Well, I had a visual flash of insight on this topic when we got an SGI Crimson in the office. It came with the X-Windows documentation, I'd say at least 3 feet of shelf-space.

The full NeXTStep documentation, including DPS, AppKit, system administration, NetInfo, etc was about a quarter of that.

Again, the previous was just the windowing system, so at most around 1/10th of the scope of the NeXTSTep documentation, and no, the NeXTSTep docs weren't any less thorough or complete.

So, if you've learned and maybe become an expert in the stuff that requires 3 feet of documentation, you're probably not too thrilled about finding out it's been for naught.

The X documentation was 2 volumes: 5 inches total. If you throw in Motif, Display Postscript (which came out in early 90s on SGI) and GL, it's still under a foot. I never had NeXTSTEP manuals, but I did have the OPENSTEP box set which was about a foot thick.

I understand the point you are trying to make, but the truth is an expert would find a lot of similarity in those systems. Even today iOS development feels comfortable and similar to the work I did on SGIs in 93.

Hmm...there were a lot more than 2 volumes on that bookshelf. And again, that was just the windowing system.

Amazon [1] suggests that there were at least 8 volumes.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Windows-System-Administrators-Definiti...

You are seriously trying to add up all the O'Reilly books and compare that to documentation published by NeXT?

I think I still have my books at home somewhere. They were by Digital Press if I recall.

That's what we were provided by SGI as the official documentation.

I just had a look, and it seems that this was common (see the highlight): http://books.google.de/books?id=d8tByjvMmIwC&pg=PR37&lpg=PR3...

The 2 volumes of authoritative X documentation came from Digital Press. X Window System by Scheifler, Gettys and Newman. X Window System Toolkit by Asente and Swick. If you read further in the acknowledgements that you quote, you'll see them listed as primary sources. My copies take up 3.25" on the shelf.

I know we had a lot of the O'Reilly X books floating around. Nobody ever read them, but we felt weird throwing books away. You're right that they got bundled by vendors--I think HP and Sun eventually bundled stuff too. The bundling decision was probably more about trying to justify insanely high workstation prices than an indictment of the complexity of X.