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From: wagner@gypsy.siemens-rtl (Mike Wagner)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac,comp.windows.misc
Subject: Re: A/UX window systems, Mac toolbox, etc
Message-ID: <484@siemens.UUCP>
Date: 9 Mar 88 18:51:00 GMT
References: <1710@ssc-vax.UUCP> <579@eplrx7.UUCP> <7550@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <3916@ihlpf.ATT.COM> <1512@devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Sender: news@siemens.UUCP
Reply-To: wagner@gypsy.UUCP (Mike Wagner)
Organization: Siemens RTL, Princeton NJ
Lines: 37
Summary: Xerox Star had pull-down menus

In article <1512@devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> des@jplpro.JPL.NASA.GOV (David Smyth) writes:
>stuart@ihlpf.ATT.COM (S. D. Ericson) writes:
>>bob@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Bob Sutterfield) writes:
>>This is an argument I've seen over and over.  But I think a lot of people
>>don't realize that *Apple* invented Pull-down menus.
>
>I dunno about this.  Xerox certainly does have menus which pop when
>you hit a mouse button over an item with several choices.
>
>Does anybody really know who licensed what, who is a thief, and
>who is creative?  I certainly have seen nothing "new" about the
>Mac interface over the Xerox stuff.
>

If you define "pull-down menus" to mean "click a mouse button while the mouse
is over some labelling image to bring up a menu" then the Xerox Star (now
Viewpoint) environment definitely had it before the Mac was on the market.
I worked for about 2 1/2 years at Xerox, so can speak with a bit of authority.
Every editor window in Star had (has) two little iconic pictures in the title
stripe. If you click on one of these, a menu pops up and you can select an
item from it. Also, the screen had a small, narrow window across the top of 
the screen, with a little picture in the far right. Click on this to bring up
a menu that did "system" kinds of things (invert the screen, logoff, ...).

An interesting anecdote. When I was working at Xerox, some people from DRI 
came up from Monterey to talk to my manager about their troubles with Apple.
Seems they wanted to see a Star environment and possibly use it as ammunition.
They were *extremely* pleased to see those pictures with menus under them.
Don't know what they did with this information. Maybe they're "copyright
infringements" were much more than just pull-down menus (MacPaint, ...).
Or maybe they couldn't afford the fight. At Xerox we were all pulling for DRI.
Wish they'd stuck it out.


Mike Wagner
Siemens Research & Technology Labs     UUCP: ...!princeton!siemens!gypsy!wagner
Princeton, NJ 08638		       ARPA: wagner@gypsy.siemens.com