Smalltalk (was: Desktop Metaphor)

[Jecel Assumpcao Jr.]

Josh Dersch wrote on Tue, 23 Oct 2018 07:25:41 -0700
> I've never seen evidence for any Smalltalk having a desktop metaphor (as in
> the discussion at hand -- icons and folders representing files and/or data,
> not merely windows, etc.).  It's certainly possible that the platform was
> used for experimentation with such within PARC or elsewhere, but no
> smalltalk images I've seen contain anything like that.  Is your thesis
> available to read anywhere?

One complication is that the meaning of terms change over time. I am
typing this in Smalltalk (Celeste email app in Squeak 4.1) and it
doesn't use icons.

Smalltalk-72 had a read-eval-print interface but many applications
written in it experimented with different GUI ideas. There were tests
for the overlapping windows that Alan Kay described as "like papers on a
messy desktop". This got filtered into "Smalltalk had a desktop
metaphor" but that is confusing since by the time Star came out the term
meant something that was a step in the direction of Microsoft Bob or
Magic Cap.

Some Smalltalk applications used icons in the sense of the MacPaint tool
bar. In fact, the term "icon" was invented by David C. Smith for his
1975 thesis:

http://worrydream.com/refs/Smith%20-%20Pygmalion.pdf

This had icons, though these were used in an environment more like
Scratch than a desktop (it didn't have windows, for example, and the
icons were related to the various application domains rather than
operating system functions). But given the role David played in the
development of the Star, I would call this a part of the future desktop
metaphor.

Smalltalk-76 got overlapping windows and popup menus as part of its
basic system and the command line got replaced with a select text and
execute or print scheme, later used in Oberon as well.The windows had
title tabs (like later used in BeOS) and they could be collapsed to just
the tab or expanded into the full window. Not quite icons on a desktop,
but not too different either.

I don't know if Smalltalk-76 had multiple projects (desktops) but -78
certainly had them. When seen from another project they were a small
window with a tiny view of the project and any windows it had. Those
looked a lot like icons, though they were literal representations and
not symbolic ones. See figure 11 in:

https://freudenbergs.de/bert/publications/Ingalls-2014-Smalltalk78.pdf

By the way, in the posts about the improvements from PARC to Apple there
was no mention of drag-n-drop, which to me was the most important
difference in practice.

My conclusion: Smalltalk didn't (and still doesn't) have a desktop
metaphor but was a key element in its creation.

-- Jecel