lohman%ibm-sj.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa (08/23/84)
From: Guy M. Lohman <lohman%ibm-sj.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa>
[Forwarded from the SRI-AI bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.]
IBM San Jose Research Lab
5600 Cottle Road
San Jose, CA 95193
Wed., Aug. 29 Computer Science Seminar
10:00 A.M. WYSIWYG PROGRAMMING
2C-012 Though single-user workstation hardware has evolved
rapidly to the point of rivaling the mainframes of a
few years ago, software has generally failed to keep
pace. "What you see is what you get" (WYSIWYG)
software for text processing and other applications
has shown the feasibility of performing applications
by direct manipulations of visual objects. But
programming languages are still based on a
"typewriter" model of communication which has
remained essentially unchanged since the 1950's.
This model has now been antiquated by the advent of
high resolution displays and accurate pointing
devices. WYSIWYG applications are often dramatically
easier to use than their traditional command-based
counterparts. This talk will describe a project to
design and prototype an interactive facility for
building programs as WYSIWYG objects, by capturing
direct manipulations of visual objects on a display
screen. The resulting programs are animations which
act like virtual users, doing the same things that a
real user can do. Building these programs is totally
continuous with normal hands-on manipulation of the
objects, while writing programs in traditional
programming languages is quite discordant with that
process.
D. Hatfield, IBM Cambridge Scientific Center
Host: D. Chamberlin
[...]