Helge Horch Helge.Horch@munich.netsurf.de is widely believed to have written:
Hmm, the marketing material I have here (for the XSIS product, V2.1 and 3.0) seems to suggest a broad spectrum, along the lines of "integrated application suite." Outliner, Business Charts, Forms, Databases, Maps, Spreadsheets, DTP, etc. An Expert System Shell (HUMBLE) thrown in for good measure. Management of security and access levels. Must have made The Customer quite happy.
I used the Analyst a bit many years ago; in fact we (as in 'Smalltalk Express Ltd' a long defunct pioneering uk company I worked for many years ago) did a lot of work trying to get XSIS to let us sell it on the Acorn port of BrouHaHa I did. On a Tek 4405 it was amazingly snappy; all sorts of neat things were doable. Animated spreadsheet cells where the animation rate depended on some other cells, cells that were other spreadsheets or entire expert systems, all sorts of wonders. The most amazing part was Kurt claiming with a straight face that most of it took him a single summer to write.
I imagine we could do something very similar but with more colour and zap with Squeak. Of course, no one but us would care since it wouldn't be powerpoint/word/excel/access compatible. I'm sure we could however make a compatible flight simulator easter-egg in our spreadsheet :-)
tim