HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: marauder@wam.umd.edu (Joe Jacobson)
Subject: The New NeXT Keyboard
Organization: ---University of Maryland, College Park---
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 03:26:52 GMT

	Just read the Winter 92 issue of NeXTWORLD.  I see that NeXT has
finally gotten around to using ADB devices.  (The first time I saw a NeXT,
the first question I asked, after wiping the drool off my chin, was "So, is
the keyboard on a desktop bus?")

	For those of you who do not have the good fortune to have a 
subscription to NeXTWORLD, the new keyboard is a ADB compatible, ergonomically
designed piece of art.  With a new command bar, help keys, and better placed
unix keys, (for all the people who still haven't figured out how to remap the
NeXT keyboard...), PLUS a hockey puck for mouse.  I've always considered a
round mouse an obsenity, having grown up with a brick for a mouse, but NeXT 
seems to think that they have got something, so I'm willing to give it a try.

	The command bar seems to be the most outlandish thing.  But, 
there is supposed to be a check box in Preferences to switch the function of 
the help keys, (located where the command keys are now), with the command bar.

	Basically, NeXT has finally got the keyboard that the hardware 
deserves.

				Joe
				marauder@wam.umd.edu

#  Hey, these opinions are my own.
#  Hey, if you're gonna flame me,
#  at least have the courtesy to 
#  flame in proper NeXTMail.  :-)
-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------
*   Joe Jacobson             |                                    *
*   marauder@wam.umd.edu     |            "LIFE KILLS"            *
*   NeXT mail accepted!      |                                    *
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.misc
From: andy@research.canon.oz.au (Andy Newman)
Subject: Re: CRASHME crashes NS 3.0 in less than a second!!!
Organization: Canon Information Systems Research Australia
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 03:29:18 GMT

pharr-matthew@CS.YALE.EDU (Matthew Pharr) writes:
>If I remember correctly, a fair number of Unix systems -aren't-
>crashed by CrashMe.  Anyway, what CrashMe does is fork as many
>processes as it can and write to memory randomly, in the hopes of
>destroying something important that the o/s wasn't protecting
>properly. I would assume that the problem NeXTs have with this is the
>same old one that comes up when you fork() too many processes or
>threads--the panic out of nowhere and lock-up that was discussed
>earlier in the thread about what happens when you try to write a
>multi-threaded app with, say, 200 threads...
>
>matt

Well not exactly (UNIX systems protect memory properly).
From the man page...

DESCRIPTION
     crashme is a very simple program that tests the operating
     environment's robustness by invoking random data as if it
     were a procedure.  The standard signals are caught and han-
     dled with a setjmp back to a loop which will try again to
     produce a fault by executing random data.
-- 
Andy Newman (andy@research.canon.oz.au)		"int - God's own type"
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.misc
From: jfr@RedBrick.COM ()
Subject: Re: Adobe/Sun Announce
Keywords: Adobe Sun Solaris Postscript
Organization: Red Brick Systems, Los Gatos, CA
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 16:30:58 GMT

In article <2097@ltb.ltb.bso.nl> wierda@ltb.ltb.bso.nl (Gerben Wierda) writes:
>
>Ha, Ha Ha Haaaaaa, Ha HA HA, Haaaaaaa!
>
>Oh, btw, how is Sun making DisplayPostScript run on those X terminals?

  This is not a very difficult thing to do.  X11R5 has the ability to
  support extensions to X, including such things as Font Servers and
  Display Postscript managers.  The actual extension will run on an
  X-client machine since most X-servers will not have the extension
  directly available (although it is possible that X terminals will
  start to support some of these extensions directly).  
  
  There is a potential impact on performance although I am not sure
  pushing X primitives out to an X-server to support Postscript is that
  much different from what a client application has to do now to get
  complex graphics on an X-terminal and that sort of thing is done
  all the time.

>I said
>this would happen. NeWS will die, and as soon as Sun announced the coop with X
>terminal producers I knew it would die.
>
>It is also bad news for NeXT in the long run. This is an attack on one of
>their key advantages. However, Sun must make it work yet.
>
>Did someone say "Bud Tribble?"
 
  Getting Sun to make it work isn't brain surgery.  However, getting users
  to adopt it is harder.  NeXT already has 5 years or more invested in the
  integration of Postscript with a very usable object-oriented application
  development environment.  Sun and others are a long way from that.

Jon Rosen
jfr@redbrick.com
-----------------------------------------------------------------
"Where is the wisdom? Lost in the knowledge.
  Where is the knowledge? Lost in the information." -- T.S. Eliot
"Where is the information? Lost in the data.
  Where is the data? Lost in the #@$%?!& database." -- Joe Celko
-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: louie@sayshell.umd.edu (Louis A. Mamakos)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.misc
Subject: Re: Message Center functional? Yes!
Date: 1 Oct 92 13:41:41 GMT
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park

In article <1992Sep30.203428.20747@muddcs.claremont.edu> wprice@pomona.claremont.edu writes:

>The second problem I  
>had was the fact that the sounds played MUST be sampled at 8 HZ rather than  
>the standard 11 and 22 HZ.  I found that very odd, and I wish there was a  
>program which would downsample sounds so I could use some of the digitized  
>stuff I have.  

I would be nice if it converted the sample rate on the fly, but its
just a demo program, right?  Anyway, check out /usr/bin/sndconvert; it
will likely do what you need.

louie
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.misc
From: andy@research.canon.oz.au (Andy Newman)
Subject: Fixed Width Fonts for Stuart/Terminal
Organization: Canon Information Systems Research Australia
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1992 23:17:57 GMT


Are there any freely available or shareware fixed width fonts out
there that work well with Stuart/Terminal?  I'm getting a little bored
with Ohlfs and Courier, neither is perfect and I'm in Stuart all day.

Mail me any details and I'll summarise in a couple of days.

-- 
Andy Newman (andy@research.canon.oz.au)		"int - God's own type"
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.misc,comp.sys.next.sysadmin
From: schmidmeier@evax12.eng.fsu.edu
Subject: Re-Install 3.0 from scratch;Essentials
Organization: Famu/Fsu College of Engineering
Date: 2 Oct 92 16:55:02 EST


Hello new 3.0-users,

as my machine has a problem during the boot process (it used to
be on ETHERNET and is still looking for it) which I cannot fix,
I think about "Reinstalling NeXTSTEP Release 3 Essentials" as
described on p.11-14 in the Release Notes.
From what I understand, it will format my internal harddrive,
(so I will put all my stuff on an external harddrive therefore )
and install the "Essentials".
1. Has anybody done this successfully and can recommend doing it?
2. What are the "Essentials", and esp.
3. What files will I have to save on my external drive first ???

Please e-mail your experiences.
Thanks,

Rainer           schmidmeier@evax.eng.fsu.edu
From: asd@sage.cc.purdue.edu (Doug McClure)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.misc
Subject: CD-ROM ship date slips again (was Re: AUUUUG! December ship on July order!)
Date: 30 Sep 92 03:33:21 GMT
Organization: Purdue University

In <JASHLEY.92Sep29203810@garbo.cs.indiana.edu> jashley@garbo.cs.indiana.edu (John Michael Ashley) writes:

>In article <1992Sep29.171805.29275@linus.mitre.org> wherndon@smiley.mitre.org (William Herndon) writes:
>       Well I just got the word from my local NeXT resellor:  The NS3.0/
>       CD-ROM bundle that I ordered in early July will not ship until mid-
>       December.  I only have on thing to say about this:

>	   Aaaaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh!

>I wish everyone would quit griping about ship dates and how they want
>to maim and murder because they don't have their 3.0.  This noise is
>obscuring all the bug reports.

>Mike

Mike, this is a NEW bitch about the ship dates.  I also called NeXT
recently, and was informed that my CD-ROM drive which they had told me
was scheduled to go out last week is now further delayed until
NOVEMBER!  That will be a 2-3 month wait before I can use my 3.0
upgrade!  This is inexcusable!  And even more so for folks who have
been waiting since early summer or before for their drives.  Do you
have your drive?  If so, maybe you would care to ship it around to us
folks who don't have it so we can upgrade and witness all those bugs.
Until I get mine, I'm not going to mind seeing reports about new
delays in shipping (although I DO mind the delay).

There maybe a number of folks out there who don't know that their
drives that they expect real soon now are going to be delayed mucho
more time.  I for one would like to know.

I don't know what it's like at your site, but bug reports are totally
obscuring EVERYTHING else here.
From: hardy@golem.ps.uci.edu (Meinhard E. Mayer (Hardy))
Subject: Re: How Slow is NeXTSTEP 3.0 w/ 8 megs ram?
In-reply-to: ab@nova.cc.purdue.edu's message of 5 Oct 92 21:36:00 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.misc
Organization: Department of Physics, UC Irvine, CA 92717-4575, USA
	<Bvo401.IzB@mentor.cc.purdue.edu>
Date: 6 Oct 92 05:27:32 GMT

I just upgraded to 3.0 (with a borrowed CD-ROM-player) and here are a
few observations on speed  and broken programs:
It seems to me that when the CD-ROM drive was mounted (I had
sym-linked some documentation to save disk space) startup of many
things was somewhat slower than in 2.1. When I unmounted the CD-ROM
drive, I had the impression of a speedup (anyone else seen this?). 

Emacs 18.55 is still broken: you cannot run scheme from it, and it
does not accept the newer tree-dired, and ange-ftp which depends on
it.  Given that NeXT got all the GNU freebies, they were MORALLY 
obliged to put a decent emacs on their system. My emacs 18.57 compiled
under 2.1 would not work either (dired -- which was dumped, not loaded
gave segmentation faults). I finally got a working 18.57 version from
a friendly person at Yale (since I did not have the time and
disk-space to rebuild). Instead of putting so much effort into clickable services
in Edit, NeXT should have made a useable emacs available!

One thing where there is a definite slow-down is in directory
listings; ls -alt |more takes its sweet time compared to the lightning
speed of ls -alt |more in 2.1 (again, can anyone confirm this?). 
I have a feeling that the ls command has been changed (which caused my
emacs to misbehave). 
The new TeX 3.141, and TeXview 3.0 are superb! They alone are worht
the cost of the upgrade (a bargain compared to PCTeX or TeXTures for
the Mac, and much faster and better). Kudos to Tom Rokicki!

Most other 2.1 applications seem to work fine, such as SLIP,
Schematik, Mathematica (which still produces huge swapfiles; can
anyone explain how to get the compressed swapping on a machine with
more than 12 MB of RAM? As I said, I don't have the on-line
documentation since I don't have the CD-ROM-player. 

Well, so much for the first 24 hours ...
--
Hardy 
-----
Meinhard E. Mayer,  Department of Physics, UC Irvine 
e-mail: hardy@golem.ps.uci.edu (preferred) or MMAYER@UCI.BITNET

Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.misc
From: jeffo@uiuc.edu (J.B. Nicholson-Owens)
Subject: Re: 3.0 Librarian
Reply-To: jeffo@uiuc.edu (J.B. Nicholson-Owens)
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 1992 17:24:26 GMT

Dave Griffiths writes
> Haven't heard much about the Mail app yet. Does that have lots of new
> features to replace all the little service workarounds?

Nope.  They added an easy way to play a sound when new mail comes in, and  
changed the look of some of the icons a little, but otherwise, no new  
functionality.

So, is this yet another place where NeXT is waiting for 3rd-party apps to give  
us things that we often use in mailing one another like:

* properly reformatting and quoting text when replying
* signature insertion (both RTF [for NeXTmail] and ASCII [for Non-NeXTmail])
* recognition of uuencoded and shar'ed material ala NewsGrazer (because not  
everyone can send NeXTmail)

These three things are pretty small.  It's annoying to have to resort to some  
other app or service to get things like this done (I haven't seen an app to do  
the third thing).  I wouldn't mind using Terminal services, but the ones  
supplied don't seem to work for quoting (as advertised) when I highlight a  
section of text in a Compose window and choose the reformat and reply service  
item.
-- 
-- Jeff (jeffo@uiuc.edu)
-- NeXTmail ok
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.misc
From: spagiola@frinext.stanford.edu (Stefano Pagiola)
Subject: Re: A Modest Proposal
Reply-To: spagiola@frinext.stanford.edu
Organization: DSO, Stanford University
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 92 23:57:13 GMT

Christopher D Audley writes
> > Why not have everyone put their documentation in troff??
> 
> Why not just use PostScript.  Authors of documentation can
> use any word processing/page layout program they want and
> save it as PostScript.  Its not like people are typically
> going to want to be able to modify documentation they receive.
> The original author can retain the document in whatever format
> he wishes for latter modification. 

> Every NeXTstep program has the ability to create PostScript
> files and every NeXT can read them.  Why does there seem to
> be resistence to using it as the standard format of documentation?

I think that the main problem with PostScript is that you can't drop  
the files into DL.

Edit .rtf and .rtfd files seem ideal for distributing docs, and  
everyone gets Edit.  The main constraint there is the lack of page  
breaks and page numbering (and perhaps, headers/footers).  This would  
seem to be fairly trivial to add to Edit, and shouldn't step on too  
many outside developers' toes, since the resulting app would still be  
pretty limited.  If NeXT can't find the time to do it itself, perhaps  
they could provide the source to somebody who would volunteer to do  
it as a public service?

--
-
Stefano Pagiola
Food Research Institute, Stanford University
spagiola@frinext.stanford.edu (NeXTMail encouraged)
From: andrew@cubetech.com
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.misc
Subject: Re: SPARC (NeXT : -) 10
Date: 3 Oct 92 00:14:09 GMT
Organization: Cube Technologies, Inc.

In article <1992Oct1.174314.21388@cs.mcgill.ca> samurai@cs.mcgill.ca (Darcy BROCKBANK) writes:
>
>I just had a peek at a SPARC 10 machine.
>
>You should see some of the cool features it has:
>
>1) Volume control on the keyboard
>2) Monitor control on the keyboard
>3) Help key on the keyboard
>4) A sound box with jacks on the back for stereo sound!
>5) ISDN connectivity
>
>And of course
>
>6) DPS on X Windows
>
>Good thig SUN doesn't take NeXT seriously.

Yes, doesn't the Sun sound-box look eerily familiar?  Ugly, but
familiar...

My favorite is how slow Virtuoso is on an SS10 compared to a
non-turbo NSC.  I couldn't tell if it was DPS on the Sun that was slow
or Virtuoso, but it probably wasn't Virtuoso.


andrew
-- 
andrew@cubetech.com     | "We shall not cease from exploration
Andrew Loewenstern      |  And the end of our exploring
Cube Technologies, Inc. |  Will be to arrive where we started
                        |  And know the place for the first time." -T.S. Eliot
Xref: sparky comp.sys.next.misc:20253 comp.dcom.isdn:607
From: curt@oasys.dt.navy.mil (Curt Welch)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.misc,comp.dcom.isdn
Subject: Re: ISDN-kit -- Does it exist?
Date: 28 Sep 92 19:10:16 GMT
Reply-To: curt@oasys.dt.navy.mil (Curt Welch)
Followup-To: comp.sys.next.misc
Organization: Carderock Division, NSWC, Bethesda, MD

I have a NeXT ISDN Extender connected to my system at home.  I don't
have an ISDN line, but I have started playing with the POTS stuff.

>        How many and which plugs does it have on the NeXT side?
	Just the DSP port.

>        How many and which plugs does it have on the line (wall) side?
	One 8 pin connector for ISDN., one 6 pin for POTS.

        It was no power line (the power comes from the DSP port) and it
	has no lights or switches (not even an on/off switch).

>        Can ISDN and POTS be concurrently accessed?
        I don't think so.  The NeXT PhoneKit seems to require the
	application to pick one or the other.  But I don't know if
	this is a limitation of the hardware or the software.  My guess
	is that it's a limitation of the hardware.  Anyone at Hayes
	care to comment?

>        How high is the system load when transferring stuff over ISDN/POTS
	I haven't really tested this.  The only software that comes with
	the NeXT that works with the POTS line is the Message Ceter demo
	app which turns the NeXT into a simple answering machine.   But
	the system at least doesn't lock up while it's recording a message.
        
>        How fast is the POTS modem stuff?
        It doesn't exist yet.  I think NeXT is waiting for some third party
	company to implement this.  If we're lucky, they are already working
	on it and it will be out soon.  I hope the NeXT/DSP has enough power
	to do Fax and V.32bis processing.  I'd love to be able to throw out
	my Neuron and free up a serial port.

>        Is Modem / Fax / Answering possible with ISDN/POTS?
	There is no Modem or Fax support with ISDN or POTS yet.  You can
	easily write an apps to do 64K data transfers over an ISDN line
	provided you have an ISDN line and someone to call - that you
	can connect to.  I don't think it currently works anywhere
	except in the US.  But I'm not sure about this.

>        Is the DSP available when the ISDN Extender is hooked up
>                / running / transferring data
	I assume it's not available when the ISDN Extender is in
	use - even when you are waiting for an incomming call - but
	I'm not sure about this.  I'll do some testing.

>        Why did the guy from NeXT talk such strange stuff, or,
	My guess is that he was a salesman.  Many salemen have
	been geneticly altered is such a way that prevents them
	from saying "I don't know".  If you ask them a question
	they don't know the answer too, they just make up a
	good sounding answer.

Curt
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.misc,comp.sys.next.sysadmin,comp.soft-sys.nextstep,comp.sys.next
From: rdlankes@rodan.acs.syr.edu (Virtual Dave)
Subject: NeXT Step on RS/6000?
Originator: rdlankes@rodan.acs.syr.edu
Keywords: Port 
Organization: Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 92 09:20:16 EDT


Hi,
I once heard someone say you could run NeXTStep on an IBM RS/6000
workstation because they both use the Mach kernal. I called
all over the country talking to NeXT and IBM, and no one seems
to have a definitive answer. Finally someone in Cambridge suggested
I ask on the net. He mentioned Carnegie Mellon in particular. 

So here it is, has anyone ported NeXTStep to another platform?
I know about NeXT working on the Intel 486 version. We have lots
of RS/6000's and just want the OS. The other platform that would be
nice is the SGI's. I would apprieciate any thoughts and would be
glad to post a summary.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|R.David Lankes (Virtual Dave)| Virtual Realities/Synaesthatic Communication  |
|  rdlankes@rodan.acs.syr.edu |     "We'll solve VIRTUALLY any problem"       |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.misc
From: david@postman.gr.osf.org (David George)
Subject: Re: Is the NeXT a true UNIX box?
Organization: OSF RI Grenoble
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 14:19:50 GMT

In article <80892@ut-emx.uucp>, ifbb657@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Douglas Floyd) writes:
|> Is the NeXT a true UNIX box, or is the UNIX part grafted on a non-
|> UNIX OS, like A/UX.  (I am not sure how A/UX is designed, so flame
|> away if the above statement is BS.)

It's probably BS.  Depends how you define Unix, is it just it's interfaces
or is it the original product produced by AT&T ?

One thing you can say is that Mach 3.0 isn't Unix but Mach 2.0 is BSD and thus
System 3 based, so the NeXT probably is a Unix box (AT&T would certainly think
so and get royalties from NeXT for every system sold).  However NeXT hasn't
signed up for all the 'Open Systems' stuff, so isn't SVID etc. compliant.

To answer your question, no it's not 'grafted on' to a none Unix like O.S.
you could argue that the Mach developments have modified the foundations
though.  When you get as far as Mach 3.0 (which NeXT isn't) the foundations
have changed so much that some of the original Unix semantics become hard to
support (like signal delivery).  However this is a different problem from
grafting a "unix" personality onto an alien OS.

David
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.misc
From: philip@utstat.uucp (Philip McDunnough)
Subject: Re: Is NeXT as good as DEAD?  (was Fed Up!)
Keywords: grumpy
Organization: University of Toronto, Dept. of Statistics
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1992 00:35:48 GMT

In article <4OCT199216512572@vax.sonoma.edu> poff@vax.sonoma.edu (Thomas Poff) writes:
>Yep, I'm a developer and I still hear what you are saying.  I'm interested
>in the NeXT as a development paradigm, but I'd still like to see my 
>applications used someday... so I'm concerned, nay MORTIFIED that so many
>people feel this way about NeXT.  C'mon guys, you've just GOT to support
>the old hardware or you'll never move forward into the markets you really
>have been striving for.

Hah...the newer users of NeXT's couldn't, for the most part, give a damn of
the fate of some of the users of "older" (i.e. 1.5 years or more) users.

When NeXT dropped the OD in the fashion they did, there was cheering coming
from most of the .com people here. When the ND didn't turn out right and the
fate of the Cube was in question, you could hear the sigh of relief.
 
Some people may feel that users simply move on to new technology every 18
months, when the Cube was marketed as an upgradeable item. The OD was
unique. Perhaps the implementation wasn't perfect, but NeXT could have
provided a migration path for people who had just spent a lot of money on
equipment (I know of many Cube users that will never buy NeXT again because
of the way the MO and ND fiascos were handled).
 
I must say that Appsoft and some of the smaller developers have been a joy to
deal with. Some users, especially Dr. Tom M., who has provided us with
an incredible amount of help with NeXT TeX issues( and others), have been great.sadly though, many are in this for a fast buck. They aren't going to get it
from the likes of myself. You have some very real concerns to deal with. There
is a BMW attitude here and at NeXT. People scoff at the 486 and the Mac, but
at least one can get decent word processors and music notation and etc...
there.
 
I have suggested NeXT's to many colleagues who have bought them. I believe
they will benifit from them a lot. However, I doubt that they will develop
a loyalty to the platform and buy software being produced by you guys. When
the next better Unix box comes around they simply get it.
 
In any case, I would not count on a large market for your software. But, heh,
it's quality not quantity that counts (so I've been told here a zillion times).
Well get  used to one steak per month.
 
Nathan J. has been waiting for certain events to occur. The day is approaching.
>
>The reason why they haven't been worried about it is because not enough
>people haven't been vocalizing their opinions.  If you show them what you
>want, they will react.  For those of you who don't know... the number is 
>(800)848-NeXT!  A letter would probably be even better.

Hah...neither would help. NeXT is about to lose another customer from higher
education. I doubt they could care less. A very short sighted bunch in my
humble opinion.
 
[ ]

Philip McDunnough
University of Toronto
philip@utstat.toronto.edu