NeXT Nugget News Digest (vol. 3, issue 9, June 30, 1992) _____________________________________________________________ Table of Contents I. ANNOUNCING THE NeXT PUBLIC DOMAIN CD-ROM FOR EDUCATION II. NeXTSTEP Application Developer/Project Leader, Switzerland III. Trident Data Systems hiring Systems Analyst IV. Cub'x X-Windows (correction) V. Black Diamond Technologies to market Lotus Realtime for NeXTSTEP _____________________________________________________________ ANNOUNCING THE NeXT PUBLIC DOMAIN CD-ROM FOR EDUCATION Soon you will be seeing quite a few CD-ROMs containing files from the major NeXT archive sites (e.g. Purdue, Oregon State). Some are being produced by NeXT user groups, others are from software publishers, and even others are included when you buy a hard disk from a particular vendor. Much of the really incredible educational software, however, does not appear at the NeXT public archive sites, and therefore may not be included in these productions. WHAT IS THE NeXT PUBLIC DOMAIN CD-ROM FOR EDUCATION? The Higher Education Marketing group at NeXT Computer, Inc. is gathering educational software that is available either free of charge (freeware) or for minimal costs (shareware) and will distribute the wares via CD-ROM. There will also be a handful of commercial demos (education oriented only) on the CD-ROM, as well some selected demonstration applications developed at NeXT which are not part of NeXT's current product lines. NeXT plans to distribute the CD-ROM this fall to many of our education users, and will give it away to attendees at the 1992 EDUCOM conference in Baltimore, MD (October 28 - 31). *SUBMISSION DEADLINE* ****July 31, 1992**** SUBMISSION GUIDELINES We realize that we're going to get gigabytes of stuff, and not all will fit on one CD-ROM. NeXT will evaluate for software for stability and then select the submissions to be included on this version of the NeXT Public Domain CD-ROM for Education. If you have software that you would like to include on the NeXT Public Domain CD-ROM for Education, please observe the following guidelines: 1. Each application should be in a separate directory, along with a README file containing the following sections: a. Who wrote the software and contact information (preferably Internet and US. Mail addresses) for questions, comments, bug reports, etc. b. The category that best describes the software type. (See *categories* below.) c. What the application does. d. What the application is used for at your institution (e.g. in a particular course, to illustrate a certain concept, research). e. Which NeXT release your software was developed under (2.x or NeXTSTEP Pre-Release 3). f. Detailed installation instructions (if any). g. Any other comments you would like to add. 2. All executables must be stripped. This can either be done by typing "make install" to build the application, or by typing "strip " in a UNIX shell. 3. If the software is an Interface Builder palette or an Objective C class, we require a small example application and/or detailed documentation illustrating the tool's function. Please include this in the directory containing the tool. 4. Only submit applications that are currently on the major NeXT public archive sites if you have an updated version that has not been placed at the archives. 5. If your software is shareware, we will gladly include any licensing information that you provide for us. Please include such information in the README file. We will also place a file in a conspicuous place on the CD-ROM encouraging people to register any shareware that they use. Note: We hope that these guidelines will make the CD-ROM much more useful for everyone in the NeXT education user community. If any guideline(s) presents a particular hardship, please contact us. PARTIAL LIST OF SOFTWARE CATEGORIES (Feel free to suggest a category that we may not have included.) Architecture Astronomy Art/Design Biology Business Chemistry Communications Computer Science CraftMan (Both programs & palettes. NeXT will supply CraftMan Engine) Economics Engineering English Foreign Language Games Geology History Information Management Law Linguistics Mathematics (Including Mathematica Notebooks and front ends to Mathematica) Medical Multimedia Music Networking Philosophy Physics Programming (e.g. palettes, objects, examples) Psychology Publishing Statistics Utilities/Services *SUBMISSION DEADLINE* ****July 31, 1992**** HOW TO SUBMIT In order of preference: 1. NeXTmail to: 2. A 1.44MB or 2.88MB floppy disk sent to: NeXT on Campus NeXT Computer, Inc. 900 Chesapeake Drive Redwood City, CA 94063 If you would like your disk returned, please include a self- addressed envelope. (NeXT will provide return postage.) Please contact us with any questions you may have. And thank you for writing top-quality educational software for NeXT computers! David Spitzler Mgr., Higher Education Marketing Email: dspitz@next.com Jeff Blum Higher Education Technical Assistant Email: jblum@next.com _____________________________________________________________ II. NeXTSTEP Application Developer/Project Leader, Switzerland Open Systems AG, is seeking the right person to pull off the activities of our Software Development Task Force that will be providing custom designed 'mission critical' applications for real time trading and analysis systems to swiss banks. Open Systems AG is a small workstation and network consulting firm located in Basel, Switzerland. We offer a young, flexible work environment in a very exciting and fast moving industry. Position requirements: - 2+ years of NeXTSTEP application development/interface design - 2+ years of C/Unix experience on workstation platforms - professional experience with real time trading systems and related information platforms (e.g. FD MIPS, Reuters Triarch, Teknekron) - must be able to independently complete an entire project - must have excellent communication skills for customer interaction and consulting activities - must relocate to Switzerland Plus but not a requirement: - X-Windows programming - Oracle, Sybase or other RDBMS experience - Financial Applications - experience with financial analysis & real time spreadsheets - Speaking knowledge of the German Language PLEASE, Only those candidates with related work experience need apply! *** ATTENTION New York residents and frequent flyers! Between June 26 and July 2 there is opportunity for an interview in New York City. Please send you resume to: flog@open.ch We accept NeXTmail and/or PS, RTF, Frame, WriteNow, WordPerfect and ASCII. Florian Gutzwiller Open Systems AG Rotbergerstrasse 34 CH-4054 Basel Switzerland _______________________________________________________________ III. Trident Data Systems hiring Systems Analyst TRIDENT DATA SYSTEMS is a dynamic, fast growing firm within the management information system and technical security industries. We currently have the following outstanding opportunities in the Los Angeles, CA area. Senior Systems Analyst for NeXT: Requires a minimum 3 years experience programming in the NeXT environment. Will be a leading source for NeXT developer design questions and design/development knowledge. Candidate must be well-versed in Objective C, object-oriented analysis and design, Interface Builder, and NeXT AppKit programming. Experience with end-user application requirements analysis, relational databases, UNIX, Mach, and networking a plus. Trident Data Systems offers competitive salaries, company paid benefits, and the opportunity for professional growth. Interested and qualified applicants please send your resumes to: Trident Data Systems, 5933 W. Century Blvd., Suite 700, Los Angeles, CA 90045. Attn: June Johnson, Corporate Recruiting. Electronic inquiries and resumes to: barba@tds.com EOE A thorough background investigation and U. S. citizenship may be required. _____________________________________________________________________ IV. Cub'x X-Windows (correction) Cub'x Systemes is now shipping version 3.01 of Cub'X-Window, X-Window server for NeXT computers. ...Contact: Phone: Roger Brown at 503-644-0111 (Interactive Technology, Inc.) for North American distribution. or Claire Normand of Cub'X Email: claire@cubx.oleane.com (corrected from previous posting) _______________________________________________________________________ V. Black Diamond Technologies to market Lotus Realtime for NeXTSTEP Black Diamond Technologies A division of O'Connor & Associates 141 West Jackson Boulevard Chicago, IL 60604 Phone: (312) 554-5455 For More Information: Robert Wilen Vice President, Black Diamond Technologies Phone: 312/554-5131 O'Connor & Associates forms a new division, Black Diamond Technologies, to market Lotus Realtime for NeXTSTEP: Major goal is to support standards within the financial community for next generation of trading room technology New York, June 29, 1992 - O'Connor & Associates, a leading specialized options trading and market making firms, announced today at the Securities Industry Association Show that it formed a new division, Black Diamond Technologies, to market trading systems software products for NeXTSTEP and other UNIX-based workstations. At the same time, Black Diamond Technologies said it has signed an exclusive two-year agreement with Lotus Development Corporation to distribute Lotus Realtimeb for NeXTSTEP, a high-performance system that extends the compelling benefits of the NeXTSTEP object-oriented environment to include realtime data analysis in trading applications. The software system is expected to be available for purchase through Value Added Resellers (VARs) in the third quarter. "We're excited by the combination of these two technologies and the huge impact they will have on the way we can aggressively support our trading operation today and our future global growth," said Craig Heimark, Director of Technology and General Partner of O'Connor & Associates. "We're convinced that software is the key competitive technology, and NeXTSTEP and Lotus Realtime are the best ways to exploit that competitive edge." NeXT workstations are the only true object-oriented computers shipping today because NeXTSTEP is the only complete, integrated applications development environment in use today. NeXTSTEP integrates a graphical user interface -- which masks the complexity of the underlying UNIX system from users -- and an object-oriented applications development environment -- which speeds the development of mission-critical custom applications five- to ten-fold. Lotus Realtime systems are based on the Lotus Realtime Engineb, which runs in the background and accepts data - from as many as 16 different commercial or proprietary sources - directly through data feed servers. Data feed servers are programs that translate the data from its native format into the Lotus Realtime standardized format. In-house developers, trading systems integrators or market data vendors use the Lotus Realtime Toolkitb to build feed servers. Developing Applications to a powerful, standard API The powerful Lotus Realtime Engine stores and delivers the data through the Lotus Realtime Applications Programming Interface (API) directly to trading applications running on the NeXT workstation, including the innovative Lotus Improvb spreadsheet. The Lotus Realtime API is now available to customers and third-party software developers for applications development and evaluation purposes. "Now we can develop suites of realtime trading tools to Lotus' emerging industry-standard API, in a fraction of the time with NeXTSTEP," said Heimark. "Standardizing our approach to writing software allows for even bigger increases in productivity down the road, as our developers in different business areas start to share object palettes, reusable software building blocks that help build the applications, as well as the applications themselves. With NeXTSTEP and Lotus Realtime, our in-house developers are free to target the bottom line." Using the utilities in the Lotus Realtime API Toolkit, developers can connect any trading application, whether custom-built or commercially available, to the Lotus Realtime Engine. In this toolkit, developers will find an application programmer's guide, sample code, header tiles, and libraries. Spreadsheets in Realtime Lotus Realtime for NeXTSTEP together with the Lotus Improv spreadsheet will be the first commercial application of these technologies available for purchase. Lotus Improv is tightly integrated with the Lotus Realtime Engine through the Lotus Realtime Add-In for Improv, which manages the updating of realtime data to the unique NeXTSTEP spreadsheet. Lotus Improv allows for a highly flexible approach to the sophisticated data analysis traders and analysts require, uses English to write formulas, and automatically records all formulas at the bottom of each worksheet, features which make it both powerful and convenient to use. Black Diamond Technologies is developing the Black Diamond WingZ Add-In for Lotus Realtime, which will deliver data from the Lotus Realtime Engine to the WingZ spreadsheet by Informix Software, Inc. WingZ is popular with traders because of its impressive graphics capabilities and robust HyperScript macro language. The WingZ Add-In is expected to be available for NeXT and Sun workstations early in the fourth quarter. Objects in Realtime In a future release of Lotus Realtime for NeXTSTEP, developers of custom applications will find the Lotus Realtime Object Kit for NeXTSTEP is an exciting innovation that vastly simplifies the work of creating a trading application requiring realtime data. The Lotus Realtime Object Kit for NeXTSTEP puts in the developer's hands a set of object classes and a NeXTSTEP Interface Builder palette that has been crafted around the Lotus Realtime Engine and API. The Objective-C class structure provides a straightforward conceptual framework for creating applications, and the customized Interface Builder kit allows easy access to realtime data for rapid prototyping of your realtime applications. In Support of OOP-based Engineering Standards These days, O'Connor & Associates as well as other financial firms are turning away from the first generation of complete, dedicated trading room technology and looking instead for technology building blocks in order to integrate a customized solution to a particular trading requirement. Giving firms the option of purchasing commercially available building blocks that use object-oriented programming (OOP) technology, rather than building them in-house greatly reduces the time a firm spends on creating development tools, and permits it to focus instead on the trading solutions that capture profits. A major goal of Black Diamond Technologies is to help define the emerging software standards that promote this more flexible and open approach to trading systems architecture. Black Diamond Technologies believes the Lotus Realtime API is extremely well positioned to become a widely used standard for both in-house developers and independent software developers who work in the financial industry. General acceptance of this API and similar standards using object-oriented programming hold enormous productivity gains for the entire industry. System Requirements Lotus Realtime has been integrated with the data delivery systems of all the leading trading systems integrators. Lotus Realtime for NeXTSTEP runs on all NeXT computers with NeXTSTEP 2.1 system software and requires 16MB of RAM and 16MB of disk space. Lotus Realtime System components can be configured to run on separate machines in a client-server architecture. Lotus Realtime feed servers and the Lotus Realtime Engine can run on any UNIX-based server while the Lotus Realtime Add-In and Improv spreadsheet clients can access that system from NeXT workstations. The Lotus Realtime System can also be configured on a single, high-powered workstation, with the feed servers, Lotus Realtime Engine, the Lotus Realtime Add-In, and Improv spreadsheet installed on the NeXT computer. Lotus Realtime will be available for purchase from Value Added Resellers for the suggested retail price of $- per user. The Lotus Realtime API Toolkit for NeXTSTEP can be licensed from Lotus for an annual maintenance fee of $- per site. The Lotus Realtime Toolkit for building data feed servers is sold separately for the suggested retail price of $- and an annual maintenance fee of $- for in-house developers. For more information on these Lotus products and other Black Diamond products, please contact Robert Wilen, Vice President, Black Diamond Technologies at 312/554-5131. Black Diamond Technologies, a division of O'Connor & Associates, markets software products for NeXTSTEP and other workstation environments. O'Connor & Associates, one of The O'Connor Partnerships, is recognized as one of the leading specialized options trading and market making firms, and as an acknowledged pioneer in the application of quantitative techniques to the securities markets. ______________________________________________________________________