The Discovery Thread

Looking through some old usenet posts there was a discussion about OpenStep and where it stood against competing technologies of the time, particularly Microsoft's Cairo, though Taligent was also mentioned. Application support was discussed with someone asking why should NeXT users worry about not having applications like Lotus Notes when they had superior options like MindShare.

I hadn't heard of this one before so I tried a search for it but the name is a bit too generic. Grepping my CD listings I found out it's by Pangea and there are demos on a few compilations. Armed with a vendor name to narrow things down I found it on kevra (http://www.kevra.org/TheBestOfNext/ThirdPartyProducts/ThirdPartySoftware/InformationManagement/MindShare/MindShare.html) but there's no mention of it here.

So it got me thinking about what other NS/OS applications have been forgotten here. Maybe we could start digging some up and shining a light on them?

Here's the idea: search the forum for an application. If you find no mention of it, post it here.

I'll start with MindShare:

QuoteWith MindShare, Pangea has combined the ease of use of e-mail with the inherent power of a client/server database to create a system that not only relays messages between users but also provides a collaboration environment, an electronic forum for scoring, organizing, and retrieving information. MindShare messages are kept in "discussions," data repositories shared across an entire organization. Use MindShare to coordinate software development teams, brainstorm, track projects, cooperatively edit and manage documents, distribute publications, run help desks, and hundreds of other applications.

The advanced client/server architecture means efficient Storage and distribution of documents of any size - around the office and around the world, MindShare was based on the Pangea Groupware Engine (PGE), an advanced enterprise messaging server also used by MindShare Mail. Using the PGE application programming interfaces, developers could build custom applications for message-driven workgroup computing.

Known Sources (demo only): 3rd Party Sampler Fall 93, Objectware 1995, Peanuts 3

That is a deep cut, and it looks like it was pretty well-maintained, too, what with that 1995 build date in the Info panel.

My understanding is that there are basically three big categories of lost or nearly-lost NeXT software that we don't have access to: vertical integrations (e.g. control software for scientific equipment), in-house solutions (the people the GSwork CDs were marketing to), and products marketed specifically to enterprise customers (like MindShare). Generally we receive contributions of commercial software from private collectors who had a NeXT in their home offices, but these three categories never had a reason to leave the workplace.

If a piece of software is lost but isn't one of these three things, then it probably had very limited distribution or wasn't even released (as was the case with MediaLogic Artisan.) TopDraw is an extreme outlier in this regard since it was widely used, but now the only known copy is Andreas's sealed box (https://www.nextcomputers.org/forums/index.php?topic=6031.msg34400#msg34400).

Proportionately I think it's probably pretty likely that the majority of people using NeXT's development tools were working on software that we've only barely heard of. Kevra lists over two dozen medical programs (http://www.kevra.org/TheBestOfNext/ThirdPartyProducts/VerticalMarkets/HealthcareSolutions/HealthcareSolutions.html) and none of them have ever turned up anywhere as far as I know:

QuoteALI UltraPACS, Anatomical Atlas, CaseServ, ChromoType, CLINIBASE 2000, COPCManage, Digital Audiometer, Digital DENTIST, Digital Psychoacoustic Laboratory, DocCube, Galen, GCS DataNet, HealthBase, Hospital Manager, InfoMed, LUMISCAN laser film digitizers, MARS, MedEquity System for Health, MediManage, Minerva, MLAB, M2001 Medical Telediagnostic, NeuroSolutions, OTTR, Peacock, Rayven Radiographic Scanners, RealTime Biosignal Workstation, TeleHealth Systems, UNIX MUMPS

There's also the mystery 3D medical image viewer (https://www.nextcomputers.org/forums/index.php?topic=5718) that was sourced for screenshots in an episode of Law & Order: SVU. It might be one of the names listed above (Peacock was a radiotherapy system with a 3D component), or it could even be from a 3D physics demo on the 1992 Edu Sampler—maybe something for visualizing orbitals?

The Finance and Specialized Solutions categories are also full of hapax legomena (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hapax_legomenon). AFAIK we don't have anything from the VisChem suite at all, for example. The forest remains big and dark...

Quote from: Rhetorica on August 24, 2025, 01:17:13 PMTopDraw is an extreme outlier in this regard since it was widely used, but now the only known copy is Andreas's sealed box (https://www.nextcomputers.org/forums/index.php?topic=6031.msg34400#msg34400).

If you look back at the video that Rob posted recently with the Warp9J folder, there's a copy of TopDraw on the same disk. He actually hovers over it before talking about Warp9J.

So with this tool we would be able to connect to a NeXT computer somewhere in the world and work on a group project i.e. and Next Software database and group our screenshots and links to documentation?

Maybe. I'm not too familiar with this kind of software. We used Lotus Notes at an old job, mainly for email though some web development was also done with it.

MindShare might not be the best choice for such a task in the modern age, but it could be a fun experiment. We'd need a full copy first though as the demo is save-disabled.