Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL!WMartin
From: WMartin@WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL (William G. Martin)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.misc
Subject: Re: The "Macintoy" chant is getting tired
Message-ID: <12505524010.13.WMARTIN@WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL>
Date: 27 Jun 89 18:55:04 GMT
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There is an interesting book out on this period in Xerox' history,
which I recommend to those of you who are interested in the topic. The title
is FUMBLING THE FUTURE. Unfortunately, I can't recall the author's name
but the title should let you find it in a library catalog. It discusses
the development of the Alto/Star product line and the milieu in which that
grew, including Englebart and the NLS & mouse development, etc. I was one
of a team of Army civilian and military software people who went out to
SRI back then and learned NLS and how to program in the CML/L10 language
group to support NLS-based systems development. We had a nice little
office-automation system going in the NLS environment for a while,
called "ELITE" (Executive-Level Interactive Terminal Environment). We stayed
with NLS while it moved from SRI to Tymshare, but tthen, later on, our HQ
terminated the project and directed it be redeveloped under UNIX, the
rationale being that we were too single-vendor-dependent under NLS, and
also the UNIX route was cheaper.

Regards, Will Martin
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