San Francisco Ð With the announcement of ObjectWare: A Catalog of Objects and Kits for NeXTSTEP at Object World here in July, NeXT signaled a bold move into a market that is only beginning to be defined.
The catalog lists more than 120 objects, kits, classes, and palettes to help developers more easily write programs. Objects for communication, database systems, education, and training, as well as public-domain and niche-market objects, are included. The catalog is available from NeXT for $10.95.
Jobs showed the catalog to the keynote audience as proof that NeXT is shipping "real objects now," but confusion over basic terms like "palette," "subclass library," and even "object" abound. "Objects are like a geneology chart. Each individual brings functionality and intelligence to the puzzle," said Greg Anderson, of Anderson Financial Systems, acknowledging that the terms are hard to understand for nonprogrammers.
"NeXT needs to educate people about object-oriented software. The catalog is a good start, as is industry-standards participation, but I can see seminars by NeXT to really push the message home," said Chris Walters of RDR, a Fairfax, Virginia-based NeXTSTEP developer.
In the absence of clear definitions, developers are attempting different marketing strategies, and it may take years for the market to standardize.
RDR, the second company in the commercial-objects market after OTI, sells its "reusable components" through NeXTConnection and a European distributor. Anderson presently sells objects directly and offers customization through consulting, but he envisions a day when developers will provide enough API hooks on all development tools and shrinkwrapped apps that end users will be able to perform easy in-house customization.
Charles Perkins, a long-standing developer in the NeXT community, sees the future including a central repository for objects, modeled on the music industry's ASCAP royalties watchdog, which will provide developers with the chance to simply order an object to use in code and be billed at the end of the month.