Actually, the first Xerox GUIs were developed on the Alto starting 
with prototypes in '72, and directly on the Alto when it started 
working in April '73. The Star was many years in the future at that 
point. The actual Star prototype GUI was called SmallStar and was 
done by David Canfield Smith (one of our three Dave Smiths) in 
Smalltalk. Politics prevented the Star from actually being programmed 
in Smalltalk (and the path they actually took was a long and dark 
one). Cf my previous comments about the AMIGA. Perhaps the best thing 
about the Star was one of the first and best attempts to create a 
"principled interface design". Various smart folks participated in 
this, including William Newman and Larry Tesler. I wasn't crazy about 
some of the design choices, but their "principles" gave rise to 
better than average discussions and arguments about UI.

Cheers,

Alan

------

At 8:52 AM -0800 11/1/01, Ned Konz wrote:
>On Thursday 01 November 2001 08:29 am, Stephen Pair wrote:
>>  Thanks for the pointer!  Now I'm curious how deep the connections (if
>>  any) between DRI, GEM, Atari, and PARC may have been...
>
>Apparently very deep. From http://xeroxstar.tripod.com/ :
>
>When Xerox PARC was developing the first GUI, as seen on the 8010, Lee Jay
>Lorenzen was a key member of the team. He was later hired by Digital Research
>Inc., where he worked on a GUI he wanted to call Crystal (after an IBM
>project at the time, called Glass). Since Crystal was already trademarked,
>the project was renamed Gem. The acronym GEM (Graphical Environment Manager)
>came later. Lee wrote the vast majority of GEM/1 following his designs from
>the Xerox closely. In fact, his expertise writing first the Xerox system and
>later GEM allowed him to walk away from DRI and create a smaller cut-down
>version for his company, Ventura. An exchange happened between DRI and Gary
>Kildall at the Atari Grass Valley research center. Gary was given a VAX
>11/750 in exchange for the development of CP/M 68K and GEM, which became TOS
>for the Atari ST line. GEM was also developed for early DOS computers. In
>fact, Elixir Desktop was built on top of the final version of GEM, version 3.
>
>--
>Ned Konz
>currently: Stanwood, WA
>email:     ned at bike-nomad.com
>homepage:  http://bike-nomad.com


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