Chapter 1: Introduction

Frontier 5.0

With 5.0 many things have changed since the original Frontier 1.0 manual. Fortunately, the original manual was updated for Frontier 4.1, so the update path isn't as steep as it could be.

Even still -- Frontier 5.0 represents a major change from even Frontier 4.1. There's now a Windows version of Frontier, the table browser is now an outliner, and so on.

More changes are to come, some in the near future, that will require further updating of this manual. Specifically: the chapter on scripting other applications is Macintosh-centric. At this writing we're actively working on the details of scripting Windows applications, but it's not quite ready to be documented yet. Soon.

What follows on this page is more on the history of this manual, then an overview of how this manual is organized. Then we get into Chapter 2, the Explorer's Guide to Frontier.

Enjoy!

Brent Simmons
Monday, February 23, 1998

History

First a bit of history. This manual started out as a set of PageMaker files, written by Dan Shafer in 1991, describing Frontier 1.0.

During the four years that Frontier was a commercial product, 1992 thru 1995, thru two major versions, we produced a series of addendas, but never revised the printed manual. We learned a lot about Frontier, but the manual (always!) kept us from making a major overhaul to the user interface.

In May 1995, Frontier became a free product, distributed thru the Internet. There was no manual. A bunch of hearty souls learned Frontier, the hard way, by trial and error, following the sample scripts, reading the online docs that were available, and by asking questions on the Frontier-talk and Mac Scripting lists.

In early 1996, Dave Winer found the PageMaker files on a backup disk and uploaded them. Then Steven Noreyko did something truly heroic. He converted the PageMaker files to HTML. All of a sudden, there were docs! Unfortunately, liberated from the tyranny of the manual, UserLand had changed the product. Oh man.

In May 1996, with the release of Frontier 4.0, we got back in synch with the docs. It was painful, but it was the right thing to do. I hired a contractor to do a light revision of the HTML files.

Frontier 4.1

Late in the release process for Frontier 4.1, in August 1996, I decided to bite the bullet. We knew how to make Frontier a lot easier. Instead of breaking the manual, I decided to to get it in shape to evolve with the product.

So Frontier 4.1 represents a real milestone in the relationship between Frontier and its users. Now it's a lot easier to learn. And, more important, we can make it even easier to learn.

Whew!

Editorial note

The primary author of this User's Guide is Dan Shafer. He wrote the original manual, under contract with UserLand Software and most of the copy in this website is Dan's. I didn't make an effort to change the voice.

Dan is now a master builder at Cnet.com, and is an active Frontier user. He did excellent work in 1991, under a lot of time pressure, and he has our gratitude for that.

But those that know my writing style will recognize it in places. I didn't attempt to hide it! Yeah-yeah.

Cooool.

Dave Winer Sun, Sep 29, 1996 at 10:57:57AM

Frontier and UserTalk

Frontier is a scripting environment. UserTalk is a scripting language.

The Frontier environment allows you to write scripts in UserTalk.

The Frontier environment is a rich, high performance, multi-threaded runtime environment.

How the User Guide is Organized

Following this introductory chapter, you'll dive right into Frontier in Chapter 2 with an explorer's guide to the inner workings and power of the product.

Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 discuss the UserTalk scripting language.

Chapter 5 opens up more of the power of scripting, showing how to customize, automate and integrate scriptable applications.

Chapter 6 and Chapter 7 describe the Object Database and other aspects of the Frontier environment.

Chapter 8 discusses scripting the operating system.