software

Paul Brainerd (1947-2026), founder of Aldus Corporation and pioneer of desktop publishing, died at 78 after battling Parkinson’s disease. He co-created PageMaker, revolutionizing printing for non-professionals and empowering many with desktop publishing tools. Following Aldus’s merger with Adobe in 1994, Brainerd focused on environmental philanthropy, founding the Brainerd Foundation, IslandWood, and supporting various initiatives in the Pacific Northwest and New Zealand. A respected leader and innovator, he significantly impacted both technology and conservation efforts throughout his life.

https://www.geekwire.com/2026/pagemaker-pioneer-paul-brainerd-1947-2026-aldus-founder-devoted-his-second-chapter-to-the-planet/

Gruber discusses Photoshop 1.0’s source code and early UI details, noting the timelessness of good design principles despite evolving styles and technologies. He critiques modern dismissiveness towards historical UI standards, emphasizing that fundamental design idioms remain relevant.

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/12/31/photoshop-1-and-the-early-macintosh-hig

Extreme TLDR:
Quake (1996) was developed to run on both DOS and Windows 95 using a single executable, quake.exe. It relied on the djgpp compiler for DOS compatibility, integrating with Windows 95’s DPMI for enhanced performance. Multiplayer support included IPX and TCP/IP, although TCP/IP was challenging to set up on DOS. Mpath’s Chunnel allowed Quake to connect via Windows’ TCP stack, leading to online gaming capabilities. The architecture was complex, involving DLLs and virtual device drivers to facilitate communication between DOS executables and Windows networking. Subsequent versions of Quake moved to native Win32 support.

https://fabiensanglard.net/quake_chunnel/index.html