Re: [NTLK] NCU-like software native MacOS X: what prevents it

From: Stephen Jendraszak (stevehj_at_mac.com)
Date: Sun Jan 27 2002 - 17:11:04 EST


I can understand Apple not supporting serial connections in X, since
less than a handful of supported machines have serial ports. But what
concerns me, being an iMac owner, is EtherTalk. If I could get a native
connection in X, over ethernet... I would be willing to pay for that.

sj

On Sunday, January 27, 2002, at 04:12 PM, Paul Guyot wrote:

>
> Stephen Jendraszak <stevehj_at_mac.com> wrote:
>> I don't understand all of what is being said here, as I am not a
>> programmer. What exactly is the problem with AppleTalk in OS X? I use
>> OS
>>
>> X almost exclusively. It has AppleTalk, which can be used for file
>> sharing, etc. How is it different from OS 9s AppleTalk implementation,
>>
>> and what causes the problem with using it to connect to a Newton?
>
> AppleTalk is a family of protocols.
>
> You have the hardware layer (Serial = LocalTalk, Ethernet =
> EtherTalk, you also have Token Ring, AppleTalk over IP and other
> things).
> And the data communication layer (including AFP, ADSP, etc.).
>
> NewtonOS natively implements LocalTalk and ADSP. With Lantern
> Package, you also have EtherTalk.
>
> LocalTalk has officially been steved. MacOS X does not support it
> (and MacOS 9 does not even fully support it, especially MacIP over
> LocalTalk). MacOS X supports EtherTalk. There are also all the
> protocols (well, at least ADSP) in Darwin (well, I've seen some
> source stuff about it).
>
> However, there is no documented way to access ADSP in a MacOS X
> program. On MacOS, you could use AppleTalk libs (considered obsoletes
> even in MacOS), the communication toolbox (steved) and OpenTransport
> (unfinished on MacOS X).
> If you tell OpenTransport to do ADSP under MacOS X, it tells you: no
> such module. FYI, OpenTransport on MacOS X does not support serial
> ports (but there are documented serial port APIs on MacOS X, via the
> IOKit, unlike ADSP).
> Also, while I'm talking about documentation. Either MacOS X does not
> have IrDA capability (why not, after all, only their top laptops have
> IrDA), or you have no documented way to do it. So DCL IrDA's support
> will be limited to MacOS.
>
> Anyway. I don't recall what was Mr Jobs rhethoric about the 18 months
> or whatever in January. But he ships computers default-booting to an
> OS I wouldn't call "finished". Normally, you start to finish the APIs
> and then you make it the default for users, to give developers the
> time to adapt. Apple has been providing ADSP for years in their OSes
> (including NewtonOS). They also used to have good documentation, in a
> nutshell, it used to be a pleasure to code on MacOS (I've been doing
> that for something like 15 years). This is the first time I try to
> code something specifically for MacOS X, and I definitely hate it (I
> don't even talk about the problems I had to download the latest Dev
> CD and Apple's stupid and painful way to now want to track website
> visitors, etc.).
>
> BTW, Philz accepted to BSD-License his MNP compression algorithm in
> lpkg (and I correct what I said earlier here, apparently, UnixNPI is
> an original work from Richard C. Li and doesn't include a single line
> from Philz). This means that with Apple's documentation, once I'll
> have reinstalled MacOS X here (apparently this OS only understands
> the Windoze way), I'll work on serial support on MacOS X in the DCL,
> until I finally get sick of the speed of the OS of the future.
>
> Paul
> --
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>
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