Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!haven!purdue!decwrl!decvax!ima!johnl
From: johnl@ima.ima.isc.com (John R. Levine)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Some thoughts about the NeXT machine
Message-ID: <3238@ima.ima.isc.com>
Date: 27 Jan 89 18:14:16 GMT
References: <8948@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
Reply-To: johnl@ima.UUCP (John R. Levine)
Organization: Segue Software, Inc.
Lines: 26

In article <8948@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> tytso@athena.mit.edu (Theodore Y. Ts'o) writes:
>The first [concern] is the terminal emulator --- it's not perfect, and I've
>heard from a friend that won't be improved any. ...

Your friend is probably misinformed.  There are two programs provided now
in which you can get a shell.  One is the terminal emulator, which gives
you enough of a vt100 to run gnumacs, the other is the shell window which
gives you a shell in an editable scrolling text window but no cursor
control.  At the developers' conference two weeks ago they said they planned
to build full vt100 into the latter and ditch the current terminal emulator.

>The second example is NeXT's position on source code.  You might make
>the case that source code isn't _absolutely_ necessary ...
>
>I believe one of the reasons why the IBM PC was so successful is that
>IBM (surprisingly) freely released all the details about the machine ...

Ah, but they didn't give out source code either.  It's true that the
current documentation is incomplete (even though it's a foot thick) and
that source code is the traditional Unix alternative to decent manuals.
I'd like source code, too, but am willing to see if I can do my hacking
without it.
-- 
John R. Levine, Segue Software, POB 349, Cambridge MA 02238, +1 617 492 3869
{ bbn | spdcc | decvax | harvard | yale }!ima!johnl, Levine@YALE.something
You're never too old to have a happy childhood.