Links to other projects
With fellow Newton developers, I've been involved in several projects, and I wrote some code used in other developer's software. It always was a pleasure to work with other developers, and I still do. Of course, we usually don't agree on implementations or styles. But this never interfered with the friendship and fellowship among Newton developers. One may say this spirit is caused the platform has been discontinued. If this is true, well, we found a reason to thank Steve for what he did.
You'll find here links to other projects or pieces of code I wrote and that are available on the Internet. In all cases, I am not the leader developer, and there is even a software which I haven't written a single line of. If someone needs to be punished, you'd better blame the main writer of the code.
I appreciate all these software and I hope you will.
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The cooperation with fellow developers started with Avi Drissman. There was a conflict between Avi's Backdrop and alt.rec..... The NewtonOS always has an application in the background. By default, it is the Notes application, but you can change it. Some applications are written for that sole purpose. I consider Avi's Backdrop as the best backdrop for Newton (I tried a couple of other backdrops). But the birthday code didn't fit my needs because it read the birthdays from the Dates application, instead of reading them from the card file. So I wrote code to do that and it was added to the software. I also translated the application to French and made some minor changes. On my Avi's Backdrop page, you will find the latest version of Avi's BD that I built. |
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One of the greatest Newton software is Sean Luke's Hemlock. It is an application to search the Internet search engines, like Apple's Sherlock. I offered Sean to translate it to French. Hemlock works with Newtscape, a web browser written by Steve Weyer. I planned to enable Hemlock to work with NetHopper, another web browser, unfortunately abandoned. But I haven't found the time to do it yet. |
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I am an NPDS fan. This web server written by Matt Vaughn is amazing. It is much more developed than MacOS Personal Data Server. With its modular approach it can be used as a very powerful groupware tool.
I enjoy working on this software. I implemented multiple connections and other features. I fixed some bugs and introduced some. I now lead NPDS development with Victor Rehorst and Adam Tow. To share NPDS experiences between developers and webmasters, there is now a mailing list. You can subscribe by sending a mail. My Newton is usually available at http://newton.kallisys.net:8080/. You'll find other serving Newtons on Misato or Continuity trackers. |
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From a couple of lines I posted on Usenet, Victor Rehorst wrote KillUpdate, a software to remove the Update transport in the IO Box. This transport allowed to update the system using a modem connection. It is useless now Apple discontinued the Newton. |
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Sean Luke described Waba as "the second coolest thing to come out on the Newton recently since [my] ATA driver". I'm not sure he's right, what he and Steve Weyer did with Waba is truly impressive. I am responsible for some minor changes in the C++ code and essentially for the serial and TCP/IP sockets support. This is the first time that these system functions are accessed directly in C++ instead of NewtonScript. Therefore, it's still experimental. As soon as it will work a little bit better, I'll post an article for the Newton Bowels Project. On my waba page, you will find a powerpoint presentation for a lecture I made on Waba at l'École Centrale d'Électronique in Paris. |