steve@tove.umd.edu (11/03/85)
From: Steve D. Miller <steve@tove.umd.edu> >From: ecsvax!dgary@caip.rutgers.edu (D Gary Grady) >Subject: Re: DRI agrees to change GEM >Of course, it was the Xerox Star, and not the Lisa or Mac, that >first introduced this sort of interface to the commercial market. >(The most noticeable difference between the Star and the Mac is the >"wait" cursor being an hour glass on the Star and a wristwatch on >the Mac.) ... >D Gary Grady >Duke U Comp Center, Durham, NC 27706 >(919) 684-3695 >USENET: {seismo,decvax,ihnp4,akgua,etc.}!mcnc!ecsvax!dgary The Star interface is *not* all that similar to the mac's. Here are some differences: 1) While both machines do have popup menus, the Star environment has one menu at the top of the screen (in what is referred to, if memory serves, as the Herald window; at least, that's what it's called in XDE) and a small number (1-2) of menus associated with any given window. Menus associated with a window are selected by pressing down on a totally unlabeled symbol in the windows namebar-equivalent. It's been my experience as an admittedly somewhat casual Star user that the menus are rather rarely used. 2) Since the Star user can't do the things through menus that the mac user can do through the finder, and since there are a lot of things that any user of any machine has to be able to do, Star has to provide some alternative. That alternative is the "Computer" icon, which holds something like eight subdivisions including things like "Local Workstation Devices", "Network Management", "Basic Documents", etc. If you want a new document to use with the editor, for example, you open Computer (by double clicking or hitting the "Open" key), then open Basic Documents, then select the prototype document you want and copy it (select, hit the "Copy" key, point to destination on the desktop to put the copy) to the Desktop. I can't think of a single application that you open directly in the entire Star world. Interaction through property sheets and documents is the name of the game here. 3) The concept of property sheets is totally unknown to the mac, while it is used extensively in Star. In the mac, you change the font of the text you're working with by using the Font menu; in Star, you select a character, hit the Props key, and select the font you want from the list therein. You can also at the same time tell the editor that you want to rearrange the paragraph that the character is a part of (justification, tab settings, et al). Properties propagate in a reasonable manner, so you don't have to individually boldify every character you want to be bold. Again, prop sheets are used more in documents, but most applications have fixed properties associated with them that can be changed similarly. 4) All applications of the "take-this-and-do-something-with-it" kind are implemented in the way that the Finder's trash can is. To print something, you drop the document on the printer; to put it in your file drawer (a synonym for a directory on the file server), you just drop it on top of the file drawer icon. Interestingly enough, there isn't a trash can on the Star desktop. If you want to delete something, you select it, hit the "Delete" key, and confirm. I admit that I like the trash can better, but that's just a matter of viewpoint. 5) Here's the biggie -- tiled windows versus overlapping ones. Like I said earlier, I am a casual user of Star (in my opinion, business environments -- even good ones like Star -- are something to be avoided; XDE is much more up my alley), so I'm not 100% sure this is true, but I don't think you can resize windows in Star. Instead, as you open new windows, the old ones get smaller so that no window is ever obscured. The mac window interface, as I suspect we're all aware, is nothing like this, and I admit that I think the mac wins here (again, a matter of viewpoint). I hope that someone will correct me if I'm wrong here; I'm at home and can't fire up Star to check. I like the concepts behind Star and I like those behind the mac. I think the basic philosophy is the same, but the visible implementation is quite different. Other than the overlapping window gripe, I think the Star interface is more complex and more powerful, while the mac is something that anyone can sit down to and get the hang of in the first half hour. I do, however, feel that someone should set the record straight on this score (well, OK, maybe just set it straighter...) -Steve Spoken: Steve Miller ARPA: steve@mimsy.umd.edu Phone: +1-301-454-4251 CSNet: steve@umcp-cs UUCP: {seismo,allegra}!umcp-cs!steve USPS: Computer Science Dept., University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742