Scripting News -- April 1998
Thursday, April 30, 1998
DaveNet: A Fragile Internet.This morning I did a project I've been wanting to do for a long time, a suite for managing banner ads in Frontier's object database. Here's a test page with a rotating banner ad and a stats page reporting views and click-thrus.
More mail.
SJ Merc: States plan to stop shipment of Windows 98.
PC Magazine tutorial on XML.
News.com: Lycos buys WiseWire. "WiseWire is a virtual library where documents search for and find interested people." The WebGuides at Lycos are implemented with WiseWire.
On MacInTouch, Henry Norr follows up with reader feedback on his scripting piece.
Last year's early May series: 1, 2, 3, 4.
Wednesday, April 29, 1998
DaveNet: Calling All DTDs!Red Herring thinks that Netscape's search engine partner is InfoSeek and Upside's David Coursey thinks that Netscape is committing browser suicide.
Amazon.com interview with COM guru Don Box.
News.com: Borland changes its name, focuses on enterprise thru CORBA.
Wired: A $500 Mac?
XML Exchange is a forum for exchanging DTDs.
IBM releases a validating XML parser in Java. It was actually released in February, and according to some has overly restrictive licensing terms.
The Economist covers XML.
Here's a first: XML-based syndication via email. You can register with Josh Lucas's server to have the headlines from Scripting News delivered via email every night at 11:59PM. He's building on our XML-based content flow.
InfoWorld's Jeff Walsh talks to Lotus, Macromedia, Netobjects, Allaire, Netscape, UserLand re WebDAV.
We're major proponents of WebDAV because it opens the door to managed content, and gets the toolmakers to work together instead of trying to be everything to everyone, which no one can be.
Tuesday, April 28, 1998
MacWEEK's Missy Roback tells the story of Flash.News.com: Lycos to team up with an ISP. I've heard about other deals like this, privately. Think "portals" -- it's the new buzzword. Like the Macarena, the idea brings my body happiness.
Pierre Morel is working on a DTD to describe graphic user interfaces. Wow! You can add your own DTDs and update them thru the Calling All DTDs page.
ZDNet: Vector graphics for the web.
SJ Merc: Knight-Ridder headquarters moving to the valley.
Highly recommended: O'Reilly's Frontier book.
Major net outage this morning. Not clear how widespread. Service is back now. Let's have fun!
Monday, April 27, 1998
Thea's Galleria goes to Waukesha, WI.A neat project: Let's build a public library of interesting DTDs. Tell your friends!
Josh Lucas put up a DTD for XML-RPC.
The Frontier-XML list is getting interesting.
Software ideas evolve, it took years to figure out how to manage HTML websites in Frontier. I hope XML goes faster. One step at a time.
Dan Shafer: Is your site ready for a redesign? Yeah, now that you mention it.
SJ Merc: Koko the gorilla chats up AOL.
Regular expressions for Frontier. What a nice-lookin site!
SGMLU has a collection of DTDs, and a gentle introduction to SGML, including DTDs.
An incredible Suck piece from late 1996 telling how Netscape and Sun tried to own the net, with Kleiner-Perkins orchestrating, and how Microsoft would foil them. I had forgotten this period. We actually did a Netscape plug-in for MacBird, but never released it. The "market" for plug-ins opened and closed in record time.
Apple: HyperCard 2.4 embraces QuickTime.
Henry Norr on MacInTouch talks about cross-platform scripting and Windows CE.
Sunday, April 26, 1998
Philosophy: Is it possible to be an open source purist?Paul Snively responds to Jacob Levy responding to Jakob Nielsen responding to Angus Davis.
I think I can settle the debate. There are tradeoffs in user interface design. What makes a piece of software accessible to a newcomer often gets in the way of an experienced user. And what makes a piece of software streamlined for the expert is totally perplexing to a newbie. Pick your audience. Design accordingly.
An example. This website is easy to learn. Frontier requires a substantial investment in time to learn. Something inbetween is what I'm into right now.
SJ Merc: Wipe your hard disk before giving it away.
Saturday, April 25, 1998
Update: XML parsing strategies for Frontier.Jakob Nielsen responds to Angus Davis.
USA Today poll: Should libraries filter Internet access?
The Scripting News in XML app is still running, it started in 12/97, and the Vignette server is still in synch with us. That's called coopetition. And good engineering!
Technology Solutions: The blox suite is leading the way in XML-in-Frontier. Thanks for keeping this moving!
On the blox site, Brian Andresen discusses issues of embedding HTML in XML structures.
Friday, April 24, 1998
The Linux Advocacy HOWTO.A fascinating story from an open source pro.
News.com: More trouble for Microsoft.
ObjectNews: The Trouble with CORBA.
Jim Roepcke, writing on ScriptMeridian, discovers a 800 percent performance boost in the latest beta of 5.0.2. Also interesting, a comparison of performance between fast Macs and an average Windows machine. The fast Macs are up to 4 times faster.
After a rough period, the Frontier community is really pulling together. It feels great! It's been worth all the effort to define our respective roles. We totally appreciate the recognition from Jim, Matt, Seth and others. Onward!
Wednesday, April 22, 1998
DaveNet: Keep Your Eye On The Prize.Sunday in Vancouver: Frontier User's Group Meeting.
SJ Merc and MacInTouch on the Apple Shareholder Meeting.
Slashdot.org is hosting a discussion of KYEOTP. Here's my response to the comments I just read on the slashdot.org site.
Scott Rosenberg, on Salon, suggests that sooner or later Microsoft is going to have to look at releasing the source for Windows.
To people who believe that open source is a panacea, I have a bunch of experience here, predating the current euphoria.
Frontier SDK is open source. Some parts of it gained traction, but much of it was ignored. We've stopped updating it, and nothing's happening, as far as I know.
In January 1996 we released the source to MacBird Runtime, hoping to ignite a move towards real graphic user interfaces on the web. Nothing happened. It was never ported, and no bug fixes were ever provided by non-paid employees.
In 1997, I looked on the web for base64 code that worked with handles not files. Finding none, I adapted existing implementations and released the source. This one worked, sort of. It was ported to HyperCard. Has anyone else used the code? I don't know.
My conclusion, like all the over-hyped manufactured "trends" of the software industry, there's some value in open source, but the press is oversimplifying it, going for the dramatic story, and as usual, the leaders are sucking it for all it's worth.
The real revolution will be open minds, not open source.
The pokey.org controversy is over, Chris can keep his domain name. At the same time, a court ruling broadens the rights of trademark holders. The Internet is changing the legal system here.
Tuesday, April 21, 1998
InfoWorld: Intel targets conference rooms.Is anyone from Intel listening? It isn't just about video technology. We learned a lot about software for meetings when we did ThinkTank in the mid 80s. Here's a story from a ThinkTank user that explains how it works. It's a goldmine, I swear, and Intel is inches away from it.
ComputerWorld: Reorg coming at JavaSoft.
USA Today: Netscape's plan. "What we do is understand where the industry is going and go there," says Mike McCue, 30, Netscape's vice president of technology. "Microsoft follows."
John Tigue of DataChannel adds to Bob Atkinson's comments from yesterday. Tigue is working on a proposal for RPC-over-HTTP called WebBroker.
InfoWorld: Anti-Microsoft lobby group forms. News.com reports that non-computer industry companies are joining this group, including publishers and the travel industry.
Lots of people are pointing me at a Wired article about Microsoft taking the Java VM out of the minimal download of MSIE.
Why now? When I talked with Gates last fall, a discussion centered around their travels with Java, I asked why they don't just give Java back to Sun and avoid the legal problems. He said that they needed Java to be competitive with Navigator. Just a guess here, now the pressure is off, because Netscape is backing off Java, presumably because they can't open-source-release Sun's Java VM.
Monday, April 20, 1998
DaveNet: XMLizations.Bob Atkinson, a lead developer in the DCOM group at Microsoft has been looking at HTTP-RPC and comments on the debate over HTTP methods used for RPC.
Thea's Galleria showcases Be's website, which is a Frontier site, of course.
Jeff Veen on WebMonkey: Browser Arrogance and Customers Don't Mix.
InfoWorld: Citrix in retreat.
A great story from Eva Way. Email is like this!
MacWEEK covers PGML.
PC WEEK: XML vendors seek clearing house.
GedML: Genealogy in XML.
Builder.com: Web Innovator Awards.
InfoWorld: Windows 98 crashes during Gates's demo.
InfoWorld: Updating software via email. According to the Mobile Automation website, they have a patent pending on this idea.
e-CLIP is another patent pending technology for transmitting software via email.
NY Times: Netscape Expands the Offering With More Browser Source Code.
Saturday, April 18, 1998
Frontier 5.0.2b10 is available on the FastTrack site.Chris Nandor's tutorial shows how to send and receive Apple Events in MacPerl.
Two new ScriptMeridian tutorials: File-based objects and ODBC connections.
More discussion of security issues in HTTP-RPC.
Feed: Where do you want to go tomorrow?
Friday, April 17, 1998
DaveNet: Kevin Lynch and Eric Hahn.Betty becomes part of Frontier.
What happens when HTTP-POSTs are actually procedure calls? Is this actually a problem?
News.com: Netscape shares up on buyout rumors.
From the Casbah mail list comes a warning about working with me. I don't want questions about my motives to stand in the way. We can implement any reasonable RPC format. We have no stake in ownership of the glue that flattens out cross-network procedure calls. It's not something anyone can or should own, IMHO.
Karl Fast on Casbah and Frontier. Simple answer to Karl's query -- yes, we would be happy to work with the Casbah people to build compatible bridges between our software on Mac and Windows, and their software on Linux.
A couple of responses from Scripting News readers.
Thursday, April 16, 1998
Lizard/FX: Vector graphics for Mozilla.Mozilla.org: Raptor is the next-generation layout engine for Navigator.
Yahoo: What is your favorite OS?
Open web-based surveying is still an unsolved puzzle as the wild fluctuations in our last survey showed. Still need to do some more digging.
InfoWorld: Automated e-mail response products.
What exactly is X-ACT?
Reminder: Frontier 5 is a great free Classified Ads system.
And don't forget ContentServer. It's also free.
Matthijs van Duin: Betty Remote Admin. Right on! We're starting to get developer support for Betty.
News.com: Sun's new CTO is Greg Papadopoulos.
SunWorld: A 1996 interview with Papadopoulos.
SJ Merc: Apple shows signs of revival.
PC WEEK reviews BackWeb.
NY Times: Aretha is still a charmer.
Wednesday, April 15, 1998
Mail Starting 4/15/98.Macromedia vice-president Kevin Lynch responds to yesterday's DaveNet piece.
Apple posts $55 million quarterly profit.
Phil Suh on ScriptMeridian: How to write a tutorial for Frontier users. I totally dig what they're doing!
ScriptMeridian is calling for participation in the redesign of the LTODBS system for distribution of reusable Frontier parts. They're building on OSD, a W3C standard.
Upside: Jerry Kaplan, who looks more like an English professor than an entrepreneur, listens to his inner geek. His approach must work. He's worth a half-billion dollars.
InfoWorld: Guy Kawasaki says you should poop like an elephant, and Netscape's Marc Andreessen says he just took a really big messy dump. They really wrote about this in InfoWorld! It wasn't an April Fools thing.
Evangelism as God Intended: 7/29/95.
Has Marc Andreesen learned anything? I listened to the RealAudio of his speech yesterday. He's still trashing Microsoft. What a turnoff for people who use Windows. Instead, he could do what Microsoft does so well.
BBC: Paraguay angered by US execution.
The NY Times looks at vector-based content standards.
Tuesday, April 14, 1998
DaveNet: Flash and PGML.New survey for people who have been following the recent developments in vector graphics standards.
Keith Swenson of Netscape explains yesterday's SWAP announcement publicly, to members of W3C and IETF.
Salon interviews Eric S. Raymond.
InfoWorld reports on the MacroMedia and Adobe announcements, including quotes from yesterday's DaveNet piece.
CNET's section of the Netscape Open Studio site points prominently to Frontier. Thanks!
Ken MacLeod wrote a Perl module that connects to Frontier via XML-RPC. Yay!
You can use the RPC debugger to test Ken's server. It's running on biff.bitsko.slc.ut.us on port 8000.
Macromedia opens Flash file format.
Wall Street Journal article on Steve Jobs.
Tish Williams says that Microsoft has been a miracle in her life and Tony Perkins chats up Arthur Van Hof.
Forbes has doubts about XML. But they think it's for web browsers. Hmmm. That's the boring application of XML. What's exciting? Using the standards of the Internet to connect previously incompatible software. They got one thing right, it changes the rules for Oracle.
Here's a server that should have an XML-RPC interface. Preston Holmes sent a pointer to its CGI interface. Thanks!
SJ Merc: Customization on websites.
Here's an example of the kind of email I love to get.
Monday, April 13, 1998
DaveNet: Vector Graphics in XML.Welcome to www.scriptmeridian.org, a website run by some of the most accomplished Frontier users and developers in the world. Let's have fun!
Thea's Galleria for Monday the 13th.
MacWEEK: MacroMedia to open Flash file format.
Press release: Adobe Submits Proposal to Improve Quality of Web Graphics with IBM, Netscape, and Sun.
W3C submission for Precision Graphics Markup Language.
Adobe: Q&A on PGML.
TechWeb interviews Perl lead developer Larry Wall.
News.com: Mozilla for Linux.
Press release: Netscape, Sun and Hewlett Packard Join to Support New Internet-Based Standard For Workflow.
I believe this is the charter for SWAP.
A related posting from April 3.
SWAP may have spun out of OMG. SWAP will use HTTP, not CORBA, which is definitely the right way to go for 1998.
Interestingly, IBM, Apple and Microsoft are not in the list of companies working on SWAP.
New feature: Scripting News Archives.
I got a mysterious email from an unknown developer. It touched my heart, maybe you'll like it toooo.
Henry Norr has a new column on the Macintouch website.
The news page at www.mozilla.org isn't changing very often. Is this an opportunity for an enterprising Frontier person? We've released the source code that manages the Scripting News site. Please consider this a gesture of goodwill to the open source world.
Sunday, April 12, 1998
5.0.2b9 has yesterday's deal-stopper fixed. Onward!A browser-based debugger for RPC calls. It lets you type in an XML procedure call and run it on betty.userland.com (and elsewhere).
betty.userland.com is running 5.0.2b9.
I re-ran the performance tests with 5.0.2b9.
A question I'm thinking about. The LA Times and others say Microsoft is doing something wrong by spending money to manufacture public opinion. Maybe so. But to balance this, the press could dig harder to find stories that aren't manufactured. Much of what they cover are big company orchestrations. Usually they don't pan out. There may be a chance to change Microsoft, but there's also a chance to reform the way the media covers our industry. Let's go for less euphoria and more realism.
Saturday, April 11, 1998
Frontier 5.0.2b8 with important fixes.Performance tests show that compiling XML text in 5.0.2b8 is 60 times faster than 5.0.2b7.
Error reporting over RPC2 now works correctly.
I archived the old scripted version of the XML verbs.
I got pretty far, but hit a deal-stopper. The new XML compiler is not ready to deploy yet. I wish it were!
Jerusalem Post: Israel celebrates Passover.
Hey Kids! It's Uncle Eli's Haggaddah!
SJ Merc: Kingsmen to get royalties from Louie Louie.
Friday, April 10, 1998
DaveNet: XML Becomes Invisible.BusinessWeek cover: What to do about Microsoft? A juicy quote from the most dramatic scenario: "The operating-systems company could be regulated. But if not, you could bet it would soon be competing with the applications company." Yeah!
We've been searching for the right solution for security for RPC handlers running in Frontier.
Check out Lisa Rein's XML RPC page.
If you want to read a single back-issue that predicted where Sun, Java, Netscape and Microsoft would be today and why, check out this piece, 5/22/97.
Comments following up on yesterday's piece.
Microsoft: Out-of-Process Components in ASP. They really FUD the idea. Frontier is not a DLL, but I think it can boost the power of the ASP environment. If what Microsoft says is true (I don't believe it is) why should we have invested in making Frontier a COM server?
Dan Gillmor: Microsoft tries to reshape debate.
DailyTish: NC, Dead before Arrival.
Thursday, April 9, 1998
DaveNet: The Java Balloon.Tomorrow is Wes Felter's 20th birthday. If you love Betty, thank Wes. Cooool. Thanks Wes, you're doing a grrrrreat job!
The Mail Page is working again.
W3C: Synchronized Multimedia spec.
The last chicken and egg joke you need to hear.
To early-morning readers, I decided to do two DaveNet pieces, one today and one tomorrow. The next piece is about the invisibility of XML. I want to do some more work and thinking about this. Onward!
Queso: AutoFrontier runs Frontier as an NT service.
Wednesday, April 8, 1998
Peter Rukavina scores a breakthru! He figured out how to call Frontier from Perl on Windows thru COM.Dino Morelli is a Java consultant who's going back to C++. Here's why.
Jason Levine starts a discussion about Frontier and ASPs on the Frontier5-Win mail list.
ActiveState: Perl debugger for Windows. Screen shot.
SRVANY.EXE, part of Microsoft's Windows NT Server Resource Kit, allows any Windows app to run as a service.
ActivePlus does the same thing?
Oooooh. This could be interesting! This tooooo.
DailyTish: Microsoft invests $10 million in Silicon Valley VC fund.
I had a support nightmare with Miramar Systems yesterday. InfoMagic Workgroup Server looks like a good alternative to Miramar, and so does DAVE from Thursby Systems and one more, COPSTalk.
The full text of a MacPerl book is on the web.
According to readers, Metrowerks, Symantec , IBM, Tower, and Supercede also have Java to native code compilers.
Tuesday, April 7, 1998
Apologies for the broken links on this page. We're upgrading our publishing environment and the glossaries aren't in synch yet. It's a very interesting job, much like porting the Scripting News ODB to Windows late last year. We're finally going multi-user. We're eating the dog food! As they say...ZDNet: Microsoft to buy Firefly.
News.com: Lotus still tops in groupware. For people who know Frontier and Notes -- how would you explain Notes to a Frontier user? Are there any meaningful connections we could create to the Notes world?
Michael Norman is both a Notes and Frontier user, and puts things in an interesting perspective.
What is Microsoft Terra Server? Lawrence Lee writes: "It's a combination of photos taken from satellites and planes. And it'll all be *free* (if this changes, then I'm not paying... heh)"
Per Bothner at Cygnus is working on a native Java compiler. This could change things a lot.
Hey, if you have Java in your browser you can talk to Chuck Shotton. Chuck wrote WebSTAR, the main HTTP server we run here.
InfoWorld interviews Microsoft's XML leading thinker, Adam Bosworth.
InfoWorld: Gerstner calls for unrestricted encryption.
MSNBC: Microsoft backs down on 'Palm PC' name.
More mail...
Monday, April 6, 1998
DaveNet: Oh Netscape!Random notes in followup to today's DaveNet piece.
MacWEEK: Apple's ColorSync 2.5 is scriptable.
Here's a screen shot of Visual XML by Pierre Morel.
Ooops! I forgot to link to Thea's Galleria today.
Fortune: Is your company Microsoft's next meal?
Wootech Voyager claims a lot of firsts, but it sounds a lot like what we've been doing with Frontier since 1996.
To our friends in the Java world: We want this to be compatible with this. Or vice versa.
Fast Company: The best things in life are free.
Sunday, April 5, 1998
Confused about Betty? Maybe this will help.Frontier's French Quarter.
A new page on the XML site explains how to do RPC with Frontier from Visual Basic, JavaScript, Java, Tcl, Perl, Rexx or Python.
Following up. Now that Frontier 5/Win is a COM server, has anyone hooked it up to asp's yet? Send pointers. How's performance? Interesting connections with the website framework? How-tos?
Andy Sylvester: Anatomy of My Web Site.
Saturday, April 4, 1998
It's a total Betty weekend. The rollup process towards 5.0.2 is starting. There will be lots of tweaks and fixes for people in the Betty loop. Discuss on the Frontier-XML list.Brent Simmons has a table of RPC handlers that allow remote access to Frontier's object database.
The software choices survey asks what the most important factor is for you when deciding to use a piece of software.
Clarification: Simple Cross-Network Scripting will work across COM and Apple Events too. Those are networks, even if the process you're talking to is on the same machine. We're going to try to get something going with Java RMI too.
InfoWorld covers scripting and XML, and Frontier. Thanks!
Upside: The saga of mTropolis.
MacWEEK: Apple struggles to make Quicktime pay.
A great collection of file format information, including a pointer to a description of .DBF format.
Friday, April 3, 1998
Frontier/Win is now a COM server. Help us find bugs!How to call Frontier thru COM from a web page. Hey, it says we do ActiveX! How did that happen?
Faisal Jawdat automates Dreamweaver with Frontier.
Arnold Lesikar: A new Frontier DLL that compresses and expands using GZIP format. Mac PowerPC and Windows.
More information from Bierman on COM in Frontier.
More Biermania! Now he wants to know how he should implement the client side of the COM interface for Frontier.
This InfoWorld story looks interesting. What is data warehousing? Is that a dumb question?
Another dumb question -- is there a definitive spec on the net for the .DBF file format? This is the format that was used by dBASE. I hear there's a lot of .DBF files floating around, it would be interesting if we could read and write them in Frontier.
O!Reilly's freeware summit!
Upside's 100 tastiest companies.
News.com: The loop is closing on a piece I wrote in 1996.
In relation to yesterday's oft-revised heads-up piece on simple cross-network scripting, I received thru email, a public posting by a Netscape researcher, proposing an IETF working group in the area we're actively developing.
We want to be compatible with what Netscape is doing; and vice versa. As with Netscape, our need for a simple net-scripting protocol is driven by the need to be able to quickly build and deploy net-based content management software.
BusinessWeek: "But Andreessen couldn't have guessed his glory days would be so brief. Indeed, he has had to grow up in Internet Time, a term first used to describe how quickly Netscape delivered new products (originally every six months, a breakneck pace). Bill Gates got to run Microsoft for more than a dozen years before IBM set its sights on him. For Netscape and Andreessen, the trip from phenom to potential has-been was over in a blink of an eye."
More mail.
Thursday, April 2, 1998
A top-level description of our upcoming cross-network scripting interface. It's simple!Heads-up: The first COM-server release of Frontier/Win is in the pipe. It should be out later this evening. You can call into Frontier from VB or ASP or whatever. Let's have fun!
DaveNet: What Would Shakespeare Think?
Wednesday, April 1, 1998
Sun has a sense of humor!Apple has a sense of humor!
As does IETF! RFC #2323, RFC #2324, RFC #2325.
PC WEEK reports on products announced at last week's XML conference. The prices are stunning!
The big news yesterday was the release of Navigator source code by Netscape. There's a lot of history on the website.
Preston Holmes writes about the first Southern California Frontier User's Group meeting.
Francis Ford Coppola, the director of The Godfather and many other great movies, talks about his new website in BusinessWeek.
I wrote about The Godfather in 1996.
Back issues...
Check out Scripting News -- March 1998.
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