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OpenStep is an object-oriented
application programming interface An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software Interface (computing), interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that des ...
(API) specification developed by
NeXT NeXT, Inc. (later NeXT Computer, Inc. and NeXT Software, Inc.) was an American technology company headquartered in Redwood City, California that specialized in computer workstations for higher education and business markets, and later develope ...
. It provides a framework for building
graphical user interface A graphical user interface, or GUI, is a form of user interface that allows user (computing), users to human–computer interaction, interact with electronic devices through Graphics, graphical icon (computing), icons and visual indicators such ...
s (GUIs) and developing software applications. OpenStep was designed to be platform-independent, allowing developers to write code that could run on multiple operating systems, including
NeXTSTEP NeXTSTEP is a discontinued object-oriented, multitasking operating system based on the Mach kernel and the UNIX-derived BSD. It was developed by NeXT, founded by Steve Jobs, in the late 1980s and early 1990s and was initially used for its ...
,
Windows NT Windows NT is a Proprietary software, proprietary Graphical user interface, graphical operating system produced by Microsoft as part of its Windows product line, the first version of which, Windows NT 3.1, was released on July 27, 1993. Original ...
, and various
Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...
-based systems. It has influenced the development of other GUI frameworks, such as Cocoa for macOS, and GNUstep. OpenStep was principally developed by NeXT and
Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed sig ...
, to allow advanced application development on Sun's operating systems, specifically Solaris. NeXT produced a version of OpenStep for its own
Mach The Mach number (M or Ma), often only Mach, (; ) is a dimensionless quantity in fluid dynamics representing the ratio of flow velocity past a Boundary (thermodynamic), boundary to the local speed of sound. It is named after the Austrian physi ...
-based Unix OS, stylized in all capital letters as OPENSTEP. The software libraries that shipped with OPENSTEP are a superset of the original OpenStep specification, including many features from the original NeXTSTEP.


History

Workstations from
Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed sig ...
were originally programmed at a relatively low-level making calls directly to the underlying
Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...
operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...
and the SunView window system toolkit, and to libraries built atop those interfaces. This led to complex programming even for simple projects. An attempt to address this with an object oriented programming model was made in the mid-1980s with Sun's
NeWS News is information about current events. This may be provided through many different Media (communication), media: word of mouth, printing, Mail, postal systems, broadcasting, Telecommunications, electronic communication, or through the te ...
windowing system, but the combination of a complex
application programming interface An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software Interface (computing), interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that des ...
(API) and generally poor performance led to little real-world use and the system was eventually abandoned. Sun then began looking for other options. Taligent was considered to be a competitor in the operating system and object markets, and Microsoft's
Cairo Cairo ( ; , ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Egypt and the Cairo Governorate, being home to more than 10 million people. It is also part of the List of urban agglomerations in Africa, largest urban agglomeration in Africa, L ...
was at least a consideration, even without any product releases from either. Taligent's theoretical newness was often compared to NeXT's older but mature and commercially established platform. Sun held exploratory meetings with Taligent before deciding upon building out its object application framework OpenStep in partnership with
NeXT NeXT, Inc. (later NeXT Computer, Inc. and NeXT Software, Inc.) was an American technology company headquartered in Redwood City, California that specialized in computer workstations for higher education and business markets, and later develope ...
as a "preemptive move against Taligent and Cairo". Bud Tribble, a founding designer of the
Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...
and of NeXTStep, was now SunSoft's Vice President of Object Products to lead this decision. The 1993 partnership included a $10 million investment from Sun into NeXT. The deal was described as "the first unadulterated piece of good news in the NeXT community in the last four years". The basic concept was to take a cut-down version of the NeXTSTEP
operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...
's object layers and adapt them to run on Sun's Solaris operating system, more specifically, Solaris on SPARC-based hardware. Most of the OpenStep effort was to strip away those portions of NeXTSTEP that depended on Mach or NeXT-specific hardware being present. This resulted in a smaller system that consisted primarily of Display PostScript, the
Objective-C Objective-C is a high-level general-purpose, object-oriented programming language that adds Smalltalk-style message passing (messaging) to the C programming language. Originally developed by Brad Cox and Tom Love in the early 1980s, it was ...
runtime and compilers, and the majority of the NeXTSTEP Objective-C libraries. Not included was the basic operating system, or the lower-level display system. Steve Jobs said "We are ahead today, but the race is far from over. ... n 1996,Cairo will be very close behind, and Taligent will be very far behind." Sun's CEO Scott McNealy said, "We have no insurance policy. We have made a firm one-company, one-architecture decision, not like Taligent getting a trophy spouse by signing up HP." The first draft of the API was published by NeXT in mid 1994. Later that year they released an OpenStep compliant version of NeXTSTEP as OPENSTEP, supported on several of their platforms as well as Sun SPARC systems. NeXT submitted the OpenStep specification to the industry's object standards bodies. The official OpenStep API, published in September 1994, was the first to split the API between Foundation and Application Kit and the first to use the "NS" prefix. Early versions of NeXTSTEP use an "NX" prefix and contain only the Application Kit, relying on standard Unix libc types for low-level data structures. OPENSTEP remained NeXT's primary operating system product until the company merged with Apple Computer in 1997. OPENSTEP was then combined with technologies from the existing
classic Mac OS Mac OS (originally System Software; retronym: Classic Mac OS) is the series of operating systems developed for the Mac (computer), Macintosh family of personal computers by Apple Computer, Inc. from 1984 to 2001, starting with System 1 and end ...
to produce Mac OS X.
iPhone The iPhone is a line of smartphones developed and marketed by Apple that run iOS, the company's own mobile operating system. The first-generation iPhone was announced by then–Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs on January 9, 2007, at ...
and iPad's iOS is also a descendant of OPENSTEP, but targeted at touch devices. Sun originally adopted the OpenStep environment with the intent of complementing Sun's CORBA-compliant object system, Solaris NEO (formerly known as Project DOE), by providing an object-oriented user interface toolkit to complement the object-oriented CORBA plumbing. The port involved integrating the OpenStep AppKit with the Display PostScript layer of the Sun X11 server, making the AppKit tolerant of multi-threaded code (as Project DOE was inherently heavily multi-threaded), implementing a Solaris daemon to simulate the behavior of Mach ports, extending the SunPro C++ compiler to support
Objective-C Objective-C is a high-level general-purpose, object-oriented programming language that adds Smalltalk-style message passing (messaging) to the C programming language. Originally developed by Brad Cox and Tom Love in the early 1980s, it was ...
using NeXT's ObjC runtime, writing an X11
window manager A window manager is system software that controls the placement and appearance of window (computing), windows within a windowing system in a graphical user interface. Most window managers are designed to help provide a desktop environment. They ...
to implement the NeXTSTEP look and feel as much as possible, and integrating the NeXT development tools, such as Project Builder and Interface Builder, with the SunPro compiler. In order to provide a complete end-user environment, Sun also ported the NeXTSTEP-3.3 versions of several end-user applications, including Mail.app, Preview.app, Edit.app, Workspace Manager, and the Dock. The OpenStep and CORBA parts of the products were later split, and NEO was released in late 1995 without the OpenStep environment. In March 1996, Sun announced Joe, a product to integrate NEO with
Java Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...
. Sun shipped a beta release of the OpenStep environment for Solaris on July 22, 1996, and made it freely available for download in August 1996 for non-commercial use, and for sale in September 1996. OpenStep/Solaris was shipped only for the SPARC architecture.


Description

OpenStep differs from NeXTSTEP in various ways: *NeXTSTEP is an operating system, whereas OpenStep is an API. *Unlike NeXTSTEP, OpenStep does not require the Mach kernel. *Each version of NeXTSTEP has a specific
endianness file:Gullivers_travels.jpg, ''Gulliver's Travels'' by Jonathan Swift, the novel from which the term was coined In computing, endianness is the order in which bytes within a word (data type), word of digital data are transmitted over a data comm ...
: big endian for Motorola 68K processors, and little endian for x86 processors, for example. OpenStep is "endian-free". *OpenStep introduces new classes and
memory management Memory management (also dynamic memory management, dynamic storage allocation, or dynamic memory allocation) is a form of Resource management (computing), resource management applied to computer memory. The essential requirement of memory manag ...
capabilities. The OpenStep API specification defines three major components: Foundation Kit, the
software framework In computer programming, a software framework is a software abstraction that provides generic functionality which developers can extend with custom code to create applications. It establishes a standard foundation for building and deploying soft ...
; Application Kit, the GUI and graphics front-end; and Display PostScript, a 2D graphics system (for drawing windows and other graphics on the screen).


Building on OpenStep

The standardization on OpenStep also allowed for the creation of several new library packages that were delivered on the OPENSTEP platform. Unlike the operating system as a whole, these packages were designed to run stand-alone on practically any operating system. The idea was to use OpenStep code as a basis for network-wide applications running across different platforms, as opposed to using CORBA or some other system. Primary among these packages was Portable Distributed Objects (PDO). PDO was essentially an even more "stripped down" version of OpenStep containing only the Foundation Kit technologies, combined with new libraries to provide remote invocation with very little code. Unlike OpenStep, which defined an operating system that applications would run in, under PDO the libraries were compiled into the application itself, creating a stand-alone "native" application for a particular platform. PDO was small enough to be easily portable, and versions were released for all major server vendors. In the mid-1990s, NeXT staff took to writing in solutions to various CORBA magazine articles in a few lines of code, whereas the original article would fill several pages. Even though using PDO required the installation of a considerable amount of supporting code (Objective-C and the libraries), PDO applications were nevertheless considerably smaller than similar CORBA solutions, typically about one-half to one-third the size. The similar D'OLE provided the same types of services, but presented the resulting objects as COM objects, with the goal of allowing programmers to create COM services running on high-powered platforms, called from
Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...
applications. For instance one could develop a high-powered financial modeling application using D'OLE, and then call it directly from within
Microsoft Excel Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet editor developed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows, Windows, macOS, Android (operating system), Android, iOS and iPadOS. It features calculation or computation capabilities, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a ...
. When D'OLE was first released, OLE by itself only communicated between applications running on a single machine. PDO enabled NeXT to demonstrate Excel talking to other Microsoft applications across a network before Microsoft themselves were able to implement this functionality (DCOM). Another package developed on OpenStep was Enterprise Objects Framework (EOF), a object-relational mapping product.


Implementations


OPENSTEP for Mach

NeXT's first operating system was
NeXTSTEP NeXTSTEP is a discontinued object-oriented, multitasking operating system based on the Mach kernel and the UNIX-derived BSD. It was developed by NeXT, founded by Steve Jobs, in the late 1980s and early 1990s and was initially used for its ...
, a sophisticated Mach-UNIX based operating system that originally ran only on NeXT's Motorola 68k-based workstations and that was then ported to run on 32-bit Intel x86-based "IBM-compatible" personal computers,
PA-RISC Precision Architecture reduced instruction set computer, RISC (PA-RISC) or Hewlett Packard Precision Architecture (HP/PA or simply HPPA), is a computer, general purpose computer instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by Hewlett-Packard f ...
-based workstations from
Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company. It was founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939 in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, California ...
, and SPARC-based workstations from
Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed sig ...
. NeXT completed an implementation of OpenStep on their existing Mach-based OS and called it OPENSTEP for Mach 4.0 (July, 1996), 4.1 (December, 1996), and 4.2 (January, 1997). It was, for all intents, NeXTSTEP 4.0, and still retained flagship NeXTSTEP technologies (such as DPS, UNIX underpinnings, user interface characteristics like the Dock and Shelf, and so on), and retained the classic NeXTSTEP user interface and styles. OPENSTEP for Mach was further improved, in comparison to NeXTSTEP 3.3, with vastly improved driver support – however the environment to actually write drivers was changed with the introduction of the object-oriented DriverKit. OPENSTEP for Mach supported Intel x86-based PC's, Sun's SPARC workstations, and NeXT's own 68k-based architectures, while the HP PA-RISC version was dropped. These versions continued to run on the underlying Mach-based OS used in NeXTSTEP. OPENSTEP for Mach became NeXT's primary OS from 1995 on, and was used mainly on the Intel platform. In addition to being a complete OpenStep implementation, the system was delivered with a complete set of NeXTSTEP libraries for backward compatibility. This was an easy thing to do in OpenStep due to library versioning, and OPENSTEP did not suffer in bloat because of it.


Solaris OpenStep

In addition to the OPENSTEP for Mach port for SPARC, Sun and NeXT developed an OpenStep compliant set of frameworks to run on Sun's Solaris operating system. After developing Solaris OpenStep, Sun lost interest in OpenStep and shifted its attention toward Java. As a virtual machine development environment, Java served as a direct competitor to OpenStep. Unlike other versions, Solaris OpenStep had Interface Builder and Project Builder sold in a separate package called Workshop OpenStep.


OPENSTEP Enterprise

NeXT also delivered an implementation running on top of Windows NT 4.0 called OPENSTEP Enterprise (often abbreviated OSE). This was an unintentional demonstration on the true nature of the portability of programs created under the OpenStep specification. Programs for OPENSTEP for Mach could be ported to OSE with little difficulty. This allowed their existing customer base to continue using their tools and applications, but running them on Windows, to which many of them were in the process of switching. Never a clean match from the UI perspective, probably due to OPENSTEP's routing of window graphics through the Display Postscript server—which was also ported to Windows—OSE nevertheless managed to work fairly well and extended OpenStep's commercial lifespan. OPENSTEP and OSE had two revisions (and one major one that was never released) before NeXT was purchased by Apple in 1997.


Rhapsody, Mac OS X Server 1.0

After acquiring NeXT, Apple intended to ship Rhapsody as a reworked version of OPENSTEP for Mach for both the Mac and standard PCs. Rhapsody was OPENSTEP for Mach with a Copland appearance from Mac OS 8 and support for Java and Apple's own technologies, including ColorSync and QuickTime; it could be regarded as OPENSTEP 5. Two developer versions of Rhapsody were released, known as Developer Preview 1 and 2; these ran on a limited subset of both Intel and PowerPC hardware. Mac OS X Server 1.0 was the first commercial release of this operating system, and was delivered exclusively for PowerPC Mac hardware.


Darwin, Mac OS X 10.0 and later

After replacing the Display Postscript WindowServer with
Quartz Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica (silicon dioxide). The Atom, atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon–oxygen Tetrahedral molecular geometry, tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tet ...
, and responding to developers by including better backward compatibility for classic Mac OS applications through the addition of
Carbon Carbon () is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol C and atomic number 6. It is nonmetallic and tetravalence, tetravalent—meaning that its atoms are able to form up to four covalent bonds due to its valence shell exhibiting 4 ...
, Apple released Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server, starting at version 10.0; Mac OS X is now named macOS. macOS's primary programming environment is essentially OpenStep (with certain additions such as XML property lists and URL classes for Internet connections) with macOS ports of the development libraries and tools, now called Cocoa. macOS has since become the single most popular desktop Unix-like operating system in the world, although macOS is no longer an OpenStep compliant operating system.


GNUstep

GNUstep, a
free software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...
implementation of the
NeXT NeXT, Inc. (later NeXT Computer, Inc. and NeXT Software, Inc.) was an American technology company headquartered in Redwood City, California that specialized in computer workstations for higher education and business markets, and later develope ...
libraries, began at the time of NeXTSTEP, predating OPENSTEP. While OPENSTEP and OSE were purchased by Apple, who effectively ended the commercial development of implementing OpenStep for other platforms, GNUstep is an ongoing open source project aiming to create a portable, free software implementation of the Cocoa/OPENSTEP libraries. GNUstep also features a fully functional development environment, reimplementations of some of the newer innovations from macOS's Cocoa framework, as well as its own extensions to the API.


See also

* NeXT character set * Multi-architecture binary


References


External links


OPENSTEP Installation Guide




in OpenStep specification
OPENSTEP SPECIFICATION
* *
The NeXTonian

NeXTComputers.org

OpenMagic 1.0 for Sparc by Luke Th. Bullock
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Openstep Application programming interfaces Berkeley Software Distribution macOS APIs NeXT Solaris software X86 operating systems