Project Builder

Last updated
Project Builder
Developer(s) NeXT, Apple Inc.
Initial release3.0 / September 8, 1992;30 years ago (1992-09-08) [1]
Final release
2.1 / December 1, 2002;20 years ago (2002-12-01) [2]
Operating system NeXTSTEP, macOS
Type Integrated development environment (IDE)
License Freeware with open-source components

Project Builder was an integrated development environment (IDE) originally developed by NeXT for version 3 of the NeXTSTEP operating system by separating out the code editing parts of Interface Builder into its own application. [1]

After Apple Computer purchased NeXT and turned NeXTSTEP into the Mac OS X operating system, the NeXTSTEP version of Project Builder became ProjectBuilderWO (maintained only for WebObjects development), and they created a new Project Builder from scratch for software development with the first version being introduced with Developer Preview 4 of Mac OS X. [3] This version of Project Builder, informally dubbed PBX. [4] was distributed with the first few versions of Mac OS X but with the release of Mac OS X v10.3 it was redesigned, reintegrated with Interface Builder and rebranded as Xcode. [5] [6] [7]

GNUstep's ProjectCenter IDE is a rough workalike of the original NextStep design; additional functionality is provided by ProjectManager, a 3rd-party GNUstep IDE meant for greater usability.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">NeXT</span> American technology company (1985–1997)

NeXT, Inc. was an American technology company that specialized in computer workstations intended for higher education and business use. Based in Redwood City, California, and founded by Apple Computer co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs after he was forced out of Apple, the company introduced their first product, the NeXT Computer, in 1988, and then the smaller NeXTcube and NeXTstation in 1990. These computers had relatively limited sales, with only about 50,000 units shipped in total. Nevertheless, their object-oriented programming and graphical user interfaces were trendsetters of computer innovation, and highly influential.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NeXTSTEP</span> Operating system from NeXT Computer

NeXTSTEP is a discontinued object-oriented, multitasking operating system based on the Mach kernel and the UNIX-derived BSD. It was developed by NeXT Computer in the late 1980s and early 1990s and was initially used for its range of proprietary workstation computers such as the NeXTcube. It was later ported to several other computer architectures.

OpenStep is a defunct object-oriented application programming interface (API) specification for a legacy object-oriented operating system, with the basic goal of offering a NeXTSTEP-like environment on non-NeXTSTEP operating systems. OpenStep was principally developed by NeXT with Sun Microsystems, to allow advanced application development on Sun's operating systems, specifically Solaris. NeXT produced a version of OpenStep for its own Mach-based Unix, stylized as OPENSTEP, as well as a version for Windows NT. The software libraries that shipped with OPENSTEP are a superset of the original OpenStep specification, including many features from the original NeXTSTEP.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">TextEdit</span> Open-source word processor and text editor

TextEdit is an open-source word processor and text editor, first featured in NeXT's NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP. It is now distributed with macOS since Apple Inc.'s acquisition of NeXT, and available as a GNUstep application for other Unix-like operating systems such as Linux. It is powered by Apple Advanced Typography.

Cocoa is Apple's native object-oriented application programming interface (API) for its desktop operating system macOS.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GNUstep</span> Open source widget toolkit and application development tools

GNUstep is a free software implementation of the Cocoa Objective-C frameworks, widget toolkit, and application development tools for Unix-like operating systems and Microsoft Windows. It is part of the GNU Project.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">WebObjects</span> Java web application server and framework originally developed by NeXT Software

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Window Maker</span>

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Rhapsody is the development series of Apple Computer's next-generation operating system. Targeting only developers for a transition period, its releases came between Apple's purchase of NeXT in late 1996 and the announcement of Mac OS X in 1998. Rhapsody represented a new and exploratory strategy for Apple, more than an operating system, and runs on x86-based PCs and on Power Macintosh. Its OPENSTEP based Yellow Box API frameworks were ported to Windows NT for creating cross-platform applications. Eventually, the non-Apple platforms were discontinued, and later versions consist primarily of the OPENSTEP operating system ported to Power Macintosh, merging the Copland-originated GUI of Mac OS 8 with that of OPENSTEP. Several existing classic Mac OS frameworks were ported, including QuickTime and AppleSearch. Rhapsody can run Mac OS 8 and its applications in a paravirtualization layer called Blue Box for backward compatibility during migration to Mac OS X.

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Gorm is a graphical user interface builder application. It is part of the developer tools of GNUstep. Gorm is the equivalent of Interface Builder that was originally found on NeXTSTEP, then OPENSTEP, and finally on Mac OS X. It supports the old .nib files as well as its own .gorm file format.

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AppKit is a graphical user interface toolkit. It initially served as the UI framework for NeXTSTEP. Along with Foundation and Display PostScript, it became one of the core parts of the OpenStep specification of APIs. Later, AppKit and Foundation became part of Cocoa, the Objective-C API framework of macOS. GNUstep, GNU's implementation of the OpenStep/Cocoa API, also contains an implementation of the AppKit API.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Interface Builder</span> Developer Application for MacOS

Interface Builder is a software development application for Apple's macOS operating system. It is part of Xcode, the Apple Developer developer's toolset. Interface Builder allows Cocoa and Carbon developers to create interfaces for applications using a graphical user interface. The resulting interface is stored as a .nib file, short for NeXT Interface Builder, or more recently, as an XML-based .xib file.

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In the macOS, iOS, NeXTSTEP, and GNUstep programming frameworks, property list files are files that store serialized objects. Property list files use the filename extension .plist, and thus are often referred to as p-list files.

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Objective-C is a high-level general-purpose, object-oriented programming language that adds Smalltalk-style messaging to the C programming language. Originally developed by Brad Cox and Tom Love in the early 1980s, it was selected by NeXT for its NeXTSTEP operating system. Due to Apple macOS’s direct lineage from NeXTSTEP, Objective-C was the standard programming language used, supported, and promoted by Apple for developing macOS and iOS applications until the introduction of the Swift programming language in 2014.

The Cocoa text system is the linked network of classes, protocols, interfaces and objects that provide typography and text field editing capabilities and to Cocoa applications on Apple's macOS, where it is the primary text-handling system. Although "extremely complex", the standard text-handling abilities of the Cocoa text system have been widely praised as without peer. It is possible to implement a fully featured rich text editor in only a few lines of code.

References

  1. 1 2 Garfinkel, Simson; Mahoney, Michael. NeXTSTEP Programming, Step One: Object-Oriented Applications (PDF).
  2. "OS X December 2002 Developer Tools". OSNews. Retrieved 2022-01-15.
  3. John Siracusa (May 24, 2000). "Mac OS X DP4". Ars Technica. Retrieved 2022-01-15.
  4. Summermatter, Paul R. (March 25, 2001). "Getting started PB -> PBX". Cocoabuilder. Archived from the original on 2015-04-29.
  5. Dippery, Michael (2 June 2015). Professional Swift. p. 36. ISBN   9781119016779. Xcode is based on Project Builder, an IDE you use to write programs for the NeXTSTEP operating system, the forerunner of Mac OS X
  6. Wentk, Richard (June 2011). Xcode 4. p. 5. ISBN   9781118108260. A free copy of Project Builder was bundled with every copy of OS X
  7. "OS X's ten most innovative features". Macworld. Sep 13, 2010. ...Included in the package was an IDE—Project Builder—that was a tweaked version of the IDE that came with NeXT, the OS whose acquisition laid much of the foundation for OS X. In 2003, Project Builder became the now familiar Xcode...