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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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?

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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).

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