- #Omniweb for openstep download software
- #Omniweb for openstep download code
- #Omniweb for openstep download mac
Not as much an issue if the work was done when all this was fresh in people’s minds but it’s been almost 10 years. In addition, the Cocoa APIs have diverged a bit since then.
#Omniweb for openstep download code
– As noted by Terrence, a lot of the code was pre-Openstep. Sun didn’t seem to care about it and the Lighthouse people left so it’s unclear if anyone kept it somewhere safe. – It’s very possible the code has disappeared beyond the ken of man.
Unfortunately, getting the Lighthouse apps back is not really an option. It’s always great to see an outpouring for Lighthouse. An essential read.Ĭategory: Java 19 comments » 19 Responses to “The Sun Also Sets” It fills in a lot of holes and goes much more into the specific details concerning the politics at Sun. Update: Terrence Talbot of Karelia has put up a great writeup of the history from his perspective of being a member of the OpenStep team at Sun with some background on the IFC thrown in as well. If anyone from that team wants to tell that story, let me know and I’ll link to it. I apologize if I skimped on details concerning the death of OpenStep. The only thing they seemed to really get out of the Lighthouse deal was a CEO.
#Omniweb for openstep download mac
The code is locked away somewhere in Sun’s vaults and most of the people have moved on to better things (some to places in the Mac sphere). Sun “coulda been a contenda.” Sun had the technology and talent to become a force on the desktop and managed to squander both. I can’t say whether it would have been a success for Sun, but at least they would have been taken seriously. Or possibly a whole suite of productivity apps for OS X. A Java GUI framework that was quite similar Cocoa. One can only imagine what could have been.
#Omniweb for openstep download software
Sun does make great system-level software but history has shown time and time again that they do not “get it” when it comes to end users and the desktop. It’s sad how they could ignore those who were experienced (but considered “outsiders”) and how they thought they could figure out this whole desktop experience thing themselves. It’s worth mentioning that Sun is sitting on the Objective-C codebase for all of Lighthouse’s apps another casualty of war resulting from their hubris. In a nutshell, Sun had at least two toolkits with superior APIs that were ready to go. The other LFC team members managed to stick around long enough to do some coding but over time they left as well. Various design discussions ensued with the people who didn’t have any real experience with OO programming or developing and shipping real desktop apps overriding those who did. I realized that if these were the people in charge of implementing the GUI toolkit for a platform, then the project is going to be a mess. It quickly became evident that the people involved from the JavaSoft side had little to no experience with OO and/or GUI programming. JavaSoft asked us, along Netscape and Taligent (I forget how they got tangled in this), to join them in the design and implementation what would become Swing. The result: they got us and Netscape to discontinue our toolkits in favor of their upcoming project, in order to provide a common front against Microsoft. JavaSoft recognized they had to do something about this. In addition to us, there was Netscape’s IFC also done by NeXT-inspired developers as well as the threat of Microsoft’s AFC. The Lighthouse Foundation Classes (LFC) were not an exact implementation but they were close enough to make porting more of a mechanical process.Īs a result of this, we became another party in the Java GUI Toolkit war. We developed an Openstep-like framework in Java to make porting easier and for the most part we were successful. I don’t think I need to elaborate on why that was a problem.
At the time, the AWT was the only option for doing UI with Java. Yes, Sun also had OpenStep but Java was shiny, new and all the rage and besides, Sun was slowly killing OpenStep. The notion was to possibly port the apps over to Java thus giving Sun an instant desktop suite. The codebase for our apps was in Objective-C and Sun was pushing Java. It was an odd transitional time for Lighthouse. We enjoyed some level of autonomy and even got to stay in our own offices, avoiding a move to Sun’s campus. While we were officially Sun, we were somewhat separate. Years ago, I worked at a company called Lighthouse Design (I refer you here for a brief history and background).
It’s a story not only about what was, but about what might have been. In the spirit of these articles, I’d like to tell a story, one that many have not heard and that, after all these years, should be told. Check out Duncan Davidson’s post here as well as Jens Alfke’s here. Triggered by news of the lack of Java on the iPhone, these articles go on to address Java’s failure on the desktop in general. Recently, a couple articles caught my attention.
0 kommentar(er)
