Xerox (RE: Lisa's scores)

From: Kai Kaltenbach <kaikal_at_MICROSOFT.com>
Date: Thu Jun 26 16:44:10 1997

The first GUI system was the Xerox Alto. It was desk-sized. The
commercial model was the Xerox Star, which was somewhat smaller (c.1977)

The Xerox Alto appears to have introduced:

- Bitmapped displays
- BitBLT raster operations
- Cursor changes to show system mode
- GUI menus and Popup menus
- Overlapped windows
- Tiled windows
- Scroll bars
- Push buttons, radio buttons, check boxes
- Dialog boxes
- Multiple fonts and styles visible in text
- Cut/Copy/Paste with a mouse

The Lisa UI appears to have introduced:

- Pull-down menus
- Menu bars
- Disabling (graying) of menu items
- Command-key shortcust for menu items
- Check marks on menu items

The book "Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented, Then Ignored, the
First Personal Computer" by Douglas Smith and Robert Alexander, states
that Xerox voluntarily offered the UI elements to Steve Jobs. Apple
does not appear to have "stolen" the ideas.

Kai

> ----------
> From: Daniel A. Seagraves
> Reply To: classiccmp_at_u.washington.edu
> Sent: Thursday, June 26, 1997 2:11 PM
> To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
> Subject: Re: Lisa's scores
>
> On Thu, 26 Jun 1997 starling_at_umr.edu wrote:
>
> > > Actually, Xerox had a working GUI-based system (the name eludes me
> at the
> > > moment) well before the LISA, which is where Jobs got his
> inspiration
>
> Was it Smalltalk?
> I got a picture of that, somewhere...
>
Received on Thu Jun 26 1997 - 16:44:10 BST