells. Also, if mice and bitmapped screens had been around in those days, then Unix might have seen lightweight processes a lot earlier to support those more intelligence and complex interfaces. > The main potential difference I see is that the Mac has zillions more > applications than the NeXT box *currently* has. However, I don't see > that UNIX makes it impossible to write the same kind of applications, Hey... remember the first Macintosh? The big problem was that there were virtually NO applications for the machine. No one wanted to write any for a machine that was aimed "for the rest of us" with Big Blue already well entrenched. There are few windowing applications for Unix perhaps because the Unix kernel doesn't support a standard interface. Vendors would have to either package their own windowing systems with the applications or sell their own windowing systems and hope someone adopts them. Maybe even turn it into a standard like Adobe's Postscript. > and UNIX+NeXTStEP may end up making it easier to write them than the Mac > OS/Toolbox does. From Unix or the smalltalk interface? NeXT hasn't shown us anything much beyond the pressurized gas cylinder demo. -- John T. Nelson UUCP: sun!sundc!potomac!jtn Advanced Decision Systems Internet: jtn@potomac.ads.com 1500 Wilson Blvd #512; Arlington, VA 22209-2401 (703) 243-1611 Shar and Enjoy!