Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!pacbell!ames!nrl-cmf!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!allosaur.cis.ohio-state.edu!bob From: bob@allosaur.cis.ohio-state.edu (Bob Sutterfield) Newsgroups: comp.sys.next Subject: Re: amusing use of a Sun at NeXT, Inc. Message-ID: <28683@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> Date: 30 Nov 88 03:05:31 GMT References: <843@amethyst.ma.arizona.edu> <2872@ima.ima.isc.com> <709STORKEL@RICE> Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu Organization: The Ohio State University Dept of Computer & Information Science Lines: 41 In article <709STORKEL@RICE> STORKEL@RICE.BITNET (Scott Storkel) writes: >Now if NeXT would release a version of NextStep for Suns... If they were to release the source to at least the protocol and toolkit libraries, and the sources to some of their window clients, then we'd at least be able to knit the NeXT box into an environment of existing UNIX boxes where people are used to running a client on one box talking to a server on another. In a similar vein, yesterday I received literature from Stepstone Inc. They sell an Objective-C compiler, a "Foundation" class library, an Objective-C interpreter, and a Graphical User Interface class library. Various parts of their product line run on Apollos, HP9000-200/300, Sun-2, Sun-3, VAX/Ultrix, VAX/VMS, and PC-AT. The UI toolkit pieces run under some of the vendors' window systems (e.g. DM on Apollos, native or X10R4 on HPs, SunView on Suns, and X10R4 on Ultrix VAXen). The compiler seems to run on most everything. Their University site license fees seem most reasonable, and include source to everything. (If only other companies would be so open - sigh...) They say the develoment environment is getting ported to more platforms daily - all they need is a good C compiler. Perhaps an X11 interface is coming soon. I'd love to play with the Interface Builder as an X11 application, and see the "bouncing molecules in a cylinder" demo running on some of the compute engines around here, displaying on my Sun running X11 I'm just beginning to understand the genealogy of this stuff, I think. It seems that NeXT licensed Stepstone's development environment, put it on the Display PostScript backend much as it was already on the X10 and SunView backends, cleaned up the existing classes, and added a few more. Then they sold it to IBM to stretch Perot's dollars a bit further to make it to the ship date :-) This still doesn't mean that you could use StepStone's stuff to develop code to run on a Cray that will whisper PostScript in your NeXT window server's ear. You'll still need some classes from NeXT to get the PostScript flying on the wire. But it's a start. (Of course, I have no connection with either NeXT or Stepstone, other than as a very curious inquirer and seeker-after-nifty-stuff.)