I spent way too much time fiddling with the icon for MathEdit for #OpenStep. I ended up making 3 different icons depending on the size. You can see how they gradually remove detail as they get smaller.

I am not an icon designer. Its a field I highly respect because its insanely difficult. I did the best I can, and while everything can always improve but I think this is good enough for now.

As for why ‘42’? Well, obviously I'm a good nerd and like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. But also, this MathEdit for OpenStep and what was the last OS version number for OpenStep? 4.2. So I think it fits with the theme and the heritage of the project.

https://github.com/jeffreybergier/NotSoulver/commit/e98aa904b705c0746b428cc76f03a122264c0326

1/2

As part of the renaming of [Not]Soulver to MathEdit for #OpenStep, I started working on a new icon. I am no graphic designer, but after a few hours with SF Symbols and some greek letters ωε, I was able to make an icon in Icon Composer beta for macOS Tahoe and I think it looks... ok. Not great but OK.

The strange thing is that between Mac OS X Snow Leopard and Tahoe, the Icon Composer application version shrank from 2.1.1 to 1.0

Holy crap! The long saga is over! I finally removed all of the NIBs from [Not]Soulver for #OpenStep!

This reinforces what I think about Mac development. ALWAYS start with a NIB. MainMenu.nib was particularly hard to replace as there is a lot of magic going on in the menu.

But I did it! I basically tried to copy the menu from TextEdit. Not all features work in all OS versions, but all the TextEdit features work including zooming which is awesome!

So, there are all new builds for all OS's so give it a try. I'll drop in the Notarized Universal Build link here: https://github.com/jeffreybergier/NotSoulver/blob/main/Builds/Z15%20-%20Sequoia/2025-07-05%20-%20Soulver.zip

If you want to see what a pain doing the menu yourself is, read it and weep! https://github.com/jeffreybergier/NotSoulver/blob/3ab8c341bc6f7f52aaabfe37e7c6ae1a07d09abb/Soulver/SVRAppDelegate.m#L413-L703

I think I am going to change the name [Not]Soulver for #OpenStep to MathEdit for OpenStep and release in the Mac App Store. I think the project has gotten to a level of polish and as well, different enough from Soulver that I will set it apart and let it live on its own.

I think I will make it paid on the Mac App Store, if people want to support development but continue for it to be FOSS and available via Github.

And yeah, I think I did everything I need to do to squat the name on the app store... not sure though.

I am almost done removing the MainMenu NIBs from [Not]Soulver for #OpenStep. Pretty much everything is working great across all platforms with my menu generation code. However, on Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and 10.2 Jaguar, I am having an issue where the Application menu shows twice. The first instance is blank and the second is the real one.

ChatGPT gave me all kinds of hints about naming the things either the exact name of my app or empty strings or other things and I tried everything and nothing resolves the issue.

If there are any old school Mac devs out there I could really use your help!

See attached screenshots for OpenStep (good), Tiger (bad), and Snow Leopard (good) to see what the problem is.

https://github.com/jeffreybergier/NotSoulver/blob/f1168120bdad7bfba47cc89ec8119bdae1c76223/Soulver/SVRAppDelegate.m#L406-L654

Whoa. Here is a full package set of NeXTSTEP 3.3J in Japanese and people are eating this up! 27 bids!

To be fair, I have found cd images for NeXTSTEP 3.3j online but never #OpenStep 4.2J. I wonder if it was ever released in Japan

Ok, actual UI update for [Not]Soulver for #OpenStep. I swapped out a text field for a slider. Big, I know , but it paves the way for the next update which is to replace the NSPopUpButton for controlling Dark Mode with a custom 3 button toggle.

https://github.com/jeffreybergier/NotSoulver/pull/45/commits/355da6f3b1e4b491e8ddb5c5cbd499b7120831da

I admit that I have never added an NSSlider in code before, but I saw in the #OpenStep documentation that it has a -setTitle: property. However, I tried to use this and in Xcode I got this quite stern warning

'setTitle:' is deprecated: first deprecated in macOS 10.9 - -setTitle: had no effect since 10.0

But after trying it, it appears it has no effect in OpenStep either. I want to know the back story here. What happened?? lol

Say what you will about #macOS26 and #LiquidGlass, but it fixes one thing I always disliked about NSButton.

NSButton in OS X doesn't size itself to the frame you give it. I think its because it draws a shadow, its always inset from its own frame. This makes it extremely hard to line up with other UI elements.

How does macOS26 help with this? It looks like for the first time since the original NSButton for #OpenStep, in macOS26, NSButton draws itself to its frame with no space around it. I'm extremely excited about.

I made this monstrosity of a diagram showing the same two UI's using the exact same layout code rendered in many versions of OS X and you can see that only OpenStep and macOS26 have exactly matching metrics.

Thank goodness for this ancient guide from Apple still being online. If it were not for this I would never be able to create an NSTextView in code. Its so fiddly. #OpenStep
https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/TextUILayer/Tasks/TextInScrollView.html#//apple_ref/doc[…]000938-CJBBIAAF

Omg. This is so dangerous. A bunch NeXT black hardware just dropped on Japanese Yahoo. I must resist. I have no space for this stuff… but I want it so badly! #OpenStep

It doesn't look great, but yes [Not]Soulver for #OpenStep builds and runs with no issues in Xcode 26 and macOS 26. I think I just need to pick some new button styles and it will be fully up and running again #wwdc25

Finally finished removing the NIB for the About, Keypad, and Settings windows in [Not]Soulver for #OpenStep. I think it came out really well. Things line up super nicely now.

Everything is pixel perfect except for the General page on OSX. At some point, Apple stopped letting you set an arbitrary height for an NSPopupButton... which is good because they were ugly... but now my layout is meh for that page. I will need to come up with a new design.

Earlier I said I did some Vibe coding by asking Gemini to convert the XIB file into objective C code. I did NOT end up using any of that code, but I can report that Gemini produced 1,577 lines of Objective-C slop and I ended up producing 915 lines of code.

So yay for human programmers! Less code is better code IMHO

https://github.com/jeffreybergier/NotSoulver/pull/44/files

Ok! Now the About window for [Not]Soulver for #OpenStep can resize both vertically AND horizontally! Amazing technology, I know

The About window is done and that means the next window I need to migrate away out of the NIB is also the most complex, the Settings window

https://github.com/jeffreybergier/NotSoulver/pull/42/files

Ok, so I admit the view is not very complex, but in [Not]Soulver for #OpenStep, I don't need any overly complex autolayout code. Just a few autoresizing masks will allow for the expected behavior. Here is a video of the same Objective-C code running 30 years apart with the exact same result! Pretty cool!

https://github.com/jeffreybergier/NotSoulver/commit/c70a7ffe564a46e4158ba9587526b1bc661b76c6