Aucbvax.5175
fa.works
utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!works
Sun Nov 15 01:43:23 1981
WorkS Digest V1 #35
>From JSol@RUTGERS Sun Nov 15 01:03:52 1981
WorkS Digest Sunday, 15 Nov 1981 Volume 1 : Issue 35
Today's Topics: RT-11 Pascal & C Compilers - Reply
Programming Environments - FORTH , Smalltalk
Apple's Lisa Project
Integrated Office Automation & Manufacturers
Portable Smalltalk Compiler in C
WorkStations For Programmers Vs. Users
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 11 Nov 1981 (Wednesday) 0528-EST
From: KENDALL at HARV-10
Subject: Inquiry on RT-11 PASCAL and C compilers
To: armte at OFFICE-1
Whitesmith, which frequently has advertisements in \Byte\, sells
PASCAL and C compilers for RT-11.
-- Sam
------------------------------
Date: 12 Nov 1981 1628-PST
Sender: BILLW at SRI-KL
Subject: Programming environments....
From: William "Chops" Westfield <BILLW@SRI-KL>
Just what distinguishes a programming environment from an ordinary
operating system with its utilities ? (I think I can tell the
difference, but Im looking for formal definitions here...).
What are the currently available environments ? If I had to guess,
Id say:
Smalltalk (well, not yet really available)
Forth
and maybe
UCSD P system
Unix
Are there others ?
Bill W
------------------------------
Date: 13 Nov 1981 1503-PST
From: Gene Autrey-Hunley <AUTREY-HUNLEY SRI-KL AT>
Subject: Apple's Lisa
cc: AUTREY-HUNLEY at SRI-KL
The Wall Street Journal (11 Nov. 1981) contains the following on page
18.
"Now that the Apple III is returning to the marketplace, the company
plans to turn its focus to the strategic new products under
development, one of which has been code-named 'Lisa.' 'You are
looking at the most sophisticated and powerful graphics-editing
machine in the history of mankind,' says Mr. Jobs as he puts Lisa
through it paces. Lisa, which may become Apple IV, is a computer
aimed at the office market. It has data- and word-processing
functions, as well as a program that permits novices to create charts
and other graphics. It cost $30 million to develop."
The comment about Lisa being "the most sophisticated and powerful
graphics- editing machine in the history of mankind" sounds like hype.
But does anyone have any more substantial information about Lisa?
Could it possibly be a Smalltalk machine?
--Gene
------------------------------
Date: 13 November 1981 23:58-EST
From: Steven T. Kirsch <SK MIT-MC AT>
Subject: Manufacturers and integrated OA
Does anyone know of a vendor other than Xerox that is involved in the
design of an integrated OA system (at the user/application level)
that will win?
Some manufacturers are only investigating distributed system issues
(Ollivetti, NBI) or are only looking at hardware and language issues
(BNR). HP Labs seems to be ignoring "office" automation in favor of
expert systems for the engineer which is contrary to statements from
the president of HP about HP's role in the office. Wang probably
won't have a well integrated system for historical reasons (it will be
messy underneath, I suspect). IBM lost de Jong and the San Jose folks
don't really have the right tools or background. InterActive doesn't
have a uniform user interface; they just have a lot of tools that can
be combined (Unix approach). ROLM has a uniform user and program
interface, but their implementation strategy will lose due to lack of
cycles.
With the size of the OA market, you might think there might be ONE
company that is exploring future integrated office system design on a
suitable tool (e.g., LISP machine or reasonable facsimile). But other
than Xerox, I can't think of one.
------------------------------
Date: 14 November 1981 09:49-EST
From: Daniel L. Weinreb <DLW AT MIT-AI>
Subject: Portable Smalltalk kernel in C
In reply to Mark.Tucker@CMUA: The idea of a portable Smalltalk kernel
in C sounds good superficially, but you should keep in mind that only
some of the kernel can be done this way. As I understand the division
of the Smalltalk-80 system between its kernel and the rest of the
system, I surmise two kinds of things reside in the kernel. The first
kind of things are operating-system or environment-dependent things;
for example, every kernel must implement a primitive that implements a
real-time interval-timer facility, that signals a given semaphore at a
given time in the future. Things like this can't be portably
implemented in C because they depend on the environment in which the C
implementation resides: either the operating system (if any) or the
hardware (if there's nothing corresponding to an operating system).
Access to the bit-mapped display and other I/O devices is likewise
dependent system-dependent, and the parts that don't depend on the
operating system or hardware are probably in Smalltalk code rather
than in the kernel. The second kind of things are those that have to
run very quickly, and indeed you might benefit by writing those once
in C and attempting to make the C code portable. I don't know how
much of the kernel makes up the first kind of things and how much the
second kind; perhaps there is a Xerox person around who can comment?
------------------------------
Date: 14 November 1981 10:02-EST
From: Daniel L. Weinreb <DLW AT MIT-AI>
In reply to Sam Kendall: I think you can rest assured that systems
like the Apollo will not be dominant among workstation-class
computers. The reason is that there is a much larger market for slick
packaged applications than there is for program development systems.
This, in turn, is because there are not that many program developers
in the world, but there are a whole lot of secretaries,
businesspeople, accountants, engineers, car designers, fashion
designers, musicians, film-makers, and so on, all of whom might
someday benefit from neat computer-based applications. SSteinberg is
in a good position to know: he is the author of the 8080 version of
VisiCalc, a particularly slick, useful, cheap, and well-implemented
application that is rightly selling very well. His company, Software
Arts, is a leader in the field of slick application packages running
on cheap computers for the mass market, and I think they stand to do
extremely well.
Now, among those workstations that will be marketed for program
development, it is possible that Apollo-like systems will be dominant.
I, too, sometimes complain that their software is backward and
primitive. But at other times, I reflect on how advanced and easy to
use and modern it is. It depends on my mood. If you compare Apollos
to all the good ideas I've seen on Lisp Machines and on various Xerox
PARC systems, they may look backward, but compared to what most people
in the world are using (not only on IBM batch systems but on Data
General time sharing systems and other things of that ilk), it's not
so bad. One can do worse than copying Unix. And the window system on
the Apollo is not half-bad; if they put in a graphical input device it
would be quite good by today's standards.
Also, you are mistaken in your assertion that the Star is the only
machine to have been marketed by Xerox that was based on the Alto
ideas. The Xerox 1100 Scientific Information Processor, or whatever
the external marketing name is, is also on the market. It is known
internally as the Dolphin, and it is a real program-development system
for the Interlisp-D system. By anyone's standards, its user interface
is up to the state of the art and is one of the best things around.
(I'm not comparing it to other things in its class so much as
comparing to to the rest of the world. There isn't very much in its
class, anyway.) You can buy them from Xerox Electro-Optical Systems
(EOS).
------------------------------
End of WorkS Digest
*******************
-------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen <
[email protected]>
of
http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/
This Usenet Oldnews Archive
article may be copied and distributed freely, provided:
1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles.
2. The following notice remains appended to each copy:
The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996
Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.
