[NTLK] Love Notes ?2? Newton

[Larry Yaeger]

On Oct 23, 2024, at 6:01 PM, Dan <dan at dbdigitalweb.com> wrote:
> On 10/23/2024 3:49 PM, Grant Hutchinson via NewtonTalk wrote:
>>> On Oct 22, 2024, at 5:18 PM, Noah Leon <moosefuel at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Anyone else have any ideas?
>> 
>> I’d love to document the process of contacting various people in the attempt to actually open source some of the Newton OS.
>> 
>> I mean, they’ve already released the source for MacPaint, QuickDraw, and Apple II DOS.
>> 
>> <https://computerhistory.org/blog/macpaint-and-quickdraw-source-code/>
>> <https://computerhistory.org/blog/apple-ii-dos-source-code/>
>> 
>> Why not Newton OS?
>> 
>> g.
> 
> I agree.  Although I have a hunch they use some of it in the iOS.  Probably not much, but enough they don't want to open source Newton OS.

Maybe, but I doubt it's anything terribly sensitive or important, if there's any at all.  iOS is a very different OS, and none of the handwriting recognition code persists.  (And the handwriting recognition code has now been excised from macOS as well.)  The data structures and code we used for encoding and exploring our dictionaries/word-lists did get picked up and used for the Mac's "data detectors", and may have spread to iOS's spell-checking and word prediction, but I suspect even that low level stuff got rewritten at some point.  Concepts from the Newton's power management might persist, but I doubt the actual code does.

However, Apple doesn't even have all the source code.  At least if I remember correctly, Paragraph's cursive recognizer was always delivered as a binary and no one at Apple ever had access to their source code.  I think Apple should have the rest of the source code though.  I think.

It'd sure be great to get the source they have, to clean up a few minor problems.

And if source remains a no-go, at least it would be nice get a blessed release of a final generation ROM image and permission to put Einstein in all the App Stores.

Documenting those Quixotic quests could be pretty darn interesting, and who knows, having the process recorded might make someone decide to step up and be the hero that makes it happen.

- larryy