I'm not quite sure what you're aiming for, but the Be Book is available online (https://www.haiku-os.org/legacy-docs/bebook/), and includes all the documentation for the API. I don't know that any of the internals stuff is online, though.

EDIT: Haiku also has the Be newsletters (https://www.haiku-os.org/legacy-docs/benewsletter/index.html) and "Programming the Be Operating System" (https://www.haiku-os.org/legacy-docs/programming_the_be_oper...), which actually does encompass everything I think you were looking for.

"It's really crazy that OS X 10.0 was such a pig on the systems of the time"

I was so ticked because OpenStep and NeXTSTEP were so responsive and I couldn't figure out what the people at Apple had done to it. Plus, changing how the menu[1] worked and moving the vertical scrollbar were and are grave sins as far as I'm concerned.

1) The UI rule that is used to justify using the Mac menu bar doesn't make any sense for touch, big monitors, or multi-monitors.

> I couldn't figure out what the people at Apple had done to it.

Double buffered, compositing window system.

Isn't the Mac menu bar designed to keep Fitts' law in mind? I can see how that isn't relevant for touch, but why does it not apply for big monitors or multiple monitors?

leave what I'm working on -> scroll -> scroll -> scroll -> click menu -> run mouse back to window via a lot of scrolling

NeXTSTEP had nice menu that could be detached - it was so easy

That's not what "scrolling" generally means. And if your cursor has a decent acceleration curve applied to it, the potentially long distance to the menu won't matter unless the menu is at least one large monitor away.

and what word would you use?

well, its a tad bit longer than the NeXTSTEP menu near the window and OS X doesn't allow tear-offs. I find it irritating and stupid compared to what NeXT had. There are quite a few things they dropped in the conversion from NeXTSTEP / OpenStep to OS X that I miss.

Which UI rule are you thinking about? Fitts' Law doesn't have anything to do with distance. It might be the case that you have to move your mouse pointer an inconvenient distance to get to the menu bar, but that doesn't change the fact that putting the bar at the top of the screen gives the bar functionally infinite height and makes it easier to accurately point to.

Fitts' Law absolutely does include distance: it's the observation that the time it takes to hit a target increases with increasing distance or decreasing size of target.

Ah, okay. I guess I misremembered it from when I learned it a few years ago. Thanks for clarifying!