eText & NeXTSTEP
Long live the `e'! Never say die!
10 243.000000 280.000000 13 NeXTSTEP Logo 10 A 20 A B 77 /khare/Library/eText/demo/eText_n_NeXTSTEP.etfd/15849_NeXTSTEPBlocksCent.tiff 29 15849_NeXTSTEPBlocksCent.tiff¬

Why doesn't eText run on Windows?
The eText Engine was built with NeXTSTEP simply because it could not be written with any other commercially deployed application architecture. I'd love to, but I have a finite budget, a finite amount of time-til-graduation, and infintesmally small tolerance for boneheadedness.

What Features of NEXTSTEP does eText leverage?

10 7d7c10e5 7 Bundles 0 ¬ Dynamic loading of objects, automagic management of application resources (images, strings)... Don't even start with me about .DLLs...
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10 711727ba 9 Protocols 0 ¬ As far as I can tell, the theorists haven't caught up with this one. Inheritance has its limits, protocols break past them... A guaranteed interface, regardless of typing is a powerful organizing principle for large scale systems. Try to extend Oberon's lousy Text object to do this... I dare you! 
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10 28d2c66b 6 AppKit 0 ¬ There isn't a better integrated suite of ªclass-libraryº objects, multimedia support, application integration, and cool out there. So much of the system ªjust worksº that I'm absolutely shocked, shocked, that a system like eText could take 25,000 lines of code. Have I told you about the Text class? No? Well, come over here, my pretties... 10 22.000000 28.000000 7 Caption 10 A 20 A B 71 /khare/Library/eText/demo/eText_n_NeXTSTEP.etfd/Untitled-181666615.tiff 23 Untitled-181666615.tiff¬
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10 3bf545c8 9 Community 0 ¬There isn't a finer community of computer users out there... They deserve a tool like this! 
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Isn't there anything in the labs?
Research tools, such as the Andrew Toolkit come close, but can't be deployed with the total integration and ease-of-use afforded by NeXSTEP.

Of course, with the public release of eText5, it's now a ªresearch systemº... with all of the attendant support and reliability issues...

So who else is this crazy?
Consider, too, that other ambitious projects are based on NeXTSTEP for similar ªit-just-can't-be-doneº reasons:

10 12 rlp@lanl.gov 36 So I was reading about MediaView.... 10 28.000000 46.000000 7 Caption 10 B 20 A B 58 /khare/Library/eText/demo/eText_n_NeXTSTEP.etfd/MailToIcon 10 MailToIcon¬ MediaView.app, the multimedia compound document editor that inspired eText, from Dick Phillips at Los Alamos National Laboratories.

10 16 poh1@cornell.edu 33 So I was reading about Draw++.... 10 28.000000 46.000000 7 Caption 10 B 20 A B 58 /khare/Library/eText/demo/eText_n_NeXTSTEP.etfd/MailToIcon 10 MailToIcon¬ Draw++.app, a compound-document extension to Draw.app from Patrick Heynen at Cornell's Program on Computer Graphics.

10 18 wave@media.mit.edu 36 So I was reading about WavesWorld... 10 28.000000 46.000000 7 Caption 10 B 20 A B 58 /khare/Library/eText/demo/eText_n_NeXTSTEP.etfd/MailToIcon 10 MailToIcon¬ WavesWorld, a interactive 3D modeling system. Geez, those four words do it such poor justice. Take a look at Michael B. Johnson's wizardry for yourself sometime... WW3DWell will be coming soon as a proposed Annotation.