Inline movies in OmniWeb 2.0

[Michael Gersten]

[Being forwarded to the nextstep bitnet mailing list; it's no longer  
on the topic of omniweb.]

[ This was a discussion of, "Should OmniWeb support NEXTIME  
in the browser?". The reply is below. The main part of the reply  
is:]

>  Sadly, the real win in NEXTIME is being overlooked - its
>  ability to provide an optimized, device-independent path
>  to the framebuffer.  Interceptor is nice (and
>  undocumented), but isn't device-independent.  (Eg, you
>  get to write your drawing routines 7 times: 2 bit, 8 bit
>  gray, 8 bit pseudo, 12 bit, 15 bit, 24 bit low, and 24
>  bit high.)
>  

>  My understanding of NEXTIME is that it allows you to give
>  it a buffer and tell it what the format is, and it'll
>  handle getting it to the screen quickly and dithered.
>  This would be an incredible boon to anyone doing
>  interactive graphics applications under NEXTSTEP.  (If
>  you doubt there are many of these, consider the Trilobyte
>  and Id both develop on NEXTSTEP.)

I would say that it is actually worse than that. NeXTStep  
originally was a nice O/S that developers could write for. But  
now, what is NeXTStep?

If you're looking to sell what you write, and you want to provide  
something that customers can use, then:

You can't write for DBKit, as there's no guarantee that people will  
have an Adaptor. But if they do, at least, then they can use it.

You can't write for EOF, because people may not have an adaptor.  
But worse than DBKit, EOF adaptors are subclasses, not stand  
alone apps. This means that they not only need to buy an adaptor,  
they also need to buy the EOF classes from NeXT.

You can't write for NEXTIME, because again, it's not provided.  
Not even the player only stuff.

You really want to get NeXTStep 3.3? No development stuff -- just  
being able to purchase programs that others have written? It's not  
just the $200 for the user stuff -- you also need to buy EOF and  
NEXTIME, separately.

Imagine, if you would, what if loadable bundles cost an extra $25.  
What if DO's were not part of NeXTStep 3.1, but required another  
$50.

Think I'm crazy? PhoneKit used to be part of NeXTStep. It's gone.  
So is (as I understand it) support for dot matrix printers (but  
then, it wasn't very much support). So is a basic, simple word  
processor whose only benefits over Edit were margin control,  
interline spacing, and multi-column printing.

Consider: How many of you have actually gotten the sound and  
music kit? It's free, but it no longer comes on the NeXT CD-Rom.  
You have to manually get it from Stanford.

Is it just me, or is NeXT going in the wrong direction with  
NeXTStep?

Begin forwarded message:

>  It would require NeXT to publish the specs on NEXTIME,
>  something I suspect they won't do in the near future
>  since I don't think NEXTIME has been the money-maker some
>  had hoped.
>  

>  Sadly, the real win in NEXTIME is being overlooked - its
>  ability to provide an optimized, device-independent path
>  to the framebuffer.  Interceptor is nice (and
>  undocumented), but isn't device-independent.  (Eg, you
>  get to write your drawing routines 7 times: 2 bit, 8 bit
>  gray, 8 bit pseudo, 12 bit, 15 bit, 24 bit low, and 24
>  bit high.)
>  

>  My understanding of NEXTIME is that it allows you to give
>  it a buffer and tell it what the format is, and it'll
>  handle getting it to the screen quickly and dithered.
>  This would be an incredible boon to anyone doing
>  interactive graphics applications under NEXTSTEP.  (If
>  you doubt there are many of these, consider the Trilobyte
>  and Id both develop on NEXTSTEP.)
>  

>  We could do MPEG or MPEG2 ourselves, but our feeling is
>  that since almost nobody has a fast enough network to
>  view these real-time (as they are downloaded), it doesn't
>  really matter if we do it inline or with another app.
>  

>  Things like Gif and JPEG images, however, should be
>  displayed incrementally inline because they don't have
>  a minimum acceptable data rate.  (You can spend as much
>  time as you want loading a GIF, you can't go below a
>  certain transfer rate for MPEG and MPEG2.)
>  

>  -Wil

--
Michael Gersten	  michael at stb.info.com  Without Prejudice, UCC 1-207
NeXT Registered Developer (NeRD) # 3860 -- Hire me! (Ready _NOW_)
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