10/7/91
Number 4 Vol 1

ANuG
Newsletter

The Albuquerque NeXT Users Group
Sponsored by Gregory Burd
gburd@nmsu.edu

Intro:

Hello again, first I would like to hold a meeting the first weekend in November.  Mark Williams has volunteered to hold the meeting in his bookstore.  Andrew Stone will be there with his shipping version of Create! and DataPhile for purchase.  The focus of the meeting will be "How to get started developing for NeXT: what to do, who to talk to, tricks traps and pitfalls."  So please email me if you will be able to make it, or if you would like to be involved with the topic, have a better topic, or some other topic of importance that you would like to speak on.

The WaNUG Super Seminar:

I was fortunate enough to attend the WaNUG Super Seminar recently held in Washington DC.  To say that this meeting was a success would only scratch the surface of what was accomplished.  What follows is a description of the events by Conrad Geiger:

From: Conrad_Geiger%next.com@triton.unm.edu
To: nug@cpac.washington.edu
Subject: WaNUG Super Seminar Summary

September 28-29 NeXT Super Seminar Summary

Hello,

I would like to recognize the all the outstanding volunteers,  
presenters, exhibitors and attendees of the WaNUG (Washington, D.C  
NeXT User Group) Super Seminar that made this years event a great  
success.   There were representatives from 36 NeXT User Groups from  
the United States, Canada, and Germany present at this first NeXT  
User/Developer Conference held September 28-29 in Washington, D.C. 

Over 30 NeXT developers demonstrated their applications during the  
two days to 100's of attendees while non-stop presentations were  
given by NeXT developers and users.  Some of the more popular  
presentations in the central auditorium were given by Dr. Richard  
Phillips of Los Alamos National Labs, Allen Olsen of Lotus, Kent  
Spackman of Oregon Health Sciences University, Lt. Col. Bryan Boesch  
of DARPA, Kris Younger of NeXT and the developer panel of Roger  
Rosner, Alex Cone, Andrew Stone, Charles Perkins and Allen Olsen of  
Lighthouse Design, Objective Technologies, Stone Design, Cube Route,  
and Lotus respectively. 

I would like to offer a special thanks to Bill Strehl, Chris Walters,  
Mike O'Neill and Hugh O'Neill for their outstanding leadership at  
WaNUG in making this event happen. The high level of success of this  
year's event would not have been reached without their devotion and  
time.  The NeXT community can not thank them enough for all their  
outstanding work in helping organize this event. Mitre Corporation  
was most generous in allowing the event to be held at their  
facilities. I look forward to attending next year's event.

conrad

On top of that the foundations of two major groups of NeXT users were set down.  First the Independent [from NeXT] NeXT Users Forum.  And second the International Independent Association of NeXT Developers.  Both these names are tentative.  The focus of the groups is to sponsor solidarity among the NeXT user community and to use its combined force to speak to NeXT.  Hopefully a group like this could pressure NeXT into for example selling an extended keyboard.  There are several areas where a united front of NeXT enthusiasts could help to change NeXT for the better.  Another function would be user support.  We all have encountered the barrier NeXT has constructed for getting questions answered.  For the Developers Association, there will be a SLIP server service started, and a FTP site with only advanced NeXT programming problems and solutions.  As well as a BBS of sorts for around the clock meetings of the Developer community.  This will help disseminate the knowledge of the few good programmers to the many aspiring developers.  This is a major step for the NeXT community that can if administered in a positive way have a profound impact on the future of NeXT.

NeXT has a Child, Appsoft:

Wait a second, didn't Apple try this with Claris?  Well if you haven't heard, NeXT is donating WriteNow the now unbundeled wordprocessor for the NeXT to the new company Appsoft.  Appsoft is founded by Randy Adams a former NeXT employee.  Randy was employee number 26 at NeXT and has worked in other arenas since his departure from NeXT in 1987.  This company got its official start up in an email message stating that "A New Company to Focus on NeXTstep Computers".  There are several other companies out there that are doing just that but don't get the send off, or the gift program (WriteNow) that Appsoft has. The difference between the creation of Claris and Appsoft is Claris was a child company partially funded by Apple where as Appsoft is now completely separate.  i guess we will have to wait and see if Appsoft produces a program completely from Appsoft.

Tid Bits:

- Newsletters will have a more centralized and specific archive site, ANuG's Newsletter will be included, and will be reformatted.  Hopefully it will have a more friendly face.  ANuG will continue to be distributed as ASCII on the ANuG alias, buy will be in .rtf format on the Net.

- Greg Burd is currently developing a program that will allow the common user with a NeXT, modem, and a university standard UNIX account to receive NeXTmail at home.  The program is due out by January '92.

- Apple has introduced three new machines.  No details as yet but some are based on the 68040.

- A group of three students is working to produce a NeXTworthy release of Xtrek (or NeXtrek if you like).  It will exploit the graphics ability of the NeXT and use Objective technology to create a new level of excitement in gamming.  The project is ongoing.

- September additions to NeXT Mini Examples are available for anonymous FTP from Purdue.

- Ariel has been marketing its Quintprocessor for a while now.  It offered 5 6800 CPU's plus memory and ports to do DSP intensive work.  Now Ariel offers a new board with two i860's plus memory with the same intension but they are also capable of being accessed through c routines for true parallel processing.  Up to three such boards can be put in a Cube at once, each running at 160MIPS.  For the power hungry programmer now there is approximately 500MIPS in one Cube.

- Adobe Systems announced its endorsement of the Adobe Technology  
Exchange (ATX).  This international users group is chartered to promote  
the exchange of information and ideas among users of Adobe(R)  
technologies and related products.  For more information contact Mike Rose, manager of user programs for Adobe, at (415) 962-4999, or Gary
Chesnutis, president of Info-Catalysts and executive director
of Adobe Technology Exchange, by phone at (408) 562-6104 or fax
at (408) 562-6381.

- Altsys Corporation is looking for a NeXTstep programmer with skills in multi-tasking, UNIX, and graphics to work on upcoming graphics programs for the NeXT.  Contact email: altsys!kdowden@uunet.UU.NET.

- Business Week praises Object Orientated Programming as the future. The article in the Oct 1 weeks edition goes on to praise the NeXT and give the example of the new Fax option that we all enjoy due to the Objective construction of NeXTstep.

- NeXT Computer will sponsor a NeXT-only trade show and technical seminar on the 4 and 5 of December 1991 at the Sheraton Reston (VA) for employees of the U.S. Federal Government.  Other people interested are also welcome.  There will be several seminars as well as third party developers there.  For more information contact Gary Fuller at (703) 506-3955 or (209) 586-6398.

-  There is now a Pascal compiler for the NeXT.  uvpac/NeXT is an ISO standard Pascal compiler developed at the University of Virginia's Academic Computing Center in conjunction with the Computer Science department.  The educational cost is $150.  Compile and run times are compatible with those of the GNU c compiler distributed with the Extended Release of NeXTstep.  Contact:
U.S. Mail
        Professor Jack W. Davidson
        Department of Computer Science
        Thornton Hall
        University of Virginia
        Charlottesville, VA 22903
E-mail
        uvapc@virginia.edu
FAX
        804-982-2214

Thanks once again for enduring the length of this Newsletter, and the wait for it to come out.  Again please tell me if you are interested in writing for the Newsletter.  Please let me know if you can make the meeting in Nov., and if you have any suggestions, as always let me know.

Greg Burd
Sponsor of ANuG
gburd@nmsu.edu