On Fri, 22 Sep 2000, Dan Linder wrote:
> I've always been interested in the early Xerox work as well.. what sort of
> feeatures did they include that made it so cutting edge? (other than
> being the first GUI, the first laser printer, the first ethernet, ....)
Xerox PARC did a very cool thing a couple years ago and held "The Last
Xerox Star Demo". About 600 people (mostly PARC employees but it also
generated a lot of outside interest) showed up.
It was about an hour and a half long, showing off the features and
functionality of the Star environment. I don't remember many specifics,
but one thing that did catch my attention was its ability to display
mathematical formulas in their more natural form, i.e. when a division
operation was typed in it would put the numerator on top and the divisor
on bottom with a horizontal line in between, and it did this
automatically. You could also dynamically re-map the keyboard to get
different symbol sets or even different language characters. It would
show the new keyboard layout on the display so you could use it for
reference.
The interface seemed more intuitive in some cases, very logically
organized overall. There was some rawness to it but overall it struck
me as being more advanced than what MS and Apple are offering even today.
There were some elements that were not as advanced, but there had been 15
years of development effort between the Star and Windows, and Windows
still lagged.
Sellam International Man of Intrigue and Danger
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Received on Fri Sep 22 2000 - 10:20:04 BST