SCaNeWSSCaNeWSSCaNeWSSCaNeWSSCaNeWSSCaNeWSSCaNeWSSCaNeWSSCaNeWSSCaNeWSSCaNeWSSCaNeWSSCaNeWSSCaNeWSSCaNeWSSCaNeWSSCaNeWSSCaNeWSSCaNeWSSCaNeWSSCaNeWSSCaNeWSSCaNeWSSCaNeWSSCaNeWS Southern California NeXT ™ Users Group VOLUME 1, NUMBER 4 SCaNeWS ©1991 Newsletter MAY 1991 All Rights Reserved
After a six-week absence, SCaN and SCaNeWS are should consider contacting Lighthouse and con- back. SCaN meetings have moved to a new night, tinuing this valuable service. the first Tuesday of every month, in an coordinative effort with SNuG (the San Diego NeXT User Last month’s well-attended meeting featured a Group) to attract a greater variety of speakers to the NeXTstation Color Computer demonstrated by Southern California NeXT community. This Rick Jackson of NeXT: all of those Scene images month’s SCaNeWS is a little shorter than some of its and movies we’ve all grown accustomed to in gray- predecessors, to leave room for this month’s supple- scale took on a new vibrancy in 4096 onscreen col- ment, a tutorial on Interface Builder and Object-Ori- ors. With a high probability that the ented Design in the NeXTstep Environment. This NeXTdimension board will be demonstrated at the tutorial was presented by Mike Mahoney at this May meeting at UCLA, we can expect to be dazzled year’s ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors yet again. in Computing Systems to an international audience, and we’re pleased to be able to include it as an ap- If you would like to host a SCaN meeting at your lo- pendix to this month’s newsletter. cation, contact one of the SCaN officers.
MAY INTRO NeXT Introduces NeXTedge ...... 2
Lorraine Rapp NeXTCONTENTS Ships 8000 CPUs in [email protected] First Quarter ...... 2 Also included in this month’s issue is a press release Bang Bits: Excerpts from the concerning NeXTedge, a new customer support pro- CONTENTS April Bay Area NeXT User gram; info on NewsGrazer, a nifty graphical inter- Group Meeting ...... 4 face to rn available via anonymous ftp (invaluable OFF THE NET for navigating high-traffic groups like CONTENTS NewsGrazer ...... 5 comp.sys.next!); an update to the ongoing FAQ; and The End of the Big Green Disk? . . . . .5 excerpts from the April Bay Area NeXT User Group Spring 1991 NeXT on Campus ...... 6 meeting. Of special note is a plea from Lighthouse CONTENTS Design for an interested party to carry on the tradi- Updates to FAQ ...... 9 tion of the Big Green Disk, a compilation of all the SCaN and SCaNeWS information . . . . .10 best public domain and shareware software avail- CONTENTS able for the NeXT. Any individual or organization SUPPLEMENT: with some extra time and an Internet connection Interface Builder and Object-Oriented CONTENTS Design in the NeXTstep Environment NeXT Press NeXT equipment, as well as a "Motorola has a very successful menu of additional service op- history servicing UNIX systems," tions, support products and educa- said Carol Dickson, vice president tion courses. marketing and sales for Motoro- la's Field Service Division, head-
"The trend in the computer indus- quartered in Dallas. "We are very NeXT INTRODUCES try is for vendors to take greater pleased to be adding NeXT to our NeXTedge: responsibility for post-sales ser- program." COMPREHENSIVE vice and support through all chan- SERVICE, SUPPORT, nels," said Paul Vais, director of NeXT Computer, Inc. designs, TRAINING PROGRAM NeXTedge at NeXT. "We decided manufactures and markets profes- Motorola Will Provide Hardware to take responsibility one step fur- sional workstations, which com- Service ther, to offer our customers ser- bine the power and networking of
vice, support and training that is today's most advanced worksta- REDWOOD CITY, Calif., April 4, as innovative and high-quality as tions with the ease of use and pro- 1991 NeXT Computer, Inc. today NeXT computers themselves. ductivity applications of today's announced NeXTedge, a program With this goal in mind, we created best personal computers. NeXT's that encompasses all NeXT's NeXTedge." professional workstation systems hardware service, software sup- promise to enhance the way port and customer education. Motorola Agreement groups of people work together in
In March, and as part of the NeX- the 1990s. NeXT is headquar- NeXT also announced that it has Tedge program, NeXT expanded tered at 900 Chesapeake Drive, signed an agreement with the its existing partnership with Mo- Redwood City, California, 94063. Field Service Division of Motoro- torola to include service of NeXT la Inc.'s Computer Group under computers. The two companies NeXT SHIPS 8,000 CPUs IN which Motorola will be NeXT's have a long, established relation- FIRST QUARTER preferred service provider in the ship: NeXT shipped the first Makes NeXT One of Leading U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico, computer to be powered by Mo- Professional Workstation Ven- with primary responsibility for torola's 68040 microprocessor, dors providing hardware service to and all NeXT computers also in- NeXT's direct customers. corporate Motorola's 56001 Digi- REDWOOD CITY, Calif., April 4, tal Signal Processor (DSP) chip. 1991 NeXT Computer, Inc. today NeXTedge will enable customers Under the auspices of NeXTedge, announced that it shipped 8,000 to obtain support and service from Motorola's nationwide network of NeXT CPUs during the first quar- wherever they purchase their field engineers will provide hard- ter of 1991, which ended March NeXT equipment: directly from ware service for NeXT customers. 31. It was NeXT's first full quar- NeXT or through a value-added Motorola has approximately 450 ter shipping its new line of work- reseller (VAR), dealer or other field engineers at 150 U.S. and 6 stations. distribution channel. NeXTedge Canadian locations, who have (continued on next page) provides a one-year warranty ser- been trained in hardware and vice that is bundled with all UNIX systems since 1981.
SCaNeWS• 2 • NeXTPress Professional Workstations Unlike other workstation vendors, Professional workstations repre- NeXT has a wide assortment of (continued from previous page) sent a rapidly emerging new cate- breakthrough productivity appli-
gory of UNIX workstations. cations, such as Lotus Improv and All of NeXT's shipments were Professional workstation users re- WordPerfect (both shipping now). into the professional workstation quire the power, networking and These applications are superior in category, making NeXT one of multitasking capabilities of UNIX functionality to, but compatible the leading vendors in this seg- workstations, but also need a with, their versions on other plat- ment. Professional workstations, computer that runs personal com- forms. They also have the ability unlike traditional scientific/tech- puter-like productivity applica- to read files by other spreadsheet nical workstations, are UNIX tions and is easy to use. These and word processing vendors, workstations designed for non- users work in areas such as pub- thus making them compatible technical users. lishing, financial services, enter- with 80 percent of the installed
tainment/advertising, medical and base of software. Lastly, NeXT is "In our first full quarter shipping legal services, government and the only computer company fo- the new systems, we think NeXT higher education. cusing on interpersonal comput- has nearly matched market leader ing, with built-in, easy-to-use Sun in shipments to the profes- Customers in non-technical fields electronic mail that allows every- sional workstation segment," said generally purchase workstations one in an organization to use Steven P. Jobs, president and CEO rather than personal computers voice, text and graphics to keep of NeXT. "Customers are begin- for three reasons: to develop mis- each other informed. ning to grasp the benefits of sion-critical custom applications; NeXT's concept of 'UNIX for to run networking-intensive in- NeXT's family of professional mere mortals' and they like what stallations; and to run more pow- workstations comprises the they see." erful versions of productivity NeXTstation and NeXTcube,
applications than are available for which began shipping in Novem- Comparing NeXT's first quarter personal computers. In time, ber 1990; NeXTstation Color, 1991 with other vendors' most re- NeXT believes, they will also de- which began shipping on March cently reported sales, NeXT tied mand greater interpersonal com- 12; and NeXTdimension, due to with Digital Equipment Corpora- puting capabilities to increase be available to customers in May. tion in the overall workstation group productivity and collabora- NeXT's first quarter shipment market. In the professional work- tion. numbers do not include the two station category, NeXT ran a close color products. All four systems second to market leader Sun Mi- NeXT computers have the tech- are based on Motorola's 68040 crosystems. nology that commercial users are microprocessor.
seeking as they migrate to work- Sixty percent of NeXT's sales station technology. NeXTstep, Distribution were to customers in business and NeXT's graphical user interface One of NeXT's challenges in 1991 government and 40 percent were and application development en- is to structure its distribution strat- to universities. More than 30 per- vironment, offers the most power- egy to match the quality of its cent of NeXT's 8,000 CPUs were ful and easiest to use environment products. In the first stage of this sold internationally to customers for custom application develop- program, NeXT is rapidly ex- in Europe and Asia. NeXT coor- ment. NeXT's systems also pro- panding its dealer base in the dinates its European activities vide extremely powerful built-in U.S., putting greater emphasis on through its three subsidiaries in networking capabilities including campus resellers in the higher ed- the United Kingdom, France and TCP/IP and both twisted-pair and ucation community, forging part- Germany. In Asia, Canon, Inc. is thin Ethernet yet setting up and nerships with more value-added the company's exclusive represen- navigating around a network on tative. NeXT is extremely simple. (continued on next page)
SCaNeWS• 3 • NeXTPress To increase its leverage among higher education customers P BANG BITS: (continued from previous page) which account for 40 percent of Excerpts from the April resellers (VARs) and increasing NeXT's total sales worldwide P Bay Area NeXT User its direct sales force. NeXT is concentrating more ef- Group Meeting
fort on campus resellers (i.e., Along with building credibility bookstores and on-campus com- Arthur Kyle speaks of Canon and for an entirely new category of puter stores). The company is fo- NeXT in Asia computers professional worksta- cusing on establishing key tions NeXT has also had to take a resellers at computer-intensive Arthur Kyle of Canon, Inc. spoke fresh look at the right distribution colleges and universities, which first about his experiences of strategies to reach professional are responsible for about half of working in Tokyo as a an employ- workstation customers," said all higher education computer ee of Canon working as a third- Todd Rulon-Miller, NeXT's vice purchases. party liaison, primarily with president, sales. " Our distribution NeXT. Arthur gave some back- goals are two-fold: to expand our Many large corporate customers, ground information, pointing out total distribution capabilities and as well as many government orga- that Canon owns 16.67% of to choose channels that give us nizations and higher education in- NeXT, which it purchased for greater leverage with customers. stitutions, prefer to purchase $100 million. When Arthur first The changes we've initiated in computers directly from vendors heard that Canon would sell 1991 take us a long way toward instead of through intermediate NeXT in Asia, he viewed it as the accomplishing these goals." channels. NeXT has doubled its "kiss of death" for NeXT, as
direct sales force in the last six Canon sells 60% - 70% of all To reach individuals and small- months to better serve these cus- Macs in Japan, and thought that and medium-sized businesses, tomers. this would block NeXT's success. NeXT is establishing a network of This has not turned out to be true, independent dealers that are ag- NeXT Computer, Inc. designs, and Arthur has turned into a "true gressive, technically savvy, own- manufactures and markets profes- believer" in both the NeXT ma- er-operated retailers with strong sional workstations, which com- chines as well as the NeXT/Canon regional reputations. Included in bine the power and networking of relationship. this group will be individually today's most advanced worksta- certified Businessland centers, tions with the ease of use and pro- The Canon name we hear really chosen on a case-by-case basis ac- ductivity applications of today's represents two distinct compa- cording to their track record sell- best personal computers. NeXT's nies: ing NeXT's professional professional workstation systems workstation products. NeXT ex- promise to enhance the way Canon, Inc. is more the scientific pects that these Businessland cen- groups of people work together in and engineering side, producing ters will make up about 10 percent the 1990s. NeXT is headquar- cameras, photocopiers, optical of its total dealer base. tered at 900 Chesapeake Drive, disks, etc, as well as selling the
Redwood City, California, 94063. NeXT machines; Canon Sales is NeXT's VAR strategy focuses on more the sales and distribution specific vertical markets that de- New NeXT Music FTP Site arm, including the Mac computers pend on proprietary custom soft- as well as the NeXT machines in ware, and for which NeXT is smaller volumes. Canon Inc. is particularly well suited, including The former NeXT music software currently selling NeXT in about publishing, financial services, en- anonymous ftp site, winnie.princ- 10 Asian countries (Japan, Korea, tertainment/advertising, medical eton.edu, is no longer in service. Singapore, Taiwan, etc) with and legal services. Historically, Music software is now available in pub/music at princeton.edu. about 1,000 older cubes in place, more than half of all workstations (continued on page 7, column 1) have been sold through VARs.
SCaNeWS• 4 • below), and began distributing it for as little money as possible under the moniker "The First Compilation Disk".
Well, a year and a tripling of optical disk prices later, the Editors’ Note: The selection criteria NewsGrazer requires NeXTstep 2.0 burden is proving too much for for Usenet postings are based solely and supports both mounted and nntp our tiny organization. The now on their interest. SCaN makes no news sources. NewsGrazer does not renamed Big Green Disk, pro- claim, explicit or implied, as to the configure a system to retrieve news ceeds from which are donated accuracy of the information con- from a news feed or to run nntp. to environmental charities, is tained in these excerpts. We also as- pretty popular, and requires sume that people who post on Please let me know about any bugs more time and effort than we Usenet will enjoy seeing their words you run across. You can also ask me can give it. For this reason, we in print. Special thanks to Alison for features, but don't expect them will stop distributing the disk Bomar ([email protected]) for brav- any time soon. If you have questions May 15. But we'd hate to see it ing f comp.sys.next in search of arti- about how something works, or it die. cles for this feature. looks like a feature is missing, please be sure you've checked the on-line documentation and Preferences pan- The End of the el before you send me mail. Thanks Big Green Disk? NewsGrazer in advance. The following two para- graphs should also help answer a Jayson Adams couple questions most people will Ray Ryan have: Jayson_Adams Lighthouse Design @next.com When NewsGrazer starts, it displays [email protected] a browser of the available news groups. If you switch to List mode, you'll just get a list all of your sub- With this posting, we're offi- Hola, scribed groups (unless you explicit- cially extending the invitation ly ask for all groups). You can set the to another group to take over I've placed NewsGrazer, a NeXTstep default mode (Browser or List) in duplication, updating and dis- news reader app, out on the archives. NewsGrazer Preferences. tribution of the Big Green At the moment it's available from so- Disk. Why? The Big Green nata.cc.purdue.edu (download /pub/ When replying by mail, NewsGrazer Disk ensures the flow of free next/submissions/NewsGrazer.52.1.- will open a new Mail Send window and shareable software to those tar.Z). It's also in the /pub/\temp fold- and attempt to place the article, etc. without net access. And saves a er at umd5.umd.edu. Here's a brief into that window. If you have anoth- tremendous amount of time description: er Send window on-screen, this info even for those who do. We'd will get blasted into that send win- like to make sure that access is NewsGrazer gives the news reading dow (this is a Mail bug). maintained. and manipulation process a graphi- cal interface. You can select groups Enjoy!!! We'll point you to a cheap by clicking on them, which displays a source of double-sided OD's, list of the group's articles (optionally jayson and hand you the pile of stuff sorted by title and time). You can NeXT Computer, Inc. we were getting ready to add to read an article by clicking on it; ar- the disk (we'll even pass you a ticles can be exported to other apps list of our favorite charities...) via Services (if they accept files). Hello all. NewsGrazer allows users to post If you or your group might be messages and to reply to posters by A while back, Lighthouse Design set interested in taking things over, mail. NewsFolders (similar to Mail- out to donate our time and money to please write to disk@light- boxes) allow easy storage and re- perform a service for the burgeoning house.com (...!uunet!light- trieval of news articles. Filters have NeXT community: we compiled all house!disk) and we'll talk. similar functionality to rn kill files. the public domain and shareware we Thanks for your consideration. could stuff onto an OD (see contents (continued on next page)
SCaNeWS• 5 • OFF THE NET (continued from previous page) Spring 1991 NeXT on Campus Jeff Wishnie - [email protected] Sample Contents as of 26 Apr
• The entire GNU distribution, in- The Spring 1991 edition of NeXT on Campus has just come off the presses cluding: and is enroute, via U.S. mail, to subscribers. An electronic version of the journal, in both FrameMaker and PostScript file formats, has been sent to GNU emacs the nova.cc.purdue.edu anonymous FTP archive site. gdb, the GNU debugger GNU versions of awk, diff, The deadline for project information submissions for the Fall 1991 issue of grep, cpio, troff, postscript, NeXT on Campus (to be published in mid August) is May 31, 1991. If you tar, sed... would like your project(s) to appear in the Fall issue, please complete the GNU utilties used by NeXT in attached information request form and return it to: next_on_campus@nex- NeXTStep 1.0 are included t.com
• Programs from the Purdue If you do not wish to submit project information but would like a free sub- NeXT archive, such as: scription to NeXT on Campus (starting with the Spring 1991 issue) please fill out the attached information request form and return it to: AltDock, allows you to extend [email protected] your dock NX_VOID, a 3-dimensional For those of you unfamiliar with NeXT on Campus, here is a brief descrip- asteroids game tion: Tetris, the ever popular arcade NeXT on Campus is a journal produced by the Higher Education Group at game NeXT Computer, Inc. The purpose of the publication is to highlight uses of DefaultMgr, an editor for your NeXT computers in higher education -- both teaching and research, to fos- Defaults database ter communication among educational users of NeXT technology, and to provide useful resources to educational users. It is published three times • News and newsletters, a year (Winter, Spring, and Fall). Hard copy is distributed to approximately including: 40,000 people and electronic versions are placed at the public archive sites. Archives of the USENET newsgroup comp.sys.next Jeff Wishnie Bay Area NeXT Users Group Technical Editor, NeXT on Campus (BaNG) Higher Education Communications Rocky Mountain NeXT Users NeXT Computer, Inc. Group (rmNUG) e-mail: [email protected] NeXT Users Journal (formerly voice: 415 780-2753 the *BuzzNUG Buzzings:) Information Request Form • An X11R3 server for NeXTstep 1.0, a beta test version formerly Full Name: named XNeXT Title: Institution/Organization: • comp.sources.unix archives (all Department: since its creation) Address, phone, and e-mail address: Which contact information you would like listed (i.e. e-mail only)? • kermit and cnews Number of NeXT computers in department: Would you like a free subscription to NeXT on Campus? End Sample Ray Ryan If you would like your project listed in the Fall '91 issue of NeXT on Cam- Lighthouse Design, Ltd. pus, please fill out these additional questions: [email protected] 6516 Western Ave. Project title and discipline: +1-301-907-4621 Project status (i.e. completed, being coded, prototyped, proposed): Chevy Chase, MD, USA Briefly describe your project: 20815-3212
SCaNeWS• 6 • BANG BITS Randy Nelson Waxes the emerging need in program- (continued from page 7, column 3) Philosophical Upon Aspects of ming for changing from ground- and about 1,280 '040 processors NeXT Development up approaches to "providing link- placed in the first quarter (an un- ages between great-working known amount of these were '030 To Randy Nelson, head of Devel- things." Randy is insistent that we - '040 upgrades). The main pur- oper Training for NeXT, the com- must focus on providing quality chasers are universities and re- pany's evolution can be split into tools and interfaces that other search centers, with software pre- and post-Improv worlds. Im- people can leverage off of to cre- developers also being significant prov represents a true milestone, ate other tools. NeXT IB, pal- customers. now just being realized, in that it ettes, speaker/listener, and represents a new potential for us- standard objects are the underly- Steve Jobs is a folk hero in the ers to customize a shrink-wrapped ing technologies that NeXT Japanese computer industry given application, and to in turn connect provides to realize this. his success at Apple, which was it to other programs. Lotus is just important in his developing a now releasing its API which will On the developer's training front, strong partnership with Canon. In allow developers and sophisticat- Randy stated complete agreement Arthur's opinion, NeXT has an ed users to tap into the underlying that a "developer-camp-on-a- excellent chance to really succeed technology of Improv. Lotus itself disk" would be highly desirable, in Asia when Kanji is finally fully worked on the interface of Improv but also stated that there is no cur- supported - NeXTstep 2.1J is cur- until very late in the product de- rent commitment to do so. rently in beta, and supports mail, velopment cycle - the plastic na- edit, IB and ".rtfj" (for Japanese) ture of the interface allows for Also, for those contemplating de- files. Each character requires two many ways to access and utilize velopment on the NeXT ma- bytes. Programming in Kanji the core algorithms - future users chines, or new to it, Randy highly cleanly requires use of the text ob- will be able to develop there own recommends getting a copy of jects, with the English shared li- interfaces layered on top of or "The NeXTstep Advantage" from braries replaced by Kanji ones. horizontally to what currently ex- NeXT, which shows the develop- The basic programming model is ists. ment of a plotting application and for developers to keep strings sep- is very informative about creating arate, and to have English trans- Randy also sees enormous poten- software on NeXT computers. lated into Kanji where needed, tial and opportunities in the build- keeping separate English/Kanji ing of quality objects. Rather Randy was very receptive to feed- string modules. than building huge programs that back from BANG, and promised do enormous amounts of things to take back two requests to Canon is very serious about its adequately, and a central task very NEXT for further consideration: partnership with NeXT, and has well, he sees the future lying in committed outstanding in-house "building one high quality brick, 1) developers need access to talent to the partnership, and pro- rather than a thin wall," and in more NeXT training materi- vided expertise in the software "making great tools, not pana- als, so that they can do in - necessary for the Kanji/multi-lin- ceas." An example of this that house training of their colleagues gual support. Additionally, Can- will hopefully come from NeXT to share what has been learned at on provides NeXT with a sales, itself is DBkit, which is a set of developers camp; distribution, and technical support objects to access SQL data bases. capability throughout Asia that 2) everyone developing wants would be otherwise beyond His background is an unusual one, self-paced courses! NeXT's limited resources to having come from a Fine Arts achieve. (painting) education into the Randy also announced that the 2.0 world of computing, and an excel- documentation is complete lent one from which to perceive (continued on next page)
SCaNeWS• 7 • BANG BITS API for this. No word on when • Here is a typical multi-tasked (continued from previous page) this might happen. transaction history by the WSM in (including the Concepts manual!), copying a file: and being printed. Distribution is • The WSM was rewritten to "de- now the key issue - hang on! kernalize" it, so its now more create new process modular and multi-tasked - before WSM File Mover Lee Boynton Speaks on the it was one giant program. Specif- Workspace Manager ically, the WSM starts up a File reply to launch Mover, a File Sizer,a Finder, or a Request the "Info Panel" on your Disk Mounter as directed by user Workspace Manager (WSM), and requests. "Lee Boynton" greets you as one start copying of the authors of this excellent ap- • You can now use a Find panel to plication. Lee gave a high-speed find a program and launch it via overview of the app (he was double-click on the file name in squeezed for time due to a fire- the panel. update pie chart alarm that cut 15 minutes of con- (on background panel) tent from our meeting). • The Process panel allows you to inspect either background or ap- Here are some highlights of what plication programs. Again, you he covered: choose by double-clicking. Copy/ update pie chart move are examples of background (on background panel) • You can change the icons for a processes. directory easily. There are two icons - one for the standard direc- • A key problem the WSM group tory display, and one for the had to deal with in development . . . "open" directory (one that is hav- was the asynchronous nature of ing a file moved, copied, or linked giving the results of a completing copy complete to it). parallel task (say File Mover). Er- ror messages presented similar To change the standard icon, problems: how do you notify the place your tiff icon into a file user, who may be making a cur- • Lee's conclusions regarding called ".dir.tiff" sor-driven selection, about some- dealing with asynchronous pro- thing when the notice migh cesses are To change the open icon, place inadvertently change the selec- your tiff icon into a file called tion? For instance, you would not 1) provide immediate feedback ".opendir.tiff" want the WSM to insert a new file to the user when possible name into a file list during a copy 2) avoid moving controlling • The Workspace inspector (in- right as you were double-clicking pixels asynchronously voked via the tools menu) is another file name. Here the solu- 3) don't make the user wait for new and uses multi-tasking. For tion was to not allow updates something to complete before instance, under the Attributes In- while the cursor was in the win- other requests can be made spector you have the "Compute" dow with the file list, so that the button.This fires up a separate list is not updated until the cursor • If you want to make a link to a task to compute the disk usage of leaves the window (so as a conse- file (versus copy or move), con- the specified directory. quence, if you want faster feed- trol-drag it to the desired directo- back, move the cursor from the ry. • The inspector is actually exten- window during WSM copies and sible - NeXT needs to release the moves!). (continued on next page)
SCaNeWS• 8 • BANG BITS which, besides obvious kinds of The important specs for the color (continued from previous page) topics, includes: monitor are: Dan Lavin Clarifies Changes at Horz Scan Rate: 61 KHz NEXTWORLD 1) fun mystery photos Vert Scan Rate: 68 Hz 2) actual code names used dur- NON-INTERLACED Dan Lavin, NEXTWORLD's ing the development of NeXT Technical Editor, briefly outlined (and 3rd party) products Where can I get 13W3 to BNC changes that have occurred at the 3) new shrink-wrapped soft- adapters to connect third party magazine: ware announcements color monitors? 4) rumors! • Former Editor in Chief Michael NuData in NewJersey carries Miley is writing a book, and has Please contact Dan at: dlavin@- 13W3 female to 4 BNC male con- been replaced by Dan Ruby, pre- nextworld.com or 415-922- nectors. 908-842-5757, the price viously with MacWeek and Info- NEXT is about $100. Call for details. World. Where can I get a NeXTstep net- • The magazine will now be pub- Updates to FAQ news reader? lished on a quarterly basis, every 3 Pascal Chesnais months instead of every two John Garnett By far the most versatile news- months. Dan is hopeful (not cer- Erik Kay reader for the NeXT is NeXT- tain!) that current subscribers will grazer by Jayson Adams of NeXT. still receive a total of 6 issues of [email protected]. It is on the archive servers and is the magazine for their subscrip- mit.edu extremely useful for coping with tion, since that what a year's sub- the volume of news we are faced scription meant when they The information contained in this with. subscribed. post is a compilation of answers to questions posted by partici- Where can I get plotting soft- • Subscribers will additionally re- pants in the comp.sys.next ware? ceive a monthly newsletter (which USENET group. No guarantees will not include advertising) so are made regarding the correct- • nxyplot by Tom Pulliam is avail- hotter news will reach subscribers ness of these responses. able from cs.orst.edu. more quickly - the newsletter will NOTE: We are not affiliated with • graph is available in source form be published even during the any of the companies mentioned from 4.3BSD systems. It is useful months the magazine is pub- in this posting. for dealing with pairs of numbers lished. NEXTWORLD believes that need to be viewed. this format will better serve the What color monitors can I use • psplot comes with the NeXT. It existing NeXT community given with the color NeXT machines? takes the output of the graph pro- its current size. gram and generates a .ps file that Sony GDM-1601 were demon- can be previewed with Preview or • Simpson Garfinkel of MIT Me- strated with the NeXT color prod- Yap. dia Lab fame is joining NEXT- ucts. NeXT is not shipping these • gnuplot is available from WORLD to add to the magazine's monitors. Sony no longer makes prep.ai.mit.edu. already considerable technical them, however there is a replace- • jsplot clone of graph that gener- depth. ment GDB-1606 which has a long ates ps files directly. lead time on delivery [2-3 week •psplot is a library of c routines • Please contact NEXTWORLD delivery on a sample point of one that generate 2D, 3D and contour if you have useful information re- monitor:-)]. It does require align- plots. It is available on the purdue garding NeXT/NeXT community, ment to adjust for the different archive. scan rate...
SCaNeWS• 9 • SCaNeWS’ Role in the Downloading SCaNeWS (from an Archive) NeXT User Community If you miss(ed) any issues of SCaNeWS and have access to Internet, you can obtain them via anony- Our goals in distributing SCaNeWS are modest. We mous file transfer protocol (ftp) as follows ( bold in- are geared more toward the needs of end-users, stu- dicates onscreen prompts, italics what you type): dents and faculty than those of developers. Devel- At your local system prompt, type opers may find our newsletter interesting but perhaps not as technically oriented as they may ftp -n nova.cc.purdue.edu like. Among our regular features we plan to in- ftp> user anonymous
SCaNeWS CONTRIBUTORS SCaN OFFICERS
Contributors: PRESIDENT: Michael K. Mahoney Jayson Adams Computer Engineering/Science Dept. Pascal Chesnais California State University John Garnett Long Beach, CA 90840 Erik Kay (213) 985-1550 Arthur Kyle [email protected] Mike Mahoney Ray Ryan VICE-PRESIDENT: Bob Desharnais Jeff Wishnie (213) 343-2056 Editors: [email protected] Mike Mahoney Lorraine Rapp SECRETARY: Lorraine Rapp [email protected] If you would like to submit an article to SCaNeWS , contact Mike or Lorraine. TREASURER: Henry Chiu Articles are copyrighted by their authors. [email protected] SCaNeWS is composed using FrameMaker ™ If you have any comments or questions about SCaN, please contact one of the above officers.
SCaNeWS• 10 •