Path: alphanet.ch!imp.ch!news.uni-stuttgart.de!news.belwue.de!news.ipc.uni-tuebingen.de!seicom.de!xlink.net!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!hookup!news.mathworks.com!panix!cmcl2!yale.edu!yale!laplace!nathan From: nathan@laplace.csb.yale.edu Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.announce Subject: NEXTSTEP-Utilities-FAQ Followup-To: comp.sys.next.misc Date: 6 Mar 1995 08:39:12 GMT Organization: Yale University, Department of Computer Science, New Haven, CT Lines: 343 Approved: nathan@laplace.csb.yale.edu Expires: Fri, 7 Apr 1995 00:00:00 GMT Message-ID: <3jehng$c4o@babyblue.cs.yale.edu> Reply-To: nathan@laplace.csb.yale.edu NNTP-Posting-Host: laplace.csb.yale.edu Summary: Frequently Asked Questions about NEXTSTEP and NeXT machines. Originator: nathan@laplace Archive-name: NEXTSTEP-Utilities-FAQ Last-modified: Mon Mar 6 03:03:59 EST 1995 Version: 3.1 These FAQs are under significant construction, and may well change form and content over the next weeks. These FAQs focus on various aspects of OpenStep, NEXTSTEP, and NeXT machines. The FAQs are kept on-line at several ftp sites, including: cs.orst.edu sonata.cc.purdue.edu Many FAQs, including these, are available (www, ftp, email) on the archive site rtfm.mit.edu in the directory pub/usenet/news.answers. The name under which this FAQ is archived appears in the Archive-nameline above. Within each section each question will be preceded by a "Subject:" field, allowing news readers to break up the file into separate questions. Each question has its own unique number. Items that appear within sections are not in any particular order, and get added and removed over time. Questions marked with a "+" are new to this issue, and questions with changes since the last issue are marked by a "!". Submissions, corrections, comments, input, etc., should be directed to Nathan Janette . Some important NEXTSTEP & OpenStep Information WWW sites: NeXT, Inc. http://www.next.com/ NeXTanswers http://www.next.com/NeXTanswers/ Stepwise NEXTSTEP/OpenStep Information Server http://digifix.digifix.com/ TABLE OF CONTENTS: ------------------ I1. Where can I obtain the most recent version of Kermit? I2. Where can I obtain a NEXTSTEP version of SLIP or PPP? I3. Where can I obtain a version of Larry Wall's patch for NEXTSTEP? I4. Where can I get a NEXTSTEP Usenet reader? I5. Where can I get plotting software? I6. Where can I get objective-c mode for emacs? I7. Is there a backup utility for multi-volume dumps (gnu tar)? I8. What are these ".z" files which appear all over the archives ? Should I just rename them to ".Z" so that compress can uncompress them ? I9. How do I decompress a file with the extension .compressed? I10. How do I change the Workspace compression app? ____________________________________________________________________________ Subject: I1. Where can I obtain the most recent version of Kermit? The source for the latest version is available via ftp from: kermit.columbia.edu http://www.columbia.edu/kermit Older versions of Kermit can also be found on... The Purdue archive: pub/next/2.0-release/source/ pub/next/2.0-release/binaries/ The Oregon archive: pub/next/sources/comm/ pub/next/binaries/ ____________________________________________________________________________ Subject: I2. Where can I obtain a NEXTSTEP version of SLIP or PPP? The free version of SLIP available from purdue was written by Louis Mamakos and is an excellent implementation. Basic SLIP is free, but VJ TCP header compression requires a license which is available inexpensively from Mr Mamakos. Morning Star Technologies offers a commercial version. For more information: email: marketing@morningstar.com ftp: ftp.morningstar.com (anonymous FTP archive of docs & literature) phone: +1 614 451 1883, +1 800 558 7827. [From: eps@toaster.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott)] Louis Mamakos' TransSys-PNI-1.7-beta.tar.gz is available for anonymous FTP. [From: Stephen J. Perkins ] There is a Public Domain PPP that has been ported to NeXT. This PPP is based on the PPP-2.2 distribution. This distribution offers several enhancements over ppp-2.1.2. Especially noteworty is that it implements BSD packet compression. Using packet compression can lead to higher throughput than you get using compressing modems. The PPP-2.2 distribution is currently in alpha stage (4th release). However, the NeXT port of this code is very stable. The NeXT port will remain in alpha stage as long as the PPP-2.2 remains in that stage. Then, the NeXT port will follow the stages of the PPP-2.2 distribution. The port works on Motorola, Intel (both Mux and NeXT supplied serial drivers), and HP systems running OS 3.2 and 3.3. It also works in conjunction with Black and White's NXFAX software. Both source and MAB Installer packages are available. In order to keep the sources and READMEs up to date with the current status of the PD PPP-2.2, all current work resides in a centralized location (ftp://ftp.duq.edu/pub/next/ppp). For more information on this work, check out: ftp://ftp.duq.edu/pub/next/ppp/README You may also want to join the mailing list for PPP. This will keep you informed of new releases and will provide an arena for discussing problems with the NeXT specific PPP port. To add yourself to the list (or for any other administrative requests), send an email message to: nextppp-request@uunet.uu.net requesting you be placed on the list. Make sure to include your proper return email address. To send mail to all the participants on the list, address your messages to: nextppp@uunet.uu.net. Please note that at the moment, this list is maintained by hand. Please be courteous with your requests. ____________________________________________________________________________ Subject: I3. Where can I obtain a version of Larry Wall's patch for NEXTSTEP? Patch is a utility that allows people to distribute updates to sources without resending the whole packages. This is done by detecting changes between the last release and the new one and creating a file of differences to each source file in the release. Patches need to be applied sequentially. The distribution can be found on the Purdue NeXT archives. ____________________________________________________________________________ Subject: I4. Where can I get a NEXTSTEP Usenet reader? By far the most versatile NEXTSTEP-specific newsreader application is NewsGrazer by Jayson Adams, formerly of NeXT. It is on the archive servers. NewsGrazer is now available as an MAB for both m68k and Intel NEXTSTEP systems! Many non-NEXTSTEP-specific newsreaders have been ported to the NEXTSTEP environment providing the flexibility and familiarity existing on other platforms. Most of these may be obtained via anonymouse ftp: ftp.uu.net:~ftp/news ____________________________________________________________________________ Subject: I5. Where can I get plotting software? nxyplot by Tom Pulliam is available from cs.orst.edu graph is available in source form from 4.3BSD systems. It is useful for dealing with pairs of numbers that need to be viewed. psplot comes with NEXTSTEP, it takes the output of the graph program and generates a .ps file that can be previewed with Preview or Yap. gnuplot is available from prep.ai.mit.edu. [From: boyan@tmnxt1.iit.edu (Boyan I. Boyanov)] The latest distributions of gnuplot (3.5 or later) include the NeXT patches. It is not necessary to get them from sonata. This has the additional advantage that the arrow keys can be used to recall commands from the history list (I could not make this work with the Purdue patches). jsplot clone of graph that generates ps files directly. plplot is a library of c routines that generate 2D, 3D and contour plots. It is available on purdue archive, plplot.tar.Z contains the source, and NXplplot.tar.Z contains the library, example programs and documentation. Mathematica The ReadList command will bring in files containing sample values and produces a plot on the fly. ____________________________________________________________________________ Subject: I6. Where can I get objective-c mode for emacs? You can get ObjC mode for Emacs, by Douglas Worthington and Kenneth Persson from cs.orst.edu ____________________________________________________________________________ Subject: I7. Is there a backup utility for multi-volume dumps (gnu tar)? GNU tar has a number of features not found in the tar delivered with NEXTSTEP, and in some cases it may be a better choice for backups than rdump and rrestore. The NEXTSTEP supplied rdump/rrestore don't work when using multiple volumes to non-NEXTSTEP systems (see the man page for rdump/rrestore). GNU tar will also allow a dump of a portion of a file system as well as an entire file system. Other useful features of GNU tar include: incremental dump capability like BSD dump/restore, scripts for backing up heterogeneous workstations across the network automatically, multivolume tape and floppy disk support (it can't do multivolume compressed unfortunately), long filename support, and scripts for integrating floppy disks into a three level backup scheme. Source and binary for NEXTSTEP is available on the purdue and orst archives in tar-1.10.tar.Z. [From: Carl Edman ] GNU tar 1.10 (which lacks many bugs which 1.11 introduced) is also shipped with NEXTSTEP 3.0. Just look in /usr/bin/gnutar. An inexpensive commercial application for backup to DAT and SCSI tape is available from Impact Software publishing. The app automatically configures your tape drive and gives a NEXTSTEP browser interface for selecting files to save or restore. The program is distributed electronically, and a demo version can be obtained from nova.cc.purdue.edu or sonata.cc.purdue.edu under the pathname: /pub/next/2.0-release/demos/enTar1.4.tar.Z [From: sanguish@digifix.com] SafetyNet. It is commerical, but an excellent app. ____________________________________________________________________________ Subject: I8. What are these ".z" files which appear all over the archives ? Should I just rename them to ".Z" so that compress can uncompress them ? [From: Carl Edman ] These files were created with GNU gzip. Gzip is a replacement for compress which achieves about 30% better compression rates and uncompresses faster. Gzip can also uncompress ".Z" file. Unfortunately compress can not uncompress ".z" files, so you will have to get and compile gzip on your machine before you can read any ".z" files. Gzip is available via anon ftp from prep.ai.mit.edu and should configure, compile and install without problem on any NEXTSTEP system. [From: sanguish@digifix.com] Needs to be updated to address the .gz file change. There are also precompiled MAB versions of gzip available on cs.orst.edu. [Bill Vermillion - bill@bilver.uucp OR bill@bilver.oau.org] Be warned however that not all .z files are gzip. The .gz extension was adopted after someone discovered that the .z was used by the pack utility in Unix. The .Z is used by compress. However - gzip is nice in that it will extract pack, compress and gzip files. It's a universal decoder. ____________________________________________________________________________ Subject: I9. How do I decompress a file with the extension .compressed? [From: sanguish@digifix.com] .compressed files have been compressed in the Workspace Manager. Basically, they are just .tar.Z files. Even single files are tarred as well as compressed. There are several methods of decompressing these files. -They can be decompressed by selecting them in the Workspace, and Selecting uncompress from the file menu. -They can be decompressed by selecting them in the Workspace, and bringing up the Workspace Inspector. (You can double click to get there faster) -You can rename them to be .tar.Z and handle them the way you do them. ____________________________________________________________________________ Subject: I10. How do I change the Workspace compression app? [Stephen Peters ] You can change the tools that the Workspace uses to create and read its .compressed files by issueing the following commands in a terminal window: dwrite Workspace compress /usr/bin/gzip dwrite Workspace uncompress /usr/bin/gunzip dwrite Workspace AlwaysTarForCompress YES [Reuven M. Lerner reuven@the-tech.mit.edu] This is generally a good thing, except that people might follow your advice and then try to send NeXTmail to someone who is still using compress/uncompress. Changing Workspace/uncompress to gunzip isn't a problem, since it uncompresses all sorts of files, but people should be very careful not to change Workspace/compress to gzip unless they will only be dealing with other gzip-equipped users. ____________________________________________________________________________ Editor: nathan@laplace.csb.yale.edu -- Nathan Janette Systems Manager, Axel T. Brönger Lab Internet: nathan@laplace.csb.yale.edu