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Re: brief status report



>>>>> "Joshua" == Joshua W Burton <burton@het.brown.edu> writes:

    >> After those six weeks have elapsed, 2.0 will ship.
    >> 

    >> That's the plan, anyway.
    >> 

    >> [We actually have plans for beyond 2.0, but astrology is hard]

    Joshua> I didn't see _any_ time in the schedule to even work
    Joshua> towards a NeXTstep release.  We've heard the story about
    Joshua> missing technical data from NeXT; if you could be a bit
    Joshua> more specific, perhaps some of us can lean on our
    Joshua> acquaintances there to help.  We old users are feeling
    Joshua> more bypassed with every 1.99 release, every week, every
    Joshua> month that goes by without us.  (If necessary, we'd settle
    Joshua> for what you can give us without the help from NeXT...we
    Joshua> don't question your good intentions toward us, but
    Joshua> unsupported faith always erodes with time.)

It was very inconsiderate of me not to explicitly mention the NEXTSTEP
port.  Here's the scoop: The person who will be doing the work is Mat.
Of late, Mat has been bogged down with DOS extender bugs, but for a
time, the NEXTSTEP port was going to be the next thing on his plate.
However, we inserted the new faster blitter into his priority queue,
because there are some meetings coming up for which it might be very
good for us to have a very fast blitter.  The next thing on Mat's list
after the fast blitter is NEXTSTEP.  To be honest, support for 16 bpp
and 32 bpp wasn't planned originally in 2.0, but there are some apps
that require it *and* to do the fast NEXTSTEP port, we need similar
capability anyway, so Mat is doing some work in that area, as well.

So, tentatively, 1.99n (coincidence) will be the first new port in a
long time to NEXTSTEP, although it will not have particularly fast
graphics unless we can get some help from NeXT.  However, when 1.99n
comes out and we can show how quick it is under DOS and Linux, perhaps
someone at NeXT will be able to officially speak to us (unofficially
we have support at NeXT, but the documents we need are effectively
classified "secret", so we need *official* participation).  At that
time, I'll ask all our remaining NEXTSTEP customers to send a polite
letter to NeXT asking that they help us out.  If anyone here already
has some pull and would like to start asking questions of your
favorite NeXT employees, feel free to do so.

If I seem cagey when discussing the type of help we need from NeXT,
you might consider the contortions people have to go through when
they're under non-disclosure.  I try to be as up front about the
goings on here at ARDI as I possibly can, including what's up with our
NEXTSTEP port.

So, the plan is that we *will* get our NEXTSTEP port going again,
although the graphics may be a bit doggy (which will be a particular
shame with our new fast blitter), and after we've released a slow
version, *perhaps* we can get someone at NeXT to deign to officially
answer our requests for that which we need to do graphics quickly.

The NEXTSTEP re-port itself isn't particularly hard, but we're in a
major time crunch trying to scrounge up a production and advertising
budget, so anything that helps us on that front winds up taking
precedence.

Thanks for voicing your concern and allowing me to clarify the
ommission.

	--Cliff
	ctm@ardi.com



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