In Search of the NeXTSTEP Look 18
GUNTHER asks:
"I've fallen in love with the NeXTSTEP style interface. I would love to have a NeXT machine but they are rather hard to come by these days, so I have been looking for programs and libraries to emulate its look and feel. I am familiar with GNUStep, Afterstep, TKStep, and GTKStep but what else is available to emulate the NeXTSTEP look and feel?"
NeXT UI (Score:1)
And the mouse sensitivity under NextStep really sucks.
Okay, enough of my opinions, let me offer some real info. "I would love to have a NeXT machine but they are rather hard to come by these days...." Actually, that's wrong. NeXT machines are easy to get these days, because nobody wants them. Check out these sites:
Spherical Solutions (www.orb.com) [orb.com]
Black Hole Inc. (www.blackholeinc.com) [blackholeinc.com]
Deep Space Tech (www.deepspacetech.com) [deepspacetech.com]
Any of them would be happy to sell you a NeXT box for a few hundred bucks. Also, look at the software at Black Hole, Inc. If you're a student, you can get NextStep for under a hundred bucks, if I remember right.
Here are a couple more links that you might find useful:
http://www3.pair.com/mccarthy/nextstep/ [pair.com]
http://people.ne.mediaone.net/jkheit [mediaone.net]
I hope something in here was helpful
ccg
chad at glendenin dot org
the mind control lasers... (Score:1)
it to you.
Just yesterday I was poking around. I had just
done an apt-get upgrade (I run Debian, unstable)
and noticed that gtk-engines-gtkstep had been
updated. See, before, the theme had been almost-
NeXTish but not quite; the scrollbar buttons were
at the ends instead of both at one end. Well this
new update fixed that, so I was quite happy.
Glowering in my fully NeXTiszed GTK apps I began
to ponder on my environment. I run WindowMaker
(always have.. remember d/ling and compiling it
back in my RH days..) and I've got the mandatory
ASClock running. "How nice it is" I thought.
Then the thought occured to me, to write a page
telling people what they should do to recieve
NeXT enlightenment in X. Then I check
this. How appropriate
I don't know if there are any other pages like
this but I thought I'd write a "How to NeXTify
your X" page. What to get and where, how to set
it up.. mainly the former though
If anyone is interested in helping, or has any
information on NeXT apps, please drop me a line.
James
OpenStep on Solaris (Score:1)
ftp://ftp.peanuts.org/pub/OpenStep/implementati
or something like that.
Cheers,
m
Re:Why not just buy the real thing? (Score:1)
acts closer to NeXTStep than any other X WM I've
seen, but it's still not *very* true to the
original. However, many of the differences are
based on the way that Workspace.app was
integrated into NeXTStep, integration that would
be difficult (but not impossible) to achieve
under X on a Linux system without modifications
to both.
One thing I really miss is the built-in
file-manager present in NeXTStep --
FSViewer.app kind of reminds me of it, but
it's not nearly close enough at this point.
Try WindowMaker... (Score:1)
Design goals are
It tries to emulate the elegant look and feel of the NeXTSTEP(tm) GUI. It is relatively fast, feature rich, and easy to configure and use.
At this point I'd like to say thanks to Alfred K.
Kojima and everybody else involved in make Wmaker
so cool.
Just get a NeXTstation or Cube (Score:1)
Bowman (Score:1)
--Danny, not helping much
Why not just buy the real thing? (Score:2)
Or you could just wait. MacOS X, supposedly out late this year, has the authentic NeXT genetic code, and I suspect a NeXT-like development environment would be available. You could also buy NeXTStep for the PC, although I believe it's a bit pricey.
I haven't actually used a real NeXT, so I can't really comment on how good the various Linux-based imitations are.
D
----
Re:the mind control lasers... (Score:1)
While I haven't ever used a proper NeXT workstation, from what I've seen and heard of it, it sounds extremely nice. Of course, Linux with WindowMaker and GTKstepped GNOME apps is also nice, but still doesn't quite come close enough.
And judging from the amount of NeXT-related projects going on in the Free Software community, this is a thing very many are interested in.
I don't know if there are any other pages like this but I thought I'd write a "How to NeXTify your X" page.
I haven't seen one, either. But I would surely love to have one around.
So if you are going to put one up, please let me know, and we'll see if I can help.
--
Correct URL for WindowMaker... (Score:1)
--
NeXTStep look on Windoze (Score:2)
Re:the mind control lasers... (Score:1)
The NeXT user experience goes beyond mere aesthetics to an overall synergy between the Dock, Browser, windowing system, drag and drop protocols and Services/multiple pasteboards which has to be experienced to be believed. Moreover, there's a consistency between NeXT apps which doesn't exist on any other platform, save perhaps PenPoint or the Newton.
Here are the links which I've put together covering both appearance and an attempt at the interface:
GTKStep
http://www-info2.informatik.uni-wuerzburg.de/mi
NEdit
http://www-pat.fnal.gov/nirvana/nedit.html
neXTaw
http://www.inf.ufrgs.br/~kojima/nextaw/index.ht
WindowMaker
http://www.windowmaker.org
Postilion
http://www.postilion.org
GNUstep
http://www.gnustep.org
TkStep
http://www.fga.de/~ograf/TkStep.shtml
I'll end by simply noting that NeXT's icons seem the most frequently illicitly pirated of any OS and that if you think the look of the OS is nice, one should try the feel of it sometime. I doubt that Mac OS X is going to live up to it---too much being left out (like built-in PostScript faxing), but we'll see.
William
Lettering Art in Modern Use
http://members.aol.com/willadams
enlightenment's step theme (Score:2)
LiteStep (Score:1)
Try http://www.litestep.net for information