ftp.cdrom.com/pub/cdrom//cdrom.tar/cdrom/reviews/nova

Text File | 1993-05-02 | 8KB | 153 lines

                                 NOVA

Walnut Creek CDROM                                      800-786-9907
1547 Palos Verdes, Suite 260                            510-947-5996
Walnut Creek, CA, 94596-2228                            510-947-1644 fax
Price: $39.95                                           [e-mail]


GENERAL

Walnut Creek is one of the latest entrants into the NeXT CD-ROM world.
With their introduction of Nova, they bring several years of
experience in publishing CD-ROMs for other platforms and software
products, most notably the X11R5 and GNU distribution CD.  Focusing on
an archive format, Nova offers some unique features of its own.

For those looking for a NeXT CD-ROM, a GNU disk, UNIX source code, and
possibly a MSDOS disk for those who have SoftPC or will have NS/FIP, Walnut
Creek can serve all your needs.  They will even create a custom CD-ROM for
you, at a fairly attractive price.

All this support for different platforms is great, but can also make you
wonder how much they concentrate on the NeXT product.  Shortly after Nova was
released, I contacted Walnut Creek to inquire if Nova was just a rehashing of
monoLib.  At that time, I received a message from someone there who knew of
no other CD-ROM products for the NeXT.  However, there were at least four
other products out on the market before Nova, and two of them had been out
for quite awhile.  This made me question how much they knew, or rather didn't
know, about the NeXT market.  Overall, I think they are a good company, and
that I just talked to someone who was not as informed.

The update policy for any CD-ROM product from Walnut Creek is based on
demand, with greater demand bringing more frequent updates.  Currently, Nova
can probably expect to see updates once or twice a year.

LAYOUT

The layout of Nova is fairly good.  Moving around the disk is not a problem.
There are two application directories, one for demonstration programs, and
another for everything else.  Nova has one of the highest number of
subdivisions of the Apps directory.  This is great for picking out exactly
one type of application.  The Demos directory is organized completely
different from the regular apps directory, concentrating on commercial
software divisions.

The source code directory is strictly limited to Objective-C classes, IB
palettes, tutorials, and other source code to aid programmers.  I found this
division quite to my liking; however, it could use further subdividing into
Palettes, Classes, and Misc directories.

One notable aspect I found was in the Fonts directory.  All fonts, both free
and shareware, are unarchived in one place, making it very easy to copy any
ones that you want off the disk.

In other places, the layout is less than satisfactory.  I especially
disliked that the Utilities directory was divided into three subdirectories.
It would be easier to use if those subdirectories were part of the Apps
directory.

With all the experience Walnut Creek has had making CDs, you would expect
things to be organized very well; but for the most part, they were no better
or worse than anyone else.  I was especially surprised at their handling of
NeXT Package files.  They were all placed in one directory, Packages.  I
would prefer to see them in the regular categories in the Apps directories.
Even if they are not immediately accessible, at least when I look for a
program, I do not have to worry about whether the program is packaged.  There
are very few programs which I am going to actually run off of a CD-ROM, so it
matters more to me how easy it is to find something on a disk, versus whether
or not I can actually run it right then or have to unpack it first.  I would
actually prefer to see the Apps and Demos directories eliminated and move
their subdirectories to the top level.  This would make for a flatter, and
much quicker disk to browse through.

As far as the CDD goes, Nova had the second best average, at 4.2, but they
scored the second worst for maximum CDD at 9.

INDEXES

One feature Nova excels at is indexing.  Walnut Creek went to a fair amount
of work on this part of the CD.  Each directory containing actual
applications or files, and not just directories, has both a file list in 'ls
-lR' format and, what really counts, an index file listing all the programs
or files, along with a brief 2-3 line sentence describing it.  For programs,
the index file also tells whether source code is included or not.  Unique to
Nova, these indexes are found everywhere on the disk, even in the
directories that just contain sound files.

Nova also has all the index and file lists indexed with Librarian.  This
makes it extremely convenient to quickly locate a program using a name, or a
match for part of its description.  Unfortunately, since there is only one
index file per directory, and that file contains the descriptions of all the
programs, it is impossible to use Librarian for complex searches, since it
will match for any program in that file.  Searching for 'jpeg' and 'source'
might reveal a match, but does not mean that they refer to the same program.
There is no main file list at the root that is 'grep'able, nor are any of the
index or file lists.

The index files are great for reading before trying all the programs or other
files in a directory.  They certainly aid in helping the user find only what
he wants instead of having to look through every file.

Nova also includes some indexing for a couple of the Documents directories,
which is useful when using those files.

CONTENTS

Nova stands out in some of the content provided.  In particular, Nova has a
PC directory which contains various public domain programs for PC's which
can be used with SoftPC.  This is a great addition, and hopefully will be be
showing up on all the other CD-ROM products in the near future.  The
inclusion of high quality, very useful PC programs, which are not available
on the NeXT, will probably become a necessity.  I did not think the PC
programs on the Nova CD were all that great, though.  Most of the programs
could already be found on, or for, the NeXT.  Unless you really hate the NeXT
options, or have booted your NeXT-Intel machine into DOS, I do not see much
need for many of the programs.  The idea is great, but I felt like the PC
directory was mainly a teaser without any really worthwhile programs.  One
redeeming quality is the inclusion of virus checking software.

There are also two Genie directories.  The first, in the root directory of the
CD, contains various information on how to become a Genie member, how to use
the Genie services, etc.  The second is in the Newsletters directory, and
contains all the Genie Unix News.  This is more of a roundtable format.
Although I did not search through it very much, I imagine it might be useful.

The Newsletters directory, unfortunately, carried very little in the way of
usergroup newsletters.  Only the Nugget newsletter was represented strongly.
Only six other newsletters were represented, and none of those had more than
three issues.  There was also no USENET news coverage.  I have found this to
be very important lately, and consider it to be a serious omission.

The product catalog, which Walnut Creek included, also mentioned the largest
collection of NeXTSTEP games.  After some investigating, I found this to be
true, but just barely.  Whether or not having the largest collection of games
makes you better than other CD-ROM products is highly debatable.  Personally,
I would have preferred to see the games deleted, and the USENET news and all
the newsletters that are on the archives included instead.  The games also do
not make up for the complete lack of any non-game GNU software.  While I
expected to see GNU software, especially since they make a GNU disk, there
was none, other than the GNU GO boardgame.

Nova was the second smallest disk that I reviewed, at least in terms of sheer
number of files.  The disk does provide good coverage of NeXT programs.  A
couple of areas in which Nova did very well include a large collection of
PostScript images and 'mod' sound files.

SUMMARY

Nova earns some marks of distinction for its PC and GENIE coverage.  The good
indexing support throughout the disk is also a definite plus.  However, the
lack of USENET news, newsletters, and GNU software really hurts.