CompuServe Messages

The Mac Hardware Forum GO MACHW section 7 is about Newton. Perhaps a thread on Newton Development would be OK here. In case it is, here is what I heard from two sources – Demos at Apple Developer Conference last May, and rumor messages I read on CompuServe. So, it's at best partly accurate: At WWDC they demonstrated Newton. Tapping on an icon called "extras" brought up a list of add-ons. I guess these are the apps which developers will write. Newton has some kind of central repository for data – all programs hook into the objects stored there. They showed a Mac application which let you draw a form on the screen, like using ResEdit to make a dialog box. There were controls like checkboxes, radio buttons, text fields and so on. You would hook the controls to the data they represent – an edittext field would hook to a text field in the repository, it looked like. You'd take this form and download it to the Newton, where it would appear in the extras list. That's all I saw at WWDC. Great for order entry, address books and so on, but I don't know that it is low enough level for all developers. Seems there is this thing called NewtonScript. I think this will be the real development language, and that it will be totally object oriented. I have no idea what it might look like, but in my head I imagine it might look more like AppleScript than anything else. I don't know if we will have traditional C compilers and assemblers for this thing. We know Newton will take some kind of plug in card. My guess is these could contain RAM, ROM, or devices. Maybe the ROM in the card would appear as new objects in the repository, and new extras. Probably anyone who knows the facts can't discuss them yet, but maybe someone can add to the speculation above. -Mike