Ars Techinca artice on History of GUI

There is nice article on history of the GUIs at Ars Technica, and Xerox PARC
and Smalltalk got one page of coverage:

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/gui.ars

rush
--
http://www.templatetamer.com/
http://www.folderscavenger.com/

In article <d6heaf$rbv$1@ss405.t-com.hr>, rush <pipa@rush.avalon.hr>
wrote:

> There is nice article on history of the GUIs at Ars Technica, and Xerox PA
RC
> and Smalltalk got one page of coverage:
>
> http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/gui.ars
>
>

says rest of article is available for "premium subscribers only."

Please do not post corporate spam here.


--Tim May

Tim May wrote:
> says rest of article is available for "premium subscribers only."

nope - only the PDF download is for subscribers only

> Please do not post corporate spam here.

Please open your eyes

--
Henrik H. Jensen, CDM A/S
Strandvejen 863, 2930 Klampenborg, Denmark
Homepage: http://www.cdm.dk
Phone: +45 7027 1927, Fax: +45 7027 1928

"Tim May" <timcmay@removethis.got.net> wrote in message
 news:200520050025457936%timcmay@removeth
is.got.net...
> In article <d6heaf$rbv$1@ss405.t-com.hr>, rush <pipa@rush.avalon.hr>
> wrote:
> says rest of article is available for "premium subscribers only."

Only if you wish to download the whole article as pdf, you need to be
premium subcriber. One can read whole article on-line without paying, as I
did.

rush
--
http://www.templatetamer.com/
http://www.folderscavenger.com/

rush wrote:
> There is nice article on history of the GUIs at Ars Technica, and Xerox PA
RC
> and Smalltalk got one page of coverage:
>
> http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/gui.ars

It says that the impetus for inventing the GUI was Xerox senior
management wanting to control the new technology.  I don't think that's
so.  Alan Kay's thesis on the dynabook predates his going to PARC, and I
think work on Smalltalk started before the Alto (the first Smalltalk
interpreter being a basic program).  I could be wrong; I have Dealers in
Lightning on order so I should be better informed soon :)

The article also doesn't mention Alan's thesis which is seminal, and
doesn't mention Dan Ingall's invention of BitBlt which has to rank with
the bitmapped display for significance.

But its worst sin is in misspelling Smalltalk as SmallTalk ;)


--
_______________,,,^..^,,,____________________________
Eliot Miranda              Smalltalk - Scene not herd

Eliot Miranda wrote:

> The article also doesn't mention Alan's thesis which is seminal, and
> doesn't mention Dan Ingall's invention of BitBlt which has to rank with
> the bitmapped display for significance.
>
> But its worst sin is in misspelling Smalltalk as SmallTalk ;)

I'd say the worst sin is in talking about Smalltalk in past tense.

Overall, a decent history of anything worthy of a written history could
not possibly fit in a half a dozen pages. History has this tendency to
change depending on who tells the story. The more significant the
subject, the more conflicting versions you come across. Jef Raskin
vehemently denied any significant influence of PARC on Lisa and Mac UI
work. At the same time, "Inventing the Lisa Interface" by Frank Ludolph,
Rod Perkins, and Dan Smith give credit to PARC ideas and specifically
"an impromptu Smalltalk demonstration by Adele Goldberg", and don't say
a word about Jef Raskin. There might be bad blood there, and whom should
we believe? There is also this tendency to simplify and dramatize the
story by picking one individual as "the father of X" who we are led to
believe "created" the thing is question pretty much single-handedly.


--
Vassili Bykov
VisualWorks Engineering, Tools Technical Lead
v b y k o v  A T  c i n c o m  D O T  c o m
http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/userblogs/vbykov

"Eliot Miranda" <eliotm@pacbell.net> wrote in message
news:2upje.1690$kj7.206@newssvr21.news.prodigy.com...
> It says that the impetus for inventing the GUI was Xerox senior
> management wanting to control the new technology.  I don't think that's
> so.  Alan Kay's thesis on the dynabook predates his going to PARC, and I
> think work on Smalltalk started before the Alto (the first Smalltalk
> interpreter being a basic program).  I could be wrong; I have Dealers in
> Lightning on order so I should be better informed soon :)

I got the impression that Ars folks wanted to say that  whole PARC was
created by Xerox with idea that "those darn computers are going to ruin our
core bussines, so we better throw in some serious money, buy the best
talent, and let them do that staff, whatever it is."

I have never been there, so I  might be serioulsy wrong, but my impression
of PARC is that for certain time it was an software develpment environmet
variant of utopia, that created some of the finest software ideas and
developments. XEROX managements can not be credited for those ideas, but for
creating such enviroment, I think they should. They should also probably be
condemned for not industrializing all thoise fruits properly once they were
created, but that is another story.

> But its worst sin is in misspelling Smalltalk as SmallTalk ;)

Well, yes, probably there are many ommisions. I may be wrong on this, but I
believe that at this time, any mentioning of Smalltalk to wider and general
computer audience is beneficial, and in this article, Smalltalk got
prominent space (deserved of course)..

rush
--
http://www.templatetamer.com/
http://www.folderscavenger.com/