Ink printers(wasSociology and Message formatting)

From: Miles O'Neal <meo_at_netads.com>
Date: Tue Jan 12 16:04:36 1999

Hans Franke said...

|If Xerox is big in not marketing PARC ideas, SIEMENS
|has at least the same attitude about some developments.

As one of the people who started this thread, I was struck
by a couple of companies I've worked for with similar
attitudes. Here's a story from one.

In the early 80s I worked for the systems division of a
firm specializing in (ground vehicle) traffic control.
When we first started getting into graphics, we realized
we would end up using a variety of graphics subsystems,
and we were already using a variety of minis.

So a couple of of worked out several cool ideas:

   - a portable, device independent graphics package
   - an object-oriented toolkit for said system
   - a runtime, interpreted language for realtime displays
     based on the toolkit
   - an easy to use, graphical editor based on the toolkit
     which was easily capable of creating GUIs, or even
     reimplementing itself
   - a desktop for said system

(No, I don't recall whether we used "object-oriented"
and "desktop" as the terms, but that's what they were.)

We drew our ideas from everywhere - the Commodore 64,
Byte Magazine, our imaginations. It even included a
way to handle random input devices, since we knew
not everyone would be using a mouse. (While I was
there we worked with mice, light pens, touch screens
and tablets.) The only major thing I think we missed
at the time was networked displays.

Management balked a bit at first, but soon got excited
over it and let us build the first four ideas (saving
the last for later, if and when they decided we needed
it). That was the cool part. It got used in a number
of systems (VAX/VMS, Perkin-Elmer/Megatek, SEL/NAPLPS
(some cheesy NAPLPS terminal), and MODCOMP/something.
We even had printing and a CalComp plotter driver.

Among other things, it got us the contract to handle
the new traffic control system for LA's downtonw in
time for the 1984 Olympics. It was a *way* cool system.

The sad part was that manegement refused to even consider
selling or licensing the technology. It was our "strategic
advantage". Arguments that others would do it as well
carried no weight. It made sense, because the company's
mission was traffic control systems. But I still wish it
had escaped our propetary grasp...

This technology could have been the basis of X or
something similar, which would have been around much
earlier, and even more portable than X. At the very
least, it would have provided a very nice OO toolkit
and graphics editor.

(Yeah - same company where I made sure we could handle
the year 2000 backin in the early 1980s.)

-Miles

The most interesting part is the language we implemented
it in...
Received on Tue Jan 12 1999 - 16:04:36 GMT