Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!sgi!arisia!tow From: tow@arisia.Xerox.COM (Rob Tow) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac Subject: Re: A Programmer Praises the Mac (r Summary: The true facts of the matter Keywords: Maureen Stone Dorado multiple screens Griffin Draw Color Message-ID: <429@arisia.Xerox.COM> Date: 29 Sep 88 18:12:32 GMT References: <76000192@uiucdcsp> <70528@sun.uucp> Reply-To: tow@arisia.UUCP (Rob Tow) Organization: Xerox PARC Lines: 87 In article <70528@sun.uucp> landman@sun.UUCP (Howard A. Landman) writes: >[This was buried in my dead.article file due to a system error some > time ago. I thought it might still be of interest. HAL] > >In article <76000192@uiucdcsp> gillies@uiucdcsp.cs.uiuc.edu writes: >>The multiple monitors trick is nice, but it's really just a trick. >>Apple didn't pioneer it -- it's been running on Xerox Dorado computers >>for at least three years. > >Make that "at least seven years". I worked on such a system in 1980 or >1981. Maureen Stone had a wonderful color "MacDraw-like" program, and >it was hard to tell whether you had your colors right on a B&W display. >Of course, you could always print it out on your color "LaserWriter", >but that took a while, and cost the company $1 per page. Anyway, one >machine I worked on had a large color screen AND a normal Alto-style >full-page B&W display to its left. The cursor moved freely between the >two screens. I think this was one of the first 2 or 3 Dorados in existence. > >Maureen's program (Griffin) had some nice features due its being experimental, >like being able to select the spline method for curve-fitting on a >curve-by-curve basis. Cubic, Catmull-ROM, Bezier, and more, on a nice >little menu. Apple didn't invent menus either ... > >In September 1980, I printed out a Griffin drawing and had it come out >VERY bizarre. Polygon points were translated all over the page, leading >to a jagged abstract effect. It turned out that there was a slightly >bad chip in the color printer; when they replaced it a few days later, >everything went back to normal. I thus have a unique art work, partially >designed by myself and partially mutilated by a bit of errant circuitry, >which I probably could never duplicate. > > Howard A. Landman > landman@hanami.sun.com > UUCP: sun!hanami!landman When I read the above, I thought Maureen should see it - now she's famous! - so I walked down the hall and showed it to her. She laughed, and then composed the following and and mailed it to my machine so I could post it here... 28-Sep-88 stone.pa Re: From the USENET Date: 28 Sep 88 17:59:40 PDT From: stone.pa Subject: Re: From the USENET In-reply-to: "Your message of 28 Sep 88 10:28:22 PDT" To: tow cc: stone RE: sliding cursors and Griffin. Sliding the cursor between displays was implemented for the Xerox PARC/CSL Cedar system in 1982. Any application using the color display got the sliding cursor. The original idea, however, came from Phil Petit's program for chip design called "Chipmonk," developed at Xerox PARC/CSL in the early 80's. Griffin was designed in 1978 and implemented over the next several years. It originally ran on the Alto computer but was soon ported to the Dorado. Howard may well have seen it running on the first Dorado with a color display. And, while we're discussing illustrator history, the original Xerox PARC synthetic (as opposed to bitmap) illustration editor was developed by Patrick Baudelaire in 1974. Called "Draw" it ran on the Alto and supported lines, text and spline curves of different types (no filled areas). It had icon-style menus and supported color in a limited fashion. The paper "Techniques for Interactive Graphics" by Baudelaire and Stone includes several pictures designed with Griffin and Draw. While it doesn't explicitly mention either illustrator, it describes some of the techniques used in both of them. The article can be found in ACM Computer Graphics, Vol 14, No. 3, July 1980, p 314 which is the Siggraph '80 conference proceedings. Maureen Stone --- Rob Tow Member Research Staff Electronic Document Lab Xerox PARC 3333 Coyote Hill Drive Palo Alto, CA 94304 (415)-494-4087