! to the table of contents
< to the previous section:
> to the next section:
NEXTSTEP is a complete development and user environment by NeXT it provides an unique GUI (graphical user interface), which currently gets copied by several other OS provider like Microsoft, combined with the currently most advanced and tested OS, named MACH. NeXT applied several changes to the MACH kernel to add special features which makes NEXTSTEP unique.
NEXTSTEP comes with a lot of development kits (bundles of classes to build on), like: Sound Kit, Indexing Kit, 3D Graphics Kit, Database or EOF Kit and Application Kit. This will change with OpenStep.
Bundled with NEXTSTEP are several user applications which enhance the daily use dramatically: NeXTMail (a MIME compatible mail application), Edit (a simple but powerful editor), FaxReader (for reading incoming faxes, you are able to send faxes from every application which supports printing), DigitalWebster (Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary and Collegiate Thesaurus), Digital Librarian (indexing and full text search utility, usable over groups of files) Preview (a PostScript and TIFF display utility), Terminal (UNIX terminal application for VT100 and TN3270 emulation), TeX (a well known compiler for formatted text), SYBASE and ORACLE adapters (to contact to SYBASE and ORACLE databases within EOF applications).
One special thing about NEXTSTEP is the display system. NeXT uses DPS (Display Post Script), which gives you true WYSIWYG on every NEXTSTEP system. The window server supports PostScript Level II, Interactive RenderMan and Photorealistic RenderMan (an distributed engine for fast high quality rendering, based on Pixar's RenderMan).
To be used in networks, NEXTSTEP supports NFS, NetInfo, Novell Netware (as client only), Ethernet and Token Ring and different filesystems (Mac, DOS, ISO 9660, High Sierra, Rock Ridge).
For multimedia purposes NeXT uses Lempel-Ziv compression for text, Audio Transform Compression for Sound (comparable to Sony MiniDisc), JPEG for TIFF and Group 4 for Fax. Of course these are only standard modes and NEXTSTEP is extensible to use other methods too.
For system administration (remember that NEXTSTEP is using MACH as an UNIX derivate), NeXT supplies several administration applications which make it easy to configure NEXTSTEP as needed, like: SimpleNetworkStarter, UserManager, PrintManager, NFSManager, HostManager, NetInfo Manager, BuildDisk, Upgrader and the complete documentation and manual pages online.