> I've been reviewing the "Newton Formats 1.1" pdf, so I think I can
> sort out generation of packages, and the cocoa API will make
> generating the user interface pretty simple too. What I lack is a
> specification for what the Book part looks like on disk. In doing a
> search through the list archives I saw it mentioned that a newton
> book specification was never really made available, and that one's
> best bet would be to use Frame View to reverse engineer such from
> example books and bookmaker output.
Most of the information is out there. A lot of it was collected here:
http://metcs.bu.edu/~feneric/cs331/Archives/Project2002/
The vast bulk of it was officially made freely available during the
Newton, Inc. days. Much of the remainder was covered here and there
unofficially or is pretty obvious. There are a few tiny details that
were (to the best of my knowledge) ever revealed anywhere, but I
suspect that some of them at least were put in for future
enhancements that were never enabled, and quite honestly they're
probably not all that important. That being said, I am very curious
about those remaining details myself... :)
> Is this still the case? Does anyone know if such a beast has been
> found or put together since the subject was last brought up? Should I
> get to work on said reverse engineering?
As above. My own notes are probably the most complete around these
days as I taught the above mentioned course and wrote a few Newton
book parsers myself for different platforms.
> Finally, while I personally would find such a program as a
> rejuvenated Newton Press useful, do you think this would be a
> worthwhile tool?
Definitely. It's one of those things I've long planned on writing
myself but have never gotten around to. If you've got the time I'll
support you how I can.
-- This is the NewtonTalk list - http://www.newtontalk.net/ for all inquiries Official Newton FAQ: http://www.chuma.org/newton/faq/ WikiWikiNewt for all kinds of articles: http://tools.unna.org/wikiwikinewt/Received on Wed Apr 26 16:43:37 2006
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