15. May 2000. Tomi Engel

Over the years many - sometimes even useful - applications have found their way out of my brain and out of that tiny harddisk. This place contain references to all my commercial and private project idea, yet unfinished projects and related software packages from other people.

MassBoy

This is an application for the analysis of mass spectroscopy data files. It can do simple mass traces, library searches and supports some high resolution techniques which have been invented at the DFA by Wolfgang Engel who was the driving force behind the development of the application and its feature set. (Mac OS X Server, OPENSTEP)

GraphBoy

Another custom tool for the chemistry labs. its purpose is to chart graphs form given data sets. Since most regular charting tool could not deliver the exact drawings or failed to export the data in a format which was suitable for the scientific publications we had to write this little tool.

it is reusing 80% of the MassBoy code and is mainly used for drawing FD chromatograms. The big difference was that we needed nonlinear and configurable scales on both axis of the graph. (OPENSTEP)

Osprey

At this time FarmersOsprey is focused on providing an animatable 3D model. The physical aspects of flight simulation have to wait for a distant future. The main purpose in the short term is to have a test application for a planned replacement of NeXTs 3DKit. It should offer RenderMan and OpenGL integration with a more Cocoa-like feeling.

The current implementation has not evolved beyond "proof of concept" and is far from being really something useful. But hey ... at least there is something in 3D that fills the screen and eats your CPU time. (Mac OS X Server, OPENSTEP, NeXTSTEP)

ISTEConfig

if you have an ISTEC ISDN device you will not find a configuration tool which is running on an old NeXTcube. Sadly the device has a "bug" which needed to get fixed periodically so I had to write this application. It can connect to the ISDN device and to send the necessary control commands. (OPENSTEP)

ProjectCenter

My little ClassEditor was only the first step, but the real goal would be a dev tool which gives you a true OO way of looking at your projects.

The vision includes a cross-language development tool with support for flat files, EOF database storage with on the fly flat file generation (for compilation etc.) and Apple Dylan like dynamic browsing capabilities. However, we are far far away from this dream.

Originally we planned to make it part of the GNUstep developer package and now someone from the GNUstep team has take the apps idea and name and started a separate project. My current and primary goal has been reduced to providing a tool for automatic documentation generation.
(Just dreaming)

FarmersSlideTray

With the need to quickly find specific images in large picture collections, like the HPV CD-ROM, this simple application was desperately needed. Initially it went by the name PictureIndex but it never was released in that version.

In addition to the quick browsing (because of precalculated thumbnails ... even for CD-ROM storage) the FarmersSlideTray offers you a bigger scale preview, the capability to reorganize image collections with drag & drop and access to necessary information like file resolution, size and encoding. (Mac OS X Server, OPENSTEP)

WebStatistics

CLFF (common log file format) are all over the place in the web-focused world and this simple GUI tool turned them into object data structures which get analyzed easily with a little custom code.

It probably could be turned into a front-end for the analog tool (a free and common CLFF-analysis tool) and simply create the necessary config files, but having your own easy access to the data of your webserver logs might be useful some day as well (OPENSTEP)

ImagePlayer

Yet another silly application to "play" still images on the screen. But it might be the only slideshow app which ever supported Solaris/Openstep (an operating system extension which vanished even before it was released; it basically died because of the Java hype).

Currently supported data files are: playlist, anim, slides, plain folder. Each file wrapper can be extended with additional "playlist" information to provide better control of the playback.

This was my NeXTIME test application which should have helped me to understand the details of the framework and its component handling. In the long run it might have enabled me to develop some NeXTIME components for playback of dumb "movie" formats or even show the way to simple conferencing components. But now we have native QuickTime all over Mac OS X and so the desire to carry on is considerably low. (OPENSTEP)

VirtuosoChemtool

A very dirty hack which offers easy drag'n'drop access to template files which are used for drawing chemical structures. In the business world this sort of hack is called a "Mission Critical Application". Yup ... its what NeXTSTEP was best for. (NeXTSTEP).

WebRenderBook

In order to demo the usefulness of 3D RenderMan data (RIB) inside a Web page I wrote this little guy which has been demoed at OOCNS'95 during the GNU 3DKit sessions. It is build on top of the Netkit and WavesWorld and could display HTML pages with embedded RIB files or interactive EVE scenes.

The plan was to create a bundle that would enable every Netkit based Web application to display 3D scenes described in either RIB and EVE files or any other format that could be converted by external filters. (NeXTSTEP)

OD3DFilter

It was planned as a filter service application that would convert Apples QuickDraw 3D datafiles into RIB data. This should enable easy integration of this dataformat into the WebRenderBook and other "RIB only" apps. The current test version is based on Apples free parsing library for their metafile formats. (Prototype hack only)

VRMLFilter

Like the QD3DFilter this app should convert VRML to RIB/EVE data...on the fly. The parsing engine is derived from the free qv parsing code by SGI. (Idea only)

PhonePad

Using a headset? Tired of having to reach for the telephone to dial a number while working on the computer? Some apps (e.g. Phone) enable the computer to dial a number using the modem. But for numbers that are not stored in any address books there is a need for a simple dial pad.

PhonePad allows you to dial a number and to trigger a service (e.g. the one provided by Phone) that will cause the computer to do the nasty work for you. (NeXTSTEP)

AnimHelper

Helps you converting .anim files (TIFF-movies) into QuickTime movies which can be played using the NeXTIME.app. Until there is an easy way to use the NeXTIME components for this kind of conversion, the real work will be done by the anim2mov UNIX tool written by Michael B. Johnson. (NeXTSTEP)

SearchAndReplace

This is a very simple graphical front-end to a recursive text search engine which will replace strings inside files. it could be very helpful if you e.g. need to change many URL references inside multiple files and don't want to go through the hell of grep, sed, awk and company or do it all manually. (NeXTSTEP)

StructureBoy

The missing "chemistry boy" will have to deal with 2D structure drawing. In contrast to the dump VirtuosoChemtool this would have to be a real drawing tool. Perhaps limited in its design features but useful to the not so computer literate chemist. The resulting files should be easy to postprocess in any PDF aware design tool. (Idea only)

FileHelper

All the *Helper applications mentioned so far (Ideas or Released) are just another bunch of hacks I made to solve quite simple problems. They are all very similar and if I ever start moving them to Mac OS X they all will be folded into a single application with loadable filter tools (small "Helpers"). But this might take a while. (Idea only)

FontInstaller

Many fonts need to be converter from other platforms before they can be used under NeXTSTEPs font system. This app should help you to get the fonts where they belong ... and to correct the font names and weight info where they are incorrect (which very often is the case if you consider Adobes spec as a valid reference) (Idea only)