>there must be some other possibilities, as there are other syncing
>applications!
Indeed.
>many companies that use newtons for gathering information, such as disney,
>astra and pharmacia could possibly have their own software for
>syncronisation...
Once upon a time, Apple had a technology to connect to the Newton
(using the 'dock protocol'). This technology is used in NCU, NPI,
NCU, NTK and Newton Press. They also released part of it into the
Desktop Integration Libraries (DILs). The DILs are in binary form
only, and available for MacOS and Windoze.
So everything was fine in this wonderful world. Real Programmers were
able to write synching software for MacOS or Windoze, such as
Newtourage.
But one day, Apple decided that they should go and buy someone who's
talented enough to sell you your shirt, The Devilish SJ. They decided
(well, he decided) that after all, there are plenty of APIs in MacOS
which nobody uses (anyway, nobody uses MacOS), so he thought they
wouldn't need to port them to OpenSTEP. They packed their partial
port of MacOS APIs into a library called Carbon, in which they added
a couple of new features to have Carbon a library available on MacOS
as well, during the transition.
They called carbonization (to carbonize) the process of transforming
a software which run more or less properly on MacOS to a slower
version of it which would also run on the slowest Unix on Earth
(where the software seems less slow because of the comparison with
the OS). There is indeed something destructive in this process and a
bad taste for the end-user, as in 'Hey, mum, I've carbonized the
sausages'. The carbonized versions of the software don't use these
APIs nobody uses but replacement of them (in fact, they often use
either the old APIs when running on MacOS or the NeXT/Unix equivalent
when running on OpenSTEP).
However, among these APIs nobody uses, there is a technology called
the Communication Toolbox. And the Desktop Integration Libraries (you
remember, the thing to connect to Newtons) happen to be based on the
Communication Toolbox (but since nobody uses Newtons and nobody uses
MacOS, less than nobody uses the Communication Toolbox). So
carbonizing a software which uses the Desktop Integration Libraries
means replacing the calls to this library to calls to an equivalent
running on OpenSTEP. Unfortunately, there is no equivalent of the
Desktop Integration Libraries (but even less than nobody minds since
less than nobody uses the Communication Toolbox).
Aware of this problem, some Newton Knights (nobody uses Newtons, but
there are Newton Knights, there can be incoherencies in fairy tales
like this one, so please don't notify it) thought it could be a good
idea to write an equivalent of the DILs which wouldn't be based on
the Communication Toolbox but on MacOS X equivalents. Sir Laurent was
their leader.
Of course, they quickly realized that things weren't that nice since
there is no LocalTalk equivalent on MacOS X (some of these knights
thought they could write LocalTalk for MacOS X, but since there is
currently no serial-equipped computer on the market which can run
MacOS X and fast enough to communicate at 57.6 on a serial port while
a window is minimized, the project was abandonned). And using IrDA
which is a matter of a couple of lines on MacOS using the CTB doesn't
seem as easy on MacOS X.
But these are just details, and our heroes are brave. In their quest
for a carbonized NCU, they met the Newton/Unix troops. These guys
were rather wild, with long hair and a white beard. I've been told
that some of them personally met dinosaurs. Organization isn't one of
their best qualities. They were apparently divided into several
groups, some only believed in a weird god from finland (it's nice for
skiing, they said), others preferred the california coast (it's nice
for surfing). Their secret weapons were called UnixNPI and lpkg.
Our band analyzed the problem and Lord Philz's prediction came true.
(Lord Philz was an old-wise warrior with some Unix blood). The
treasure was protected by DES.
DES is a monster which was put by Apple's engineers in the Dock
protocol, in order to protect the Newtons from unwanted intruders.
For an unknown reason, the monster doesn't guard the package
installation process. Apparently, Apple's Engineers didn't know Greek
as Homer explains the dangers of letting packages in. But for
everything else (backup, import, export, etc.), you need to convince
DES to let you in.
OK, I'm sorry, I haven't written the end of this fairy tale yet.
Paul
-- Home page: http://www.kallisys.com/ Newton-powered WebServer: http://newt.dyndns.org:8080/-- This is the Newtontalk mailinglist - http://www.newtontalk.net To unsubscribe or manage: visit the above link or mailto:newtontalk-request_at_newtontalk.net?Subject=unsubscribe
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Sun Sep 09 2001 - 19:47:04 EDT