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Allegedly, one of the Acorn OS developers quit and went to work for NeXT in Silicon Valley... and right afterwards, the test in-development version of NeXTstep

Allegedly, one of the Acorn OS developers quit and went to work for NeXT in Silicon Valley... and right afterwards, the test in-development version of NeXTstep suddenly had this Acorn Risc OS-like floating icon bar! NeXT also implemented app directories, where all the contents of an app, its resources and libraries and so on, are in a folder with a special magic name... another idea nicked from Acorn. (Risc OS apps are called !Name; NeXTstep ones are called Name.app.) Acorn Risc OS was also the first OS to have integrated, always-on font antialiasing, next seen in NeXTstep, and the first to have full-window drag. Source: a retrospective meetup of the surviving developers, which I moderated. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_SDL0IwbCc&t=2s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_SDL0IwbCc&t=2s

deleted 3y ago
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superq 3y ago
somewhat related to the directories: https://www.macdisk.com/macforken.php https://www.macdisk.com/macforken.php
- lproven 3y ago
  Not really... that's a Classic MacOS thing, not anything in NeXTstep, OpenStep or OS X, although OS X respects and preserves them. Perhaps the closer correspondence is file metadata. For all that Risc OS is based on Acorn MOS, an OS that's as old or older than MS-DOS, it stores richer metadata: for instance, files have a Creator Type which is 3 hex digits. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_RISC_OS_filetypes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_RISC_OS_filetypes This can't be stored on DOS filesystems. So, just like Classic MacOS files with their 2 forks, to keep Risc OS files on DOS media without damaging them, they must be packed inside a Zip file or something like that -- and using a RiscOS (or MacOS) native Zip program that stores, and recreates, the metadata. (Linux used to do something vaguely similar with the `umsdos` filesystem.) DOS/Windows PC owners, who think the universe revolves around them, never could get the hang of this.
spookie 3y ago
Oh, interesting!

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

superq 3y ago

somewhat related to the directories: https://www.macdisk.com/macforken.php https://www.macdisk.com/macforken.php

lproven 3y ago
Not really... that's a Classic MacOS thing, not anything in NeXTstep, OpenStep or OS X, although OS X respects and preserves them. Perhaps the closer correspondence is file metadata. For all that Risc OS is based on Acorn MOS, an OS that's as old or older than MS-DOS, it stores richer metadata: for instance, files have a Creator Type which is 3 hex digits. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_RISC_OS_filetypes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_RISC_OS_filetypes This can't be stored on DOS filesystems. So, just like Classic MacOS files with their 2 forks, to keep Risc OS files on DOS media without damaging them, they must be packed inside a Zip file or something like that -- and using a RiscOS (or MacOS) native Zip program that stores, and recreates, the metadata. (Linux used to do something vaguely similar with the `umsdos` filesystem.) DOS/Windows PC owners, who think the universe revolves around them, never could get the hang of this.

spookie 3y ago

Oh, interesting!