22 Oct
2018
22 Oct
'18
6:38 p.m.
As they used to say, Windows95 = Mac 1984. Which is pushing it a bit but has some truth in
it... Maybe Mac 1990. Curiously, the Xerox Alto has quite advanced GUI and object oriented
programming (including the smalltalk windowing environment), but no desktop metaphor or
icons that I have seen. I believe desktop metaphors appear later in the Alto commercial
successor, the Xerox Star, and in the Apple Lisa, which bears strong Xerox influences.
Xerox?s desktop metaphor pushes the object concept a bit far, while the Lisa got what
would become the modern ubiquitous version of the concept almost dead on. Did I get this
approximately right? Are there any other GUI desktop metaphors that predates this?
Marc
On Oct 22, 2018, at 2:19 PM, ben via cctalk <cctalk
at classiccmp.org> wrote:
On 10/22/2018 10:57 AM, Rick Bensene via cctalk
wrote:
X-Windows-based desktop metaphor UI's existed within the Unix world long before Win95
came on the scene.
The whole desktop metaphor UI existed long before Windows 95 in non-Unix implementations
by Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) with the pioneering Xerox Alto, introduced in
1973, which implemented Alan Kay's concepts for the desktop metaphor that were
postulated in 1970 using Smalltalk as the core operating system.
That may be true but DOS/WINDOWS and APPLE II all had TV display output formats, now it
is WIDE SCREEN ONLY. From what little I have seen about the Alto, you had a full sized
8x10? page format. The printed page
DOES matter for graphic displays. Try and find a printed page size PDF
reader, or one a tad smaller. Reading a PDF on a KINDLE DOES NOT WORK.
I suspect a good PDF reader, a not tablet, is needed often for all the
online doc's at places like bit savers to get the knowledge close to a
classic computer.
I hate GUI's,because I hate ICON's. I see a little hand popup, is a mouse
pointer,stop that sign, or play feel the naked photo.
Ben.