23 May
2001
23 May
'01
9:51 p.m.
If you ever worked on a Xerox, where you had the
copy/move/prop/...
special
keys on the left hand side of your keyboard you'd
know how easy handling
can
be ... unlike todays interface, where you use the
mouse for several thing,
here the little critter was only a pointing device, while you selected
most
functions via keys (and your left hand).
Heck yes, it's *way* better that what we've ended up with! I reckon things
started going downhill when somebody dreamt up the menu bar - the original
Star interface had a button bar across the top of the window where you could
get at the few functions you couldn't provide by the left-hand keypad. None
of this "hunt the menu option" rubbish you have to do now.
IMHO the Star interface was, and still is, about as good as you're likely
to get with the windows-icons-mouse paradigm. Look at the fuss Microsoft
made about making the desktop more "document-centric" - that's what the
Star
desktop was all about in the first place! Something was lost when Apple
implemented their own version of it, which Microsoft then copied.
Al
24 May
24 May
1:41 a.m.
I am just going to note that while I do prefer a command line to a GUI,
not all GUI's are created equal. In Windows, IU find myself fiddling
most of the time with the OS rather than actually accomplishing anything.
This sort of activity is largely masturbatory rather than productive. I
don't enjoy playing with Bill's little bits. I find switching from my
Amiga to a Windows loss gives me a 30+% loss in productivity.
On Thu, 24 May 2001, Alan Pearson wrote:
M. K. Peirce
Rhode Island Computer Museum, Inc.
Shady Lea, Rhode Island
"Casta est quam nemo rogavit."
- Ovid
If you ever
worked on a Xerox, where you had the copy/move/prop/...
special
keys on the left hand side of your keyboard
you'd know how easy handling
can
be ... unlike todays interface, where you use the
mouse for several thing,
here the little critter was only a pointing device, while you selected
most
functions via keys (and your left hand).
Heck yes, it's *way* better that what we've ended up with! I reckon things
started going downhill when somebody dreamt up the menu bar - the original
Star interface had a button bar across the top of the window where you could
get at the few functions you couldn't provide by the left-hand keypad. None
of this "hunt the menu option" rubbish you have to do now.
IMHO the Star interface was, and still is, about as good as you're likely
to get with the windows-icons-mouse paradigm. Look at the fuss Microsoft
made about making the desktop more "document-centric" - that's what the
Star
desktop was all about in the first place! Something was lost when Apple
implemented their own version of it, which Microsoft then copied.
Al
2:07 a.m.
On Thu, 24 May 2001, Alan Pearson wrote:
IMHO the Star interface was, and still is, about as
good as you're
likely to get with the windows-icons-mouse paradigm. Look at the fuss
Microsoft made about making the desktop more "document-centric" -
that's what the Star desktop was all about in the first place!
Something was lost when Apple implemented their own version of it,
which Microsoft then copied.
I was convinced after seeing the "Last Star Demo" a few years back (1998?)
that the Star interface was still years ahead of both Apple and MS. I
wish I can remember fine details (I can only remember one in particular,
where a person was able to create a mathematical formula the way it would
be written on paper, with a real square root symbol, a division with the
dividend over the divisor separated by a horizontal line, etc. and all
this in the middle of a text document) but it's been a while.
Just trust me when I say that Apple and MS still have plenty of catching
up to do to even equal the Star.
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
7:20 a.m.
On Thu, May 24, 2001 at 07:07:31AM -0700, Sellam Ismail wrote:
wish I can remember fine details (I can only remember
one in particular,
where a person was able to create a mathematical formula the way it would
be written on paper, with a real square root symbol, a division with the
dividend over the divisor separated by a horizontal line, etc. and all
this in the middle of a text document) but it's been a while.
MathCAD does that but it only runs on Windows. Some day I'd like to
write something similar as an open-source project, but only the front
end... I'm not enough of a mathematician to write all the algorithms
to actually do stuff with the equations. (I started using MathCAD back
in the late 80's on DOS, so it's even sortof on-topic... amazing what
they accomplished without a lot of processing power, or even using
graphics mode.)
LyX has a passable equation editor too.
--
_______ Shawn T. Rutledge / KB7PWD ecloud(a)bigfoot.com
(_ | |_) http://www.bigfoot.com/~ecloud kb7pwd(a)kb7pwd.ampr.org
__) | | \________________________________________________________________
10:23 a.m.
At 12:20 PM 5/24/01 -0700, you wrote:
On Thu, May 24, 2001 at 07:07:31AM -0700, Sellam Ismail
wrote:
Wrong. There is (was) a DOS version. I have both versions. Let me
know if you want copy of the DOS version.
Joe
wish I can remember fine details (I can only
remember one in particular,
where a person was able to create a mathematical formula the way it would
be written on paper, with a real square root symbol, a division with the
dividend over the divisor separated by a horizontal line, etc. and all
this in the middle of a text document) but it's been a while.
MathCAD does that but it only runs on Windows.
11:13 a.m.
On Thu, May 24, 2001 at 06:23:08PM -0400, joe wrote:
At 12:20 PM 5/24/01 -0700, you wrote:
Which I mentioned in the same email... I meant that current versions run
only on Windows. They should have Mac and Linux versions by now but
they don't.
--
_______ Shawn T. Rutledge / KB7PWD ecloud(a)bigfoot.com
(_ | |_) http://www.bigfoot.com/~ecloud kb7pwd(a)kb7pwd.ampr.org
__) | | \________________________________________________________________
MathCAD does that but it only runs on Windows.
Wrong. There is (was) a DOS version.
1:16 p.m.
On Thu, 24 May 2001, Shawn T. Rutledge wrote:
On Thu, May 24, 2001 at 07:07:31AM -0700, Sellam
Ismail wrote:
This was built into the OS on the Star ;)
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
wish I can remember fine details (I can only
remember one in particular,
where a person was able to create a mathematical formula the way it would
be written on paper, with a real square root symbol, a division with the
dividend over the divisor separated by a horizontal line, etc. and all
this in the middle of a text document) but it's been a while.
MathCAD does that but it only runs on Windows. Some day I'd like to 
7:59 a.m.
On Thu, 24 May 2001, Sellam Ismail wrote:
I was convinced after seeing the "Last Star
Demo" a few years back (1998?)
that the Star interface was still years ahead of both Apple and MS. I
Back in the mid 1990s, I worked with a Xerox workstation (I forget the
model number; it may have been a Star) which was running some sort of
graphical user interface that was used for documentation of PL/M
programs for defense department work at Westinghouse.
The only good thing about using that machine was a Chinese puzzle game
that I discovered, which I spent many hours playing when I'd get bored
with the work, which I often did, to help quitting time arrive a
little faster. It was the most boring and hacker unfriendly machine
that I ever played with; trying to wander through, and find, files,
amongst a very large number of files, using that GUI, was a pain, to
say the least. Somerhere, I've got the model number written down,
along with the OS... I think the OS was [something]-Point (Viewpoint?)
or some odd sounding OS name. Fortunately, I was spared from that
boring work by defense dept. budget cuts. :-)
There was no hackworthy technical documentation about those machines
to be found anywhere, and no one there knew much of anything about
them, other than how to use them to edit documents.
--
Copyright (C) 2001 R. D. Davis The difference between humans & other animals:
All Rights Reserved an unnatural belief that we're above Nature &
rdd(a)perqlogic.com 410-744-4900 her other creatures, using dogma to justify such
http://www.perqlogic.com/rdd beliefs and to justify much human cruelty.
8613
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7 comments
6 participants
participants (6)
-
Alan.Pearson＠cramersystems.com -
at258＠osfn.org -
ecloud＠bigfoot.com -
foo＠siconic.com -
rdd＠smart.net -
rigdonj＠intellistar.net