Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watcgl!andrewt From: andrewt@watnow.waterloo.edu (Andrew Thomas) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Amiga mentality cont'd Message-ID: Date: 11 Apr 90 19:19:43 GMT References: <1342@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca> <90098.170806JKT100@psuvm.psu.edu> <4087@nmtsun.nmt.edu> <5561@sugar.hackercorp.com> <1990Apr11.182605.288@wam.umd.edu> Sender: daemon@watcgl.waterloo.edu Organization: University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada Lines: 39 In-reply-to: ddev@wam.umd.edu's message of 11 Apr 90 18:26:05 GMT In article <1990Apr11.182605.288@wam.umd.edu> ddev@wam.umd.edu (Don DeVoe) writes: >In article <5561@sugar.hackercorp.com> karl@sugar.hackercorp.com (Karl Lehenbauer) writes: >>Oh, please. Apple didn't invent GUIs, Xerox did. And Apple's implementation >>substantially degraded their power. Xerox's multitasked and included an >>integrated object-oriented programming environment as well, and that was 15+ >>years ago, to boot. > >Excuse me, but what do multitasking and object-oriented programming have to >do with a GUI? Are you trying to say that Apple's interface is less >powerful than the Xerox's? Have you ever used a Xerox? Do you know what you're >saying?? Please tell me how your comments are relevant to the power of a >GUI, and how you decided that Apple's GUI 'degraded' the power of the >Xerox GUI...without talking about OS concerns. I have used a Xerox. And an apple. I agree with Karl. The types of actions provided on mouse events were better: resizing, moving, iconifying, popup menus, semi-permanent popups, and lots more. The GUI was object oriented which, from a programmer's perspective, allowed very powerful things very easily, and allowed (through multiple inheritance) mixing the various abilities of the objects without having to do any work. From a user's perspective the ease of implementation of a powerful interface meant that they existed more frequently. Multitasking is not strictly a GUI issue, but it allowed things like active values and gauges attached to various events/variables/objects in a way that was truly tranparent to the user and programmer alike. I have never seen as good an interface and programming environment as on the Xerox lisp stations. I will admit that part of the beauty was possible because they were dedicated lisp workstations, allowing very good application integration, but even just at the windowing level they were second to none. The customizability on the things was absolute. A little more speed would have been nice, though. -- Andrew Thomas andrewt@watnow.waterloo.edu Systems Design Eng. University of Waterloo "If a million people do a stupid thing, it's still a stupid thing." - Opus