Re: X is painful

["Simon Martin" <smartin@reuna.cl>]

From: Shaya Potter <spotter@itd.nrl.navy.mil>
<snip>
> Nah, Xerox at PARC invented the GUI, they actually made a computer that 
> used it, but it was really bad.  Both Steve Jobs (Mac guy) and Bill Gates

> visited PARC and saw their GUI.  They both saw that this was where the 
> computer interface should head.  The rest is history.
<snip>

Just a little aside. One of my jobs is for Xerox, and the Xerox
workstations are pretty good. The UI and networking (XNS) are fully
integrated, giving some very interesting and powerful side-effects. So
interesting in fact that I understand that Novell licensed some it for
NetWare 4. The workstations are Sparc based. Unfortunately they are dying
out, as only Xerox internal development supports them, because neither the
UI nor XNS became commercial products (don't ask me why).

I know that Mac OS, Windows and Solaris are based on the PARC UI projects
(there is even a thank you note to Xerox in the Solaris documentation), but
this is not surprising seeing as Xerox developed the mouse, an early
windowing environment, etc, whilst most other people hadn't even thought
about a simple menu system.

Thanks for listening

             | <smartin@reuna.cl>
             | <http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Park/1152>
             |
Simon Martin | "Old software engineers never die,
             |  they just fail to boot"
             |
             | Any Trademarks used in this document are recognized 
             | as Registered Trademarks of their respective owners.

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