NeXT Nugget News Digest (vol. 4, issue 6, July 30, 1992) This is vol. 4, issue 6 of the 1992 NeXT NUGGET NEWS DIGEST - a collection of items of interest for NeXT User Group members. Please direct your comments and feedback on the content of this NeXT news to: nugget@next.com. Previous Nugget News Digests are located in the /pub/next/Newletters/Nugget directory on the Purdue archive server site: sonata.cc.purdue.edu. Conrad Geiger Manager, International NeXT User Groups __________________________________________________________________ TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Objective Technologies, Inc. Announces the Release of SqlBuddy II. DIT looking for NeXTSTEP developers III. How To Join NeXT SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS (SIGS) IV. Marble shipping version 1.1 of Teleconnect V. NeXT Positions available at Oceania VI. NeXT Public Domain CD-ROM reminder (New DEADLINE: August 10) VII. User Interface Guidelines for 3.0 available for anonymous FTP VIII. NeXT Computer at Fed Micro 1992 IX. Connextions Announces NeXT-to-IBM Connectivity Products X. RDR Reduces Prices on all Objects in PowerPalette Series by 60% XI. Announcing MathGraph __________________________________________________________________ I. Objective Technologies, Inc. Announces the Release of SqlBuddy Objective Technologies, Inc 7 Dey Street, Suite 1502 New York City, NY 10007 July 1st, 1992 Objective Technologies, Inc. Announces the Release of SqlBuddy Objective Technologies, Inc., a Wall Street based NeXT software development and consulting firm announced that they were starting shipments of SqlBuddy vers 1.0, a friendly and easy-to-use front-end to relational databases. SqlBuddy Simplifies Database Use SqlBuddy eliminates the need for general users to use the difficult Structured Query Language (SQL) to get information from databases. Instead, it lets users graphically construct and execute database commands and view the results. SqlBuddy puts database information within easy reach of ordinary users. Users can quickly view data servers, databases, tables and columns. They can use the simple point-and-click method of writing queries to get the information they want from databases. In addition, they can use any of the advanced SQL features such as grouping, aggregate functions and computes. SqlBuddy gives everyone the ability to use database information and eliminates the need to learn complicated query languages. SqlBuddy also makes programming and administration databases easier. It provides an interactive database access environment with command history and Emacs-style key bindings. It is fully integrated in the NeXTSTEP environment so commands can be run and data can be retrieved through the NeXT services interface. All the database commands and all the system stored procedures (for the Sybased database) are available as templates from the menu. Frequently used queries and commands can even be easily saved to the menu. All SqlBuddy text files can be used interchangeably with OTProvide. SqlBuddy runs on NeXT computers with NeXTSTEP 2.0/2.1 system software and Sybase. SqlBuddy version 1.0 provides access to Sybase databases only. Version 2.0, due to be released after NeXT's DBKit (a feature of NeXTSTEP 3.0) will provide access to Oracle and other databases. PRICING AND AVAILABILITY SqlBuddy is available now from OTI directly or through NeXTConnection. The price is $XXX for a single floating license and $XXX for a single machine-lock license. Educational customers receive a 50% discount on floating licenses, and site licenses are available. Objective Technologies, Inc., founded in 1990, is one of the leading suppliers of software for the NeXT platform. In addition to SqlBuddy, OTI is the producer of OTProvide, a tool for use with Lotus' Improv spreadsheet program which allows users to create models where their data resides in a relational database (Sybase version available now), and [OTPalettes:2.0], a collection of custom object palettes designed to help programmers develop general-purpose applications for the NeXT platform. Objective Technologies, Inc. markets its products worldwide through distributors and directly to end users. The privately held company is headquartered in New York. For more information contact: Objective Technologies, Inc 7 Dey Street, Suite 1502 New York City, NY 10007 ___________________________________________________________________ II. DIT looking for NeXTSTEP developers Digital Instrumentation Technology, Inc. (DIT) is looking for a few good NeXT developers to help with our continuing NeXTSTEP product development efforts. We are the company who brought the NeXT community the CubeFloppy 2.9 and Plus external floppy drives, CubeDigital I/O, FloppyWorks and OnDuty for the NeXT. We also have products for the Sun and Silicon Graphics workstations. The qualifications for these positions are: - significant NeXTSTEP programming experience - at least three years of C programming experience - good background in data structure design and manipulation - multi-platform experience (Macintosh, X/Motif, Windows) - hard worker who can handle long hours and deadlines. DIT is located is the beautiful southwest (New Mexico). In addition to the great location, we offer very competitive salaries, stock options, excellent medical and dental benefits, liberal vacation and sick leave benefits, and a challenging and rewarding work environment. If you are interested and qualified for these positions, please respond via e-mail (if possible); NeXTmail welcomed. Resumes may be sent to: Robert Justice DIT, Inc. 127 Eastgate Drive #20500 Los Alamos, New Mexico 87544 Email: robert_justice@dit.com fax (505)662-0897 ___________________________________________________________________ III. How To Join NeXT SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS (SIGS) NeXT Special Interest groups are a great way to communicate electronically with NeXT users with similar interest or problems that range from system administration to specific application interest such as Lotus Improv or Frame. Have a look at the list below of the 34 special interest groups (if you wish to start a noew group, please send email to user_groups@next.com: Adobe Illustrator NeXT SIG (ai_next@wcraft.wimsey.bc.ca) To join, email: jchin@wcraft.wimsey.bc.ca AFS NeXT SIG To join, email: info-afs-next-request@transarc.com Auspex Administrators (NFS file servers) To join, send email to: auspex-request@princeton.edu Berkeley Mathematics Software Group Email: nb@cs.stanford.edu Classroom: NeXT Courseware SIG To join, email the text: "SUBSCRIBE next-classroom " to MAILSERV@gac.edu Communications/TeleCommunications SIG To join, email: nextcomm-request@marble.com Create users NeXT SIG To join, send email to Create-request@mcs.anl.gov Data GROUP NeXT SIG To join, email: data_group@dazzl.com DataPhile users NeXT SIG To join, send email to DataPhile-request@mcs.anl.gov Epoch Administrators SIG To join, send email to: epuf-request@antares.mcs.anl.gov Executor SIG To join, email: executor-request@ictv.com Finnish: FUNeXT (Finnish Users of NeXT) To join, send email to: mailserver@lists.funet.fi and write in body text: HELP LIST SUB FUNeXT Frame: FUN (Frame Users Network) To join, email: framers-request@drd.com Frame User Network -New England (FUNNE) To join, email: funne@srbci.mv.com Gopher users Interest Group To join, email: gopher-news-request@boombox.micro.umn.edu GIS(Geographical Information Services)SIG To join, email: next-gis-request@deltos.com Improv User Group To join, email: improv-request@bmt.gun.com Japanese: Kanji and Japanese on the NeXT To join, email:next-nihongo-request@pinoko.berkeley.edu Mathematica:Special Interest Group To join, email: mathgroup-request@yoda.physics.unc.edu Medical: NeXTMed SIG To join, email:NeXTMed-request@ulnar.biostr.washington.edu Music: NeXT Music SIG To join, email: nextmusic-request@wri.com Mexico - MexNeXT Discussion List To join, email the text: "SUBSCRIBE MEXNEXT " to listserv@TECMTYVM.bitnet Missouri -MUNUG-L Discussion List To join, email the text: "SUBSCRIBE MUNUG-L " to listserv@UMCVMB.bitnet NexLAW - Legal NeXT User Group To join, email: NexLAW-request@techlaw.com Next/Apple II Mailing List To join, email: na2sig-request@byu.edu NeXT-Icons Mailing List To join, email: next-icon-request@bmt.gun.com NeXTManagers (quick & technical answers) To join, email: next-managers-request@stolaf.edu NeXT Q&A's To join, email the text: "SUBSCRIBE NEXT-L " to LISTSERV@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU NeXTSTEP, the operating environment To join, email the text: "SUBSCRIBE NEXTSTEP " to LISTSERV@IndyCMS.IUPUI.Edu or LISTSERV@IndyCMS.BITNET. Network and Security Management for Installed Labs and Large Installations To join, email: next-lab-request@cs.ubc.ca Developers/ Programmers: NeXT Programmers SIG To join, email: next-prog-request@cpac.washington.edu Publishing Interest Group To join, email: publish-request@chron.com SCIENCE NeXT User Group (SNUG) To join, email: snug-requests@whitewater.chem.wisc.edu United Kingdom SIG To join, email: uk-next-users-request@ohm.york.ac.uk, and next-uk-usergroups-request@asmec.co.uk, and uk-next-announce-request@asmec.co.uk ___________________________________________________________________ IV. Marble shipping version 1.1 of Teleconnect From: ray@carrara.bos.marble.com (Ray Bloom) Marble Associates is pleased to announce the immediate availability of version 1.1 of Marble Teleconnect for the NeXT. We appreciate everyone's patience while we have been preparing this release. We have just finished the testing period and can now upgrade existing copies of Teleconnect v1.0. Any owner of a copy of Marble Teleconnect may upgrade to version 1.1 directly from Marble Software Products, regardless of where the copy was purchased Upgrades are available between between July 1 and August 31, 1992. Please contact Marble Software Products (see signature) for more upgrade information. The Future: ISDN Marble Teleconnect already supports the Hayes ISDN System Adapter under NeXTstep 2.1, and it will support this adapter under NeXTstep 3.0, when 3.0 becomes available. ___________________________________________________________________ V. NeXT Positions available at Oceania Oceania Health Care Systems is a growing start-up software development company dedicated to improving patient care through a progressive approach aimed at providing health care information management solutions. Oceania is committed to utilizing industry standards, maintaining an open architecture, incorporating the newest advances in hardware, networking/communication and software technologies, and changing the notion of the human machine interface. Our goal is the development of a state of the art computer human interface and database for the clinical environment. Oceania extends this progressive philosophy to its corporate management and operations. We are committed to a democratic management approach and high quality working environment which includes flexible hours, medical benefits, and aggressive profit sharing plans. We seek qualified candidates in the following areas: System Administration and Support: Perform traditional system administration duties, customer support, and quality assurance. The individual will need Unix experience, networking, and NeXT NetInfo. BS/BA in an engineering related degree with 3-5 years of experience. Network Designer: Perform the design and implementation of a distributed application. The individual will need UNIX, OLTP, Network, TCP/IP, LU6.2, and Client/Server application experience. MS/PhD in an engineering related degree with 5-10 years of experience. Software Implementers: Implementation of a clinical health care application. The individual will need NeXT, OOD, GUI, UNIX, Health Care, multi media, networking, and database experience. BS/MS in an engineering related degree with 3-10 years of experience. Senior Software Developers: Design and Implementation of a clinical health care application. The individual will need strong writing and communication skills, NeXT, OOD, GUI, UNIX, Health Care, multi media, networking, and database experience. MS/PhD in an engineering related degree with 5-15 years of experience. Both full and part-time positions are available with start time and compensation package negotiable. All interested in Oceania and its endeavors are encouraged to mail or FAX a CV/Resume (please no electronic mail) , indicating the position(s) you are interested in, to: Edmund Billings, Jr. MD. 325 Lytton Avenue. Suite 400 Palo Alto, CA 94301 FAX: (415) 322-0142 __________________________________________________________________ VI. NeXT Public Domain CD-ROM reminder (NEW DEADLINE: August 10) Reminder: ******SUBMISSION DEADLINE****** ****Monday, August 10, 1992**** ANNOUNCING THE NeXT PUBLIC DOMAIN CD-ROM FOR EDUCATION Soon you will be seeing quite a few CD-ROMs containing files from the major NeXT archive sites (e.g. Purdue, Oregon State). Some are being produced by NeXT user groups, others are from software publishers, and even others are included when you buy a hard disk from a particular vendor. Much of the *really* incredible educational software, however, does not appear at the NeXT public archive sites, and therefore may not be included in these productions. WHAT IS THE NeXT PUBLIC DOMAIN CD-ROM FOR EDUCATION? The Higher Education Marketing group at NeXT Computer, Inc. is gathering educational software that is available either free of charge (freeware) or for minimal costs (shareware) and will distribute the wares via CD-ROM. There will also be a handful of commercial demos (education oriented only) on the CD-ROM, as well some selected demonstration applications developed at NeXT which are not part of NeXT's current product lines. NeXT plans to distribute the CD-ROM this fall to many of our education users, and will give it away to attendees at the 1992 EDUCOM conference in Baltimore, MD (October 28 - 31). ******SUBMISSION DEADLINE****** ****Monday, August 10, 1992**** SUBMISSION GUIDELINES We realize that we're going to get gigabytes of stuff, and not all will fit on one CD-ROM. NeXT will evaluate for software for stability and then select the submissions to be included on this version of the NeXT Public Domain CD-ROM for Education. If you have software that you would like to include on the NeXT Public Domain CD-ROM for Education, please observe the following guidelines: 1. Each application should be in a separate directory, along with a README file containing the following sections: a. Who wrote the software and contact information (preferably Internet and US. Mail addresses) for questions, comments, bug reports, etc. b. The category that best describes the software type. (See *categories* below.) c. What the application does. d. What the application is used for at your institution (e.g. in a particular course, to illustrate a certain concept, research). e. Which NeXT release your software was developed under (2.x or NeXTSTEP Pre-Release 3). f. Detailed installation instructions (if any). g. Any other comments you would like to add. 2. All executables must be stripped. This can either be done by typing "make install" to build the application, or by typing "strip " in a UNIX shell. 3. If the software is an Interface Builder palette or an Objective C class, we require a small example application and / or detailed documentation illustrating the tool's function. Please include this in the directory containing the tool. 4. If your software is shareware, we will gladly include any licensing information that you provide for us. Please include such information in the README file. We will also place a file in a conspicuous place on the CD-ROM encouraging people to register any shareware that they use. Note: We hope that these guidelines will make the CD-ROM much more useful for everyone in the NeXT education user community. If any guideline(s) presents a particular hardship, please contact us. PARTIAL LIST OF SOFTWARE CATEGORIES (Feel free to suggest a category that we may not have included.) Architecture Astronomy Art/Design Biology Business Chemistry Communications Computer Science CraftMan (Both programs & palettes. NeXT will supply CraftMan Engine) Economics Engineering English Foreign Language Games Geology History Information Management Law Linguistics Mathematics (Including Mathematica Notebooks and front ends to Mathematica) MediaStation (NeXT will provide a MediaStation engine to run your archives) MediaView Medical Multimedia Music Networking Philosophy Physics Programming (e.g. palettes, objects, examples) Psychology Publishing Statistics Utilities/Services ******SUBMISSION DEADLINE****** ****Monday, August 10, 1992**** HOW TO SUBMIT In order of preference: 1. NeXTmail to: 2. A 1.44MB or 2.88MB floppy disk sent to: NeXT on Campus NeXT Computer, Inc. 900 Chesapeake Drive Redwood City, CA 94063 If you would like your disk returned, please include a self-addressed envelope. (NeXT will provide return postage.) Please contact us with any questions you may have. And thank you for writing top-quality educational software for NeXT computers! David Spitzler Mgr., Higher Education Marketing dspitz@next.com Jeff Blum Higher Education Technical Assistant jblum@next.com ___________________________________________________________________ VII. User Interface Guidelines for 3.0 available for anonymous FTP The latest version of NeXT's User Interface Guidelines document (.rtfd) is now available for anonymous FTP from sutro.sfsu.edu [130.212.15.230] in the directory pub/UIGuide_July_92/. This supersedes the previous draft release already on the archives. The UIGuide_July_92 directory contains the following files: README (instructions how to uncompress the Guidelines) UserInterface.squfold UnSquashOnly* Addison-Wesley will publish the final version in hardcopy form as part of the NeXTSTEP 3.0 documentation set. Thanks to Kathy Walrath for making these files available to BANG and for permission to redistribute them electronically. BANG P.O Box 1731 Palo Alto, CA 94302 info@bang.org (415) 327-BANG The Bay Area NeXT Group is an organization that provides a forum for information exchange concerning the NeXT marketplace and computer technology in general. ____________________________________________________________________ VIII. NeXT Computer at Fed Micro 1992 If you are in the Washington, D.C (USA) area next week... The Fed Micro '92 show is in full swing next week at the Washington Convention Center! Fed Micro (next to FOSE) is one of the largest and fastest growing Federal microcomputer conferences drawing over 50,000 attendees. NeXT will be participating this year in both the Lotus and Adobe Booths. NeXT's Jeff Spirer will also be speaking on a panel called, "OS Wars: Is There a New Operating Systems in Your Future" on August 5 between 10:15 and 11:45AM. ____________________________________________________________________ IX. Connextions Announces NeXT-to-IBM Connectivity Products Connextions has announced their 5250Vision product, which connects NeXT computers to IBM's Application System 400. The 5250 product offers NeXT-to-IBM connectivity in heterogeneous network environments using the TCP/IP protocol. Connextions also announced Release 3.0 of the 3270Vision product, which offers new functionality and services to its users. In a separate announcement, Connextions introduced Network Palette, an object library for developing distributed network applications on NeXTSTEP computers. It offers a complete object interface to the 3270Vision and 5250Vision products. Contact: Ed Kodinsky (508) 689-3570 ____________________________________________________________________ X. RDR Reduces Prices on all Objects in PowerPalette Series by as Much as 60% June 12, 1992. RDR announced today that prices for all of its reusable software components are to be reduced by up to 60% from their current levels. Due to high user demand for inexpensive, reliable and reusable software components, RDR has restructured the pricing of its PowerPalettes series of NeXTSTEP Objects to better address the needs of the developer market. In addition to the new pricing structure, RDR announced the RDRSelector palette is now shipping. PowerPalettes consists of five palettes designed to provide developers access to useful graphical interface components. Members of the PowerPalettes family include RDRSwitchView, RDRSound, RDRSelector, RDRImageView, and RDRGadgets. All palettes are appropriate for many custom application domains, and are not specific to any particular vertical markets. In addition, RDR announced two new reseller agreements. NeXTConnection, the New Hampshire based mail order reseller for the NeXT market, will carry RDR's line of reusable components. In the United Kingdom, RDR has signed an exclusive distribution agreement with TPS Systems, Ltd. of Perth. RDR is actively pursuing additional international resellers. Contact: Chris Walters, (703) 591-8713 ____________________________________________________________________ XI. Announcing MathGraph Dr. Michael J. Mezzino, Jr., chairman of the University of Houston Clear Lake's Department of Mathematics and a NeXTSTEP developer, today announced MathGraph, a general mathematical graphical display object. In the form of a loadable object palette, MathGraph is an object class that lets users control and display a variety of graphical models using fixed or variable data in two-dimensional and three-dimensional formats. It also manages data, data scaling, axes, axis labels, data plotting and limited animation. Contact: Dr. Michael J. Mezzino, Jr. Phone: (713) 331-6624 Email: mezzino@gauss.cl.uh.edu ____________________________________________________________________ end