On Wednesday, August 14, 2002, at 08:18 PM, Victor Rehorst wrote:
> There are two package installers for OSX.
>
> UnixNPI works over serial only: http://unixnpi.sf.net/
> And Andrew Patrikalakis wrote an OSX package installer for TCP/IP here:
> http://anrp.irulethe.net/newton/
Okay, so this is what I've seen so far:
1) Newton side:
A TCP/IP transport that is made available in the Dock app
2) Mac side:
A TCP/IP command line pkg installer for OS X
It seems to me that in order to make the Newton connectivity forward
compatible, moving to 1) Ethernet (wired or unwired) physical layer
connections and 2) TCP/IP data transport is paramount. In order to get
there we need to keep moving down these paths.
1) Serial hardware interfaces are rapidly disappearing. Adapters are
available, but why not keep with native support like with an Ethernet
driver? Higher speeds and greater ubiquity of connections are two great
reasons to pursue this.
2) Apple has already made it clear that AppleTalk is deprecated. TCP/IP
opens up a world of connectivity options including remote docking and
greater Windows connectivity.
There seem to be a number of projects that could be worked on and I'm
wondering if anyone is working on these:
A) A TCP/IP transport that can handle not only packages but also syncing
(or at least bi-directional dumping of data) from the Dock application.
B1) A GUI-based tool for installing packages with TCP/IP.
B2) A GUI-based tool for engaging with the TCP/IP Transport to sync/dump
data through the Dock application.
Once the data is transfered over to the MacOS X side, I could work with
the existing Perl translation tools to convert the captured data into
vCards (or vCals) or Tab-delimited or XML or whathaveyou. I've even got
some ideas for doing syncing using the same tools.
At the end of the day, the proprietary code that comprises the Newton
must be relegated to the bare necessities if the Newton is to be a
community support platform. This mostly means finding alternatives for
NCU for mac and win. With the addition of the TCP/IP transport for the
Dock, and with the various Ethernet drivers, we are well on our way.
If there are people here who have already begun down these paths, I'd
love to hear what's going on.
...Ross...
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