Did someone already post this?
https://layered.work/nextstep-naming/
QuoteFor decades, the precise naming and capitalization of NeXT's operating systems have been a source of endless confusion. Was it NeXTstep, NeXTStep, or NEXTSTEP? The answer often changed depending on the specific version, the architecture, or the marketing strategy of the time.
It's interesting to trace down the genealogy of these articles based on their mistakes.
I think the first must be the kevra.org list (http://www.kevra.org/TheBestOfNext/DifferentNeXTSpellings/DifferentNeXTSpellings.html), which originates the claim that "NextStep" was never an official stylization. In reality, it was always an
unofficial stylization used inside NeXT, and when the NEXTSTEP name was first announced at the NeXT Event in Oct 1988, Steve's own slides called the operating system "NextStep."
This other article (https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace/blob/master/Documentation/OpenStep%20Confusion.md) (from the NEXTSPACE GitHub repo, found by
@ZombiePhysicist) seems to repeat the kevra.org errors, but also adds in the spurious stylization of "OPENSTEP for MachOS." There are a handful of citations for "MachOS" that go back to 1996, shortly after OPENSTEP was officially adopted as the name for the operating system product, but no NeXT product ever used this; the actual name is "OPENSTEP for Mach." Presumably "MachOS" is an invention of zealous enthusiasts who thought it was flattering to make "Mach" and "Mac OS" look as similar as possible.
I went over the mistakes in the above two articles here (http://nextcommunity.net/forums/index.php?topic=47.msg343#msg343).
The layered.work article you posted above seems to be downstream of the NEXTSPACE article, as it repeats all of the above errors but has an additional corruption: it refers to OPENSTEP for Mach as OPENSTEP for
MacOS, which is patently untrue and could only be the product of a major typo.
Although the possibility of an OpenStep API running on Classic Mac OS (a reverse "Blue Box" situation) was a common object of speculation—particularly since NeXT had managed to port OpenStep to Windows 95, another severely deficient consumer operating system—no such product was ever announced, and there is no mention of it in the January 1997 proclamations from Gil Amelio
et al. that are on the
Neue Horizonte CD (http://cdrom.nextcommunity.net/compilation/NeueHorizonte_Dec_96.7z).
We should probably reach out to these people and try to get their material fixed.
Yeah, it's quite a confusing mess. My guess is that it was just not that strictly controlled within the company until OpenStep the API was released in which case they had to interact with other companies and be clear.
I also think that they probably consider the logo type NEXTSTEP to be a sufficiently different context from plain text meaning the caps could be different.
But in the OpenStep developer tutorial guide, they do at least give us this one tiny clarification.
QuoteWhats in a Name?
"0PENSTEP" refers to the software product. "0penStep" refers to the standard or specification on which the product is based, and by extension to the
concepts expressed by the specification.
The OpenStep specification is available via anonymous ftp at ftp.next.com.
https://bitsavers.org/pdf/next/OpenSTEP_Developers_Tutorial_4.0_Mach_1996.pdf