From: andrew_abernathy@wire.gwinnett.com (andrew abernathy)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.programmer
Subject: switch views, et al... a big thank you
Date: 11 Sep 92 05:27:22 GMT
Organization: or lack thereof


I want to publicly thank the many people who helped me tremendously with  
the prototype I had to put together which included all kinds of stuff.  I  
really did get a tremendous amount of help for which I am very grateful.

As a quick intro for those who didn't see my first post asking for help; I  
was tasked with creating a prototype for a portion of a traffic control  
system.  I didn't have any warning, I had two weeks to do it in (most of  
which had to be on my own time), it was to be used in a MAJOR MAJOR MAJOR  
presentation/proposal, and I really didn't know how to do anything  
programming-wise on my NeXT, despite the fact that I've had it for several  
months now and preach to everyone in the office (and out of the office)  
about it.  (Ok, ok... I _still_ don't know much programming-wise about my  
NeXT, but I know a lot more than I did, and I think I've learned enough to  
motivate myself to keep going with this.  Just not until I get some  
sleep.)  The prototype was to integrate drawings, images, video and  
database functionality.  (Actually, we realized at the last moment that  
sound would be good, too.)


So anyway, the presentation was this past Wednesday, and we feel that it  
went very well.  We won't know for several weeks whether or not we'll get  
the job, and the NeXT _probably_ won't get used (for this job) even if we  
do, but it got attention at the presentation, and it's made some serious  
waves internally.  Senior VP of the company told me that he thought it was  
"VERY impressive stuff."  I think the President was also impressed, and  
what really impressed them was the fact that it only took me two weeks to  
do what I did... and they aren't aware of how little I know about  
programming this machine!  Hopefully, this has really legitimized the  
platform so that it can get real consideration in the future; certainly a  
number of people are talking about it.

To let you know, I basically set up the structure for one "view" or  
"profile" of a traffic control system.  This was an object-level view,  
allowing the user to select a type of object (intersection, section,  
detector, etc.), then select a particular object and examine/manipulate  
it.  I created stuff for an intersection which allowed you to select an  
intersection, view and manipulate much data about it, view intersection  
photographs, drawings, cabinet photographs and drawings, video, etc.  I  
used Speaker/Listener to call Lennart L vstrand's ImageViewer to show my  
scanned photographs, and to call Adobe Illustrator to show AutoCAD files  
which were converted with Graphisoft's VISA.  I used distributed objects  
and a slightly modified version of Movie to show my "video"... but we  
didn't use it in the end as we couldn't get the video we needed into the  
form we needed in time.  (BTW- I know so little about programming this  
machine, yet I'm using distributed objects.  I love this platform.)  I  
dummied up the data, though some of the stuff (like the images and  
drawings) were actually pretty real and could be easily changed on a  
per-intersection basis, to the point of having a list of photographs for  
an intersection that the user could scroll through and select from.  I  
used freely available code and lots of help from the net to have multiple  
view panels, browsers, etc.

Again, things went well, and I am very grateful for all the help.  I  
didn't gain directly financially from this, but I did gain 12MB RAM, and  
more importantly got a lot of people thinking much more seriously about  
the NeXT.  Thanks again.


Credits:  (in no particular order, and I'm sure I left someone off and  
misspelled some names.  I mention company names where known; I hope the  
students aren't too upset at the unfairness that I don't mention the  
universities...)

Nick Christopher, Subrata Sircar (Canon), Art Isbell (Cubic Solutions),  
Paul Burchard, Mike Kienenberger, Mark Thomsen (TRW?), Gerard T. Schwarz  
(President, MIDIapolis Systems), Chris Walters (RDI, Inc.), Karl Kraft,  
Pascal Gaudette, Russ Sasnett, Greg Burd (NeXT), Travis TeSelle (ONyX  
Systems, Inc.), Robert Nicholson (and Simon Alexander), Mike Barthelemy  
(Chromagrafx Imaging Systems), Andrew Lowenstern (Cube Technologies,  
Inc.), Lee Sailor (how did you do that in 2 hours?), Kevin Brain, Garrick  
Toubassi, Brian C. Hobbs (Chromagrafx Imaging Systems), Robert D.  
Nicholson.

---
andrew_abernathy@wire.gwinnett.com (NeXTmail gleefully accepted)
I'll deny I ever said it
-- 
andrew_abernathy@wire.gwinnett.com (NeXTmail gleefully accepted)