Mail_Daemon%MIT-CSR@sri-unix.UUCP (03/19/84)
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Date: 13 Mar 84 0007-EST
From: Dave Steiner (The Moderator) <WorkS-Request@Rutgers>
Reply-to: WORKS@RUTGERS
Subject: WORKS Digest V4 #14
To: WORKS@RUTGERS
WORKS Digest Tuesday, 13 Mar 1984 Volume 4 : Issue 14
Today's Topics:
Announcement - net.works.apollo,
Hardware - Mice (3 msgs) &
Xerox STAR (2 msgs) &
Microwriter and WriteHander &
Macintosh & EXXON 500
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Date: 6 Mar 84 11:35:16 PST (Tuesday)
Subject: Re: WORKS Digest V4 #13
From: Ron Newman <Newman.es@PARC-MAXC.ARPA>
Announcing net.works.apollo. This newsgroup is for the discussion
of the Apollo workstation. Anyone with interesting applications,
bug reports, or technical questions is invited to submit articles.
You realize, of course, that the WORKS digest itself was originally
called APOLLO and was organized for the purpose mentioned above!
/Ron
------------------------------
Date: 6 March 1984 12:08-EST
From: Robert Elton Maas <REM @ MIT-MC>
Subject: mickey-mouse mice
Well, last week I tried using the mouse on the Dandilion in Pat
Suppes's office, and didn't like it. If I don't press hard enough, it
slides instead of rolls, causing the cursor to just sit while I'm
trying to move it. If I press too hard, the whole plastic mat slides
across the table, and the mouse doesn't roll relative to it, it is
dragging the mat along with it, and again the cursor just sits. The
expert then said "you have to learn how to do it right, like driving
a car". My reaction is a mouse isn't something a novice can just pick
up and use correctly, so it isn't qualatively better than
keystroke-cursor motion or other tools that need training and
experience, although it may be quantitively better in needing less
training.
More on initial reation to mouse after some other problems are fixed
so I can give it another try (after the CPU is fixed to not crash and
the software is fixed to allow copying virtual-memories around so we
don't have to spend 15 minutes booting from four floppies each time
the program crashes and the 800-page Interlisp-D documentation
arrives. Also if we had the fileserver up I'm told things would be
more tolerable).
------------------------------
Date: 9 Mar 84 4:05:47-PST (Fri)
From: ihnp4!fortune!rpw3 @ Ucb-Vax
Subject: Re: mickey-mouse mice - (nf)
#R:sri-arpa:-1725400:fortune:12600005:000:1958
fortune!rpw3 Mar 9 02:59:00 1984
I tried the mouse on the Apple Macintosh in an office supply store
the other day, and was generally favorably impressed with the feel of
the mouse, EXCEPT...
<<FLAME ON>>
...the damn ball is under the BACK of the mouse, not under the button!
Now look, folks, the whole point of the mouse is that it is a
kinesthetic extension of your body, like a pencil or a steering wheel
or a screwdriver. You're supposed to be able to use it naturally
without thinking about it. In the case of the mouse, since you use
it to point with, that means that you want the position of the cursor
on the screen to track with where you "fingers" are pointing, which
happens to be somewhere near the tips of your actual fingers, which
in turn are comfortably (one hopes) draped over the button(s).
[Aside: I prefer multi-button mice, myself]
If the ball is at the other end of the mouse, that means a good bit
of misalignment whenever you make large motions, due to your arm
pivoting around your elbow. When trying to use MacPaint to draw with,
it's "off" just enough to be annoying. (I held the mouse "upside
down", to check that I was really feeling what I thought I was. Yup!
It's easier to use that way, except for the cord in the way and the
button being weird to press :-)
It's been a couple of years, but I don't recall the mouse on the
Xerox Alto II having that problem.
Sure, the inside of the mouse is probably a little crowded under the
button, but the button actuating arm could have been cantilevered
back to a switch in the rear, if they really needed the room. It's a
shame for them to have put that much work into the "human factors"
and then get bitten by this kind of inattention to detail!
<<FLAME OFF>>
Rob Warnock "Otherwise, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"
UUCP: {sri-unix,amd70,hpda,harpo,ihnp4,allegra}!fortune!rpw3
DDD: (415)595-8444
USPS: Fortune Systems Corp, 101 Twin Dolphin Drive,
Redwood City, CA 94065
------------------------------
Date: 10 Mar 84 7:41:14-PST (Sat)
From: hplabs!sdcrdcf!darrelj @ Ucb-Vax
Subject: Re: mickey-mouse mice - (nf)
A previous note complained of the Macintosh mouse having the tracking
ball at the opposite end from the button, and (tentatively) recalling
the Xerox Alto had the ball under the buttons.
The mice in Xerox equipment have gone thru three generations on the
Altos and Dolphins.
1) back into antiquity (i.e. 10 years) they used a Hawley mouse with
the main ball under the buttons (actually requires levers, the
switches are at the other end)
2) about a year ago, Hawley turned the mouse around and took out the
levers, so the ball in not under the buttons.
3) Xerox has just switched to their own optical design (which works
on almost any textured surface, even a table cloth) which has the
"ball" back under the buttons again.
Mistracking from ball position may be slightly less for all Xerox
mice because the mouse is smaller than the Apple mice.
--
Darrel J. Van Buer, PhD
System Development Corp.
2500 Colorado Ave
Santa Monica, CA 90406
(213)820-4111 x5449
...{allegra,burdvax,cbosgd,hplabs,ihnp4,sdccsu3,trw-unix}
!sdcrdcf!darrelj
VANBUER@USC-ECL.ARPA
------------------------------
Date: 6 Mar 84 09:52:42 EST
From: Lou <STEINBERG@RUTGERS.ARPA>
Subject: STAR
To: bakin@HI-MULTICS.ARPA
I do not know anything about the STAR software, but if I had to do
the project you describe and had my choice of machines I'd probably
want a Xerox LISP machine. The Dandelion is essentialy yhe same
processor as a STAR, but with more memory and the INTERLISP
language/environment. For experimental programming, especially of
the kind you describe where you are dealing with various features of
programs and with graphics, the Xerox Lisp machine Interlisp
environment is very hard to beat.
------------------------------
Date: 6 Mar 84 21:10:43-PST (Tue)
From: hplabs!hao!seismo!rlgvax!guy @ Ucb-Vax
Subject: Re: Xerox STAR
> You can't program a Star. It's a dedicated super word processor.
> The same hardware running Interlisp software is called a Dandelion,
> and is as fast as a 780 running Interlisp. Great for developing
> lisp software.
Running an OS whose kernel whose code size in bytes is almost as big
as our 4.1c here? Yup, "super" is the word for it. It's a bit more
than a "word processor"; it has a mini database system (it's not
really relational, but imagine a "relational dbms" with *one*
relation and you're not too far off), electronic mail, etc.. There
is a development system that runs on the hardware, also; someone told
me that the Star applications programs can run on the same machine as
the "Mesa Development Environment" under the Pilot OS. So *if* you
can pry the Mesa Development Environment out of Xerox, yes, you can
program a Star.
The Star consists of a Dandelion microprogrammable engine running
microcode to give it the "Mesa processor" instruction set and running
the Pilot OS with the Star applications software on top of it. The
"Mesa processor" is discussed in the Proceedings of the Symposium on
Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems
(ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News, Volume 10, Number 2, March
1982 and ACM SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 4, April 1982, ACM
Order Number 556811) and the OS is discussed in an article in CACM
called "Pilot: An Operating System for a Personal Computer"
(Communications of the ACM, Volume 23, Number 2, February 1980) and
in a paper in the Proceedings of the Eighth Symposium on Operating
Systems Principles (ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review, Volume 15,
Number 5, December 1981). The Mesa language (I've heard it described
as "industrial strength Pascal"; it's got the usual sort of abstract
data type thingies, as well as a "fork" and "join" primitive for
process creation and a *very* PL/Iish signal mechanism) is described
in the Mesa Language Manual, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center paper
CSL-79-3.
Whether you consider the Star a success or failure (they haven't sold
many, but then how many of *you* are willing to buy a deskside
"office automation" computer that costs $15K, as the Star originally
did?), the Mesa processor, the Pilot OS, the Mesa language, and the
Star applications software are worth reading about. There are
several clever ideas in all of them.
Guy Harris
{seismo,ihnp4,allegra}!rlgvax!guy
------------------------------
Date: 6-Mar-84 18:42 PST
From: Rich Zellich <RICH.GVT@OFFICE-3>
Subject: Microwriter and WriteHander
pur-ee!uiucdcs!uicsl!preece@Ucb-Vax asks "Didn't the
Microwriter...get a big play in one of the micro magazines four or
five years ago?". I don't know about the Microwriter, but somthing
similar did get play about that time. This was the WriteHander (tm),
about the size and shape of a Teletype 5620 mouse, hemispherical with
4 buttons (for the 4 fingers of the right hand) on the bottom front
edge and a double column of buttons (I forget how many buttons tall)
on the left side for use by the right thumb. You would use buttons
in combination to type any ASCII character: one or more of the front
4, plus one of the vertical thumb buttons (I don't think two thumb
buttons were ever pressed at the same time). I always wondered if
there wasn't some way to put wheels/ball(s) under it and combine the
Engelbart chord keyset and mouse into one device.
I seem to recall this being on the cover of Byte when the NCC was at
Anaheim (not last year, the Anaheim NCC before that one).
-Rich
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 7 Mar 84 13:29 EST
From: Steven Gutfreund <gutfreund%umass-cs.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa>
Subject: MAC
Given the shoddiness of the Info-Mac discussion, I wonder if someone
here could give detailed enumeration of the Macintosh Hardware,
features, and limitations. A good contrast with traditional
workstations: SUN, Apollo, Perq, would be helpful.
- steven gutfrend
------------------------------
From: ulysses!allegra!princeton!eosp1!elias@Berkeley
Date: Thu, 8 Mar 84 09:54:20 est
Subject: EXXON 500
...if you're the person who wanted some info on EXXON 500's, you may
be able to use me as an internal contact...won't really know 'til i
hear what questions you've got: Marketing and Sales (ptha! 'scuse me,
bad taste in my mouth) may not want certain things let out, or only
by certain channels, or ...
doug
<..!{princeton,allegra}!eosp1!elias>
(609) 734-9200 ext 320
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End of WORKS Digest
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