[TETENAL]

Did Nextstep already have Spotlight?

http://www.openstep.se/jobs/

Watch Jobs demo Nextstep. He talks about something called digital librarian, and it looks like a Spotlight demo. Nextstep also appeared to have a thesaurus many people miss in Pages. And it appeared to have something similar to OpenDoc.

[Nebagakid]

Originally posted by TETENAL:
Did Nextstep already have Spotlight?

http://www.openstep.se/jobs/

Watch Jobs demo Nextstep. He talks about something called digital librarian, and it looks like a Spotlight demo. Nextstep also appeared to have a thesaurus many people miss in Pages. And it appeared to have something similar to OpenDoc.

i just watched it, the digital librarian is just searching a database of saved newspaper articles, and not all your files, but it is a similar idea of searching something very quickly

[Millennium]

Originally posted by TETENAL:
And it appeared to have something similar to OpenDoc.

Not just 'similar to OpenDoc': they had OpenDoc. As in, they reimplemented it for NeXTStep, using what little specs were made available.

Yes, it could have been brought into OSX, but Jobs was bound and determined to kill it, first by dragging Apple's feet in making the Finder into an OpenDoc container as promised, and second by dragging Apple's feet in providing proper documentation.

Not that I'm bitter about the best piece of technology ever to come out of Apple being killed unnecessarily.

[Ganesha]

That Wordperfect demo looked a lot like pages.

Funny watching Jobs repeatedly say easier/better then a Mac/PC

[WJMoore]

Yeah the comments about PC's are nothing new but it was funny hearing him pay out on Macs. I guess it all makes sense though. In the end the "superior" Next OS that he's demoing lives on in Mac OS X and the Next hardware was initially based on the same processors as the Mac anyway.

[BuonRotto]

Most NeXT/OpenStep apps looked like Pages. There were basically 4 parts of any app in NeXTstep: the menubar (vertical, movable, tear-off), the document window with a shelf and/or toolbar in some cases, the inspector, and a library or catalog window in some cases. You can see the common thread from most former NeXTstep apps that were ported to OS X such as Keynote, Pages, Create, TIFFany (when it was around), etc. Add the Dock, and that was basically the user experience in a neat, tidy and consistent package.

Oh yeah, Digital Librarian didn't have all the niceties of Spotlight AFAIK. I believe it was more akin to the original Sherlock or these PDF ebook reader app thingies.

http://www.levenez.com/NeXTSTEP/NextApps.html
http://www.levenez.com/NeXTSTEP/Librarian.jpg

[yukon]

Lots of stuff in that video I wanted. Webster's dictionary was bundled with NeXT, and it registered itself as a service. so if you highlighted text in any app, and chose the webster's service, a definition would pop up within a second, I miss having a dictionary application ;-) (there was one bundled with my performa, American Heritage, I used it in classic before). Also, they have an awesome way to show the path you're in...I have to add a button to do that, and it's just a small drop down menu when NeXT had a window of icons. impressive that documents update dynamically even when the document is across the world. also, you can fax something WYSIWYG just like printing, an entire company can do that over a single fax modem.

Sorry that was so general, I sent that to someone while watching the video.

[WJMoore]

Originally posted by yukon:
Lots of stuff in that video I wanted. Webster's dictionary was bundled with NeXT, and it registered itself as a service. so if you highlighted text in any app, and chose the webster's service, a definition would pop up within a second, I miss having a dictionary application ;-)

CleverKeys adds a service that utilises dictionary.com to get definitions. I haven't tried it though so I can't comment on how well it works.

[yukon]

Yeah, I usually just search google for the word, and click the dictionary link, a bit odd but easily/quickly accessed, same result. Also there's firefox' quick search, type "dict TheWordYouWant" and it directly searches the dictionary. I just sorta miss having a local dictionary, online ones sometimes go down at inopportune times.

[Big Mac]

Originally posted by Millennium:
Not that I'm bitter about the best piece of technology ever to come out of Apple being killed unnecessarily.

I didn't know anyone was that passionate about OpenDoc. While I read a lot on it and was quite excited to see what I thought would be the future of the Mac, I never really got to experience it for myself. Perhaps if I did I would be as passionate as you. I also had absolutely no idea that there was an OpenStep implementation of OpenDoc. One would think that if Jobs liked the technology enough to bring it over, he would have been a staunch supporter of it going forward to OS X. Whatever the case may be, I believe OpenDoc failed because people weren't ready for the paradigm shift away from the monolithic application. I also imagine that OpenDoc would have had a much better chance at success if not for the disarray of Copland. If Copland had come out, OpenDoc would have been a central component. Of course, if that had happen, we wouldn't have OS X and possibly not even the second Golden Era of Jobs at all.

[jasong]

Originally posted by yukon:
. . . highlighted text in any app, and chose the webster's service, a definition would pop up within a second

Omni Dictionary

-- Jason

[TETENAL]

Originally posted by Millennium:
Not just 'similar to OpenDoc': they had OpenDoc. As in, they reimplemented it for NeXTStep, using what little specs were made available.

Yes, it could have been brought into OSX, but Jobs was bound and determined to kill it, first by dragging Apple's feet in making the Finder into an OpenDoc container as promised, and second by dragging Apple's feet in providing proper documentation.

Huh? How is asking for documentation and requesting support by the Finder "bound and determined to kill it"?

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally posted by TETENAL:
Huh? How is asking for documentation and requesting support by the Finder "bound and determined to kill it"?

note to non-English-natives:

"dragging his feet" means NOT providing documentation and NOT turning the Finder in to an OpenDoc container.

That amounts to deliberate killing of OpenDoc.

[LaGow]

Originally posted by Spheric Harlot:
note to non-English-natives:

"dragging his feet" means NOT providing documentation and NOT turning the Finder in to an OpenDoc container.

That amounts to deliberate killing of OpenDoc.

That chain of events soured Apple's relationship with Corel, who was developing WordPerfect for the Mac for OpenDoc, thus killing WordPerfect on the Macintosh platform. What a shame. WordPerfect for the Mac was just brilliant.

[alex_kac]

Originally posted by Big Mac:
I didn't know anyone was that passionate about OpenDoc. While I read a lot on it and was quite excited to see what I thought would be the future of the Mac, I never really got to experience it for myself. Perhaps if I did I would be as passionate as you. I also had absolutely no idea that there was an OpenStep implementation of OpenDoc. One would think that if Jobs liked the technology enough to bring it over, he would have been a staunch supporter of it going forward to OS X. Whatever the case may be, I believe OpenDoc failed because people weren't ready for the paradigm shift away from the monolithic application. I also imagine that OpenDoc would have had a much better chance at success if not for the disarray of Copland. If Copland had come out, OpenDoc would have been a central component. Of course, if that had happen, we wouldn't have OS X and possibly not even the second Golden Era of Jobs at all.

I used OpenDoc pretty heavily durings its beta and release phases when I worked at Apple. Lets say that it was really half baked. Maybe it was the implementation. It did allow a lot of nice things that even now aren't seen much, though.

[MPMoriarty]

Well, Apple is bundling a dictionary/thesarus application for Mac OS X Tiger. I'm not talking about the Dashboard widget. I'm talking about a real application.

I wonder if that is actually just a GUI to a service that is available system-wide to all applications like spell checking?

[JLL]

Originally posted by Millennium:
Not just 'similar to OpenDoc': they had OpenDoc. As in, they reimplemented it for NeXTStep, using what little specs were made available.

Yes, it could have been brought into OSX, but Jobs was bound and determined to kill it, first by dragging Apple's feet in making the Finder into an OpenDoc container as promised, and second by dragging Apple's feet in providing proper documentation.

Not that I'm bitter about the best piece of technology ever to come out of Apple being killed unnecessarily.

Wasn't it Amelio who killed OpenDoc?

[- - e r i k - -]

Originally posted by yukon:
Yeah, I usually just search google for the word, and click the dictionary link, a bit odd but easily/quickly accessed, same result. Also there's firefox' quick search, type "dict TheWordYouWant" and it directly searches the dictionary. I just sorta miss having a local dictionary, online ones sometimes go down at inopportune times.

Nisus Thesaurus. Free. Fast.

[LaGow]

Originally posted by JLL:
Wasn't it Amelio who killed OpenDoc?

I thought it may have been "Steved," y'know, like the Newton. But now that you mention it, I think Amelio did kill it. I remember Spindler being very excited (at least for him) about it. I was at a Seybold keynote he gave some years back where he touted OpenDoc as a platform unto itself.

[dlefebvre]

Just watched the NextStep Demo. Pretty impressive for the time. It's so obvious where OS X comes from. I remeber we had 2 Next computers at work many years ago. Too bad we gave them away, considering the crap we kept from this era.