Re: Need help porting old (very old) NeXT app

[Stefan Böhringer]

On 21 Nov 2001 13:39:15 +0000, Damian Steer wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm considering porting a very old (but historically interesting) NeXT 
> app to GNUStep. I've got the source code but it's pretty baffling (I've 
> only ever used GNUStep and MacOS X). The odd bits are:
> 
> 1) Classes start 'NX' not 'NS'
> 
> 2) No project builder files at all - just IB.
> 
> This is from '91. I tried nib2gmodel on Mac OS X 10.1 (they need to 
> clean up that naming ;-) but it reported the nib file as unsupported 
> '2.x'. I'm guessing that IB used to maintain projects, and hoping that 
> s/NX/NS/ will be sufficient to get most of the app working.
> 
> Any old NeXT types have any tips? Are there any other sources of 
> information for prehistoric NeXT?

1. You should definitly go through OPENSTEP first. You can use the
OPENSTEP IB to read 3.3 nib files and save them in 4.2 file format. Then
nib2gmodel should work.
2. Unfortunately, substituting NX for NS is not enough. However the
conversion scripts supplied with OPENSTEP work quite well. As an example
I could port BackSpace.app in some hours.

Therefore, if OPENSTEP is available, first port to OPENSTEP, then to
GNUstep.

Hope this helps.

Stefan