4 ms·

Frank Siegert’s collection of NeXTSTEP programs (1996)

61 points by tobr 8y ago

twoodfin 8y ago
I had totally forgotten about WAIS, a pre-web information service architecture that was, like all other such schemes, swallowed whole by HTTP/HTML. It even had a URL scheme which I’m pretty sure I resolved a few times via Lynx. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_area_information_server https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_area_information_server
Aloha 8y ago
I'd find an app like Talker to be useful still.
mpweiher 8y ago
My favorite was the Postscript NFS server that could be launched by looking at an EPS sent via E-Mail, for example. NeXT later plugged that particular hole...
zafiro17 8y ago
Interesting stuff, and apparently an interesting guy. This DataCase app looks great - wish I had something similar on my *nix box today! Lots of "note taker" apps out there, but this one was "databasier", which is to my liking. " Datacase is a sort-of frontend to FreeWAIS. It uses the wais indexing engine to build indexes of data you give to Datacase. I build this tool out of my growing need to get access to little data sniplets fast. Often I encounter something nice, funny, important, etc. in the news or in the web. Now with Datacase storing this information is easy: highlight it in any application or terminal window, press the ALT-shortkey, give it a nick name (Datacase opens a dialog for check-in) and that was it. The index is rebuilded automatically in a few seconds, regardless how many data is in the database. Datacase provides fast full text retrieval and understands natural english as query language. Data is presented in a special retrieval window that can highlight certain portions of text very fast."
tannhaeuser 8y ago
Perhaps too common to list, but this shouldn't be missing on any list of historic Next software: https://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/WorldWideWeb.html https://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/WorldWideWeb.html
exikyut 8y ago
The Datacase screenshot, https://www.wizards.de/~frank/DatacaseScreen.gif https://www.wizards.de/~frank/DatacaseScreen.gif, shows something very interesting near the lower-left: the 3rd icon is labeled Konsole!! This was 1996. Did KDE exist then?
- LeoPanthera 8y ago
  Perhaps "NextStep" in this screenshot is being simulated using Linux/Gnustep/WindowMaker?
  - exikyut 8y ago
    I can't rule it out. One the one hand it's a GIF, on the other hand the server's saying it was last modified in 2012.
  - em-bee 8y ago
    windowmaker has a different icon (although that could be changed) but more so the icon at the bottom to the left of the recycling bin, is fiend, an app that allowed you to put dock icons everywhere on the screen and supported virtual desktops of some form, if i remember correctly. since windowmaker didn't implement the dock in the same way, porting fiend didn't make much sense. instead, it features a clip that includes desktop switching in its icon. the GWorkspace implemention for GNUstep also adds fiend features right in, and looks slightly different, so it is quite unlikely that this is anything but a genuine NeXTStep desktop. in 1996 NeXTStep was still in active use and development and also available for intel PCs. (the last release was 1997. it was supported until 2002) (myself, i was using NeXT workstations until 2005) greetings, eMBee.
- irishsultan 8y ago
  Seems KDE was founded in October 1996 (according to Wikipedia), not sure what this means about the age of Konsole. The first Konsole commit on git has a Changelog which goes back to April 1998, but that already has version number 0.8.6 (https://cgit.kde.org/konsole.git/diff/ChangeLog?id=d8f741181967eee423f9234726443a4684f89310 https://cgit.kde.org/konsole.git/diff/ChangeLog?id=d8f741181... ), so it's not implausible that you would have a Konsole in 1996 or shortly after.
VectorLock 8y ago
> any NS/OS system with Public Window Server turned on is securitywise equivalent to one which has exported all filesystems by NFS public read/write. Thats Cisco level security right there.

61 points by tobr 8y ago

I had totally forgotten about WAIS, a pre-web information service architecture that was, like all other such schemes, swallowed whole by HTTP/HTML. It even had a URL scheme which I’m pretty sure I resolved a few times via Lynx. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_area_information_server https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_area_information_server

Aloha 8y ago

I'd find an app like Talker to be useful still.

mpweiher 8y ago

My favorite was the Postscript NFS server that could be launched by looking at an EPS sent via E-Mail, for example. NeXT later plugged that particular hole...

zafiro17 8y ago

Interesting stuff, and apparently an interesting guy. This DataCase app looks great - wish I had something similar on my *nix box today! Lots of "note taker" apps out there, but this one was "databasier", which is to my liking. " Datacase is a sort-of frontend to FreeWAIS. It uses the wais indexing engine to build indexes of data you give to Datacase. I build this tool out of my growing need to get access to little data sniplets fast. Often I encounter something nice, funny, important, etc. in the news or in the web. Now with Datacase storing this information is easy: highlight it in any application or terminal window, press the ALT-shortkey, give it a nick name (Datacase opens a dialog for check-in) and that was it. The index is rebuilded automatically in a few seconds, regardless how many data is in the database. Datacase provides fast full text retrieval and understands natural english as query language. Data is presented in a special retrieval window that can highlight certain portions of text very fast."

tannhaeuser 8y ago

Perhaps too common to list, but this shouldn't be missing on any list of historic Next software: https://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/WorldWideWeb.html https://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/WorldWideWeb.html

exikyut 8y ago

The Datacase screenshot, https://www.wizards.de/~frank/DatacaseScreen.gif https://www.wizards.de/~frank/DatacaseScreen.gif, shows something very interesting near the lower-left: the 3rd icon is labeled Konsole!! This was 1996. Did KDE exist then?

LeoPanthera 8y ago
Perhaps "NextStep" in this screenshot is being simulated using Linux/Gnustep/WindowMaker?
- exikyut 8y ago
  I can't rule it out. One the one hand it's a GIF, on the other hand the server's saying it was last modified in 2012.
- em-bee 8y ago
  windowmaker has a different icon (although that could be changed) but more so the icon at the bottom to the left of the recycling bin, is fiend, an app that allowed you to put dock icons everywhere on the screen and supported virtual desktops of some form, if i remember correctly. since windowmaker didn't implement the dock in the same way, porting fiend didn't make much sense. instead, it features a clip that includes desktop switching in its icon. the GWorkspace implemention for GNUstep also adds fiend features right in, and looks slightly different, so it is quite unlikely that this is anything but a genuine NeXTStep desktop. in 1996 NeXTStep was still in active use and development and also available for intel PCs. (the last release was 1997. it was supported until 2002) (myself, i was using NeXT workstations until 2005) greetings, eMBee.
irishsultan 8y ago
Seems KDE was founded in October 1996 (according to Wikipedia), not sure what this means about the age of Konsole. The first Konsole commit on git has a Changelog which goes back to April 1998, but that already has version number 0.8.6 (https://cgit.kde.org/konsole.git/diff/ChangeLog?id=d8f741181967eee423f9234726443a4684f89310 https://cgit.kde.org/konsole.git/diff/ChangeLog?id=d8f741181... ), so it's not implausible that you would have a Konsole in 1996 or shortly after.

VectorLock 8y ago

> any NS/OS system with Public Window Server turned on is securitywise equivalent to one which has exported all filesystems by NFS public read/write. Thats Cisco level security right there.