Sunday, February 22, 1998

The new DocServer site for Frontier 5 is ready. Each built-in verb in Frontier gets its own page. It's like the man page convention in Unix, thru a web interface.

The name of the DocServer site comes from an app that's been with us since 1992 called (of course) DocServer. It's a hybrid of a database, a browser and a scripting interface. Pretty cool stuff. Very futuristic for 1992. However, we didn't port DocServer to Windows, we're moving away from the app, and towards HTML rendering of verb pages.

John Delacour, a prolific Frontier developer, has been working on the Verbi suite for Frontier 5. It provides the same info as the website, without a net connection, all running inside Frontier, Mac or Windows. Lots of people use Verbi and highly recommend it.

The original author of the DocServer text is Dan Shafer, who now is a famous industry pundit!

Wes Felter, a future superstar (he's 19) is working on DocServer for us now.

Many of Frontier's verbs are cross-platform, including the string, file, outline, and threading verbs. These are just examples, if you want, apps built in Frontier can run equally well on Windows or Macs.

You can download a copy of the DocServer app and the database for the Frontier 4 verb set. Mac only.

What happened at macfaq.com?

Is it a love triangle? The NY Times reports on the return of H. Ross to Perot Systems. The guy he booted out is Jim Cannavino, who is rumored to be Apple's new CEO. He would work for Steve Jobs, or work with Steve Jobs, or would replace Steve Jobs. Now, remember that Perot used to be Jobs's partner at NeXT. Does it make your head spin?

Dino Morelli is working on getting data from Frontier's object database into Java.

Maybe Ask Jeeves is what we need? It's interesting. They use human beings to create their index.

SJ Merc: An argument in favor of leaving, now.