On Fri, 25 May 2001, Alan Pearson 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.
>
> Wish I'd seen that. Yeah, ViewPoint/Star/GlobalView (whatever you want to
> call it) is still a long way ahead of what we've ended up with. I usually
In what way is it ahead of X11 combined with xterms? Graphical-only
user interfaces are useful for those who don't do much wiht their
computers, such as those with a few data dozen files here and there,
who just access the 'net, use a word processor or spreadsheet now and
then, etc. - such as the typical biz-'droid. However, anyone who has
lots of data files, programs, scripts, etc. needs something more
useful that allows more reasonable, e.g.quicker, access to their data.
> use GVWin on the laptop for docs etc, they only get converted to Word format
> if they have to be sent outside :-) Admittedly it's only become usable since
Why Word format? Aren't you able to convert it to LaTeX format which you
can then use something useful like Emacs with?
Speaking of Emacs, did those Xerox systems ever support a useful text
editor like Emacs, or a reasonably useful clone of Emacs? I remember
that there was an Emacs like clone called Hemlock for the PERQs
running Accent... of course, the PERQs themselves were great
improvements over what I've seen of the Xerox systems - truly hackers
systems were, and are, the PERQs.
Alas, the PERQs, from what I can tell, were never much good at
communicating with other systems that don't use their proprietary
protocols. PERQ Kermit was/is a little slow and buggy - and it can't
copy entire directory structures, and TCP/IP seems to never have been
fully implemented... or it it was, no remaining copies appear to be
available anywhere; add to that a lack of working utilities like a
completed version of tar, and this makes preserving software for the
PERQs extremely difficult, as getting the files archived and copied to
live filesystems for safe-keeping is a daunting task that could take
far more hours than most have available to expend on it.
--
Copyright (C) 2001 R. D. Davis The difference between humans & other animals:
All Rights Reserved an unnatural belief that we're above Nature &
rdd_at_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.
Received on Fri May 25 2001 - 11:22:09 BST