In the early 1980's, technology had reached the point of maturity necessary so that computers became more user friendly. The " 8010 Star Information System" , a work station known as "Xerox Star " revolutionized the computer, the first commercial system Available in having a graphical user interface using windows, icons and folders, managed with a mouse instead of the cryptic text-based screens. In addition, he possessed Ethernet network connection, file server, print server and email. In 1981! . Many
water ran under the bridge between 1975 and 1980. Advanced computer technology, therefore, it was possible to go from computers with 256 bytes of memory keys and LEDs used to communicate with their owners a marvel as the " Xerox Star, a workstation of Xerox Corporation that had a GUI not very different from today. The Xerox Star was a milestone in computing history, offering some features that would only be available on other computers 10 or 15 years later. But first things first.
The Research Center Xerox Palo Alto (PARC , by Palo Alto Research Center) was created by Xerox Corporation in 1970. I had intended to give the company a work environment that allowed them to develop new technologies that-eventually-became commercial products. In PARC was not the classical pressure develop the product "A" at one time "X" . His investigators had an enormous degree of freedom, and could experience almost no restrictions with innovative concepts and technologies. Thus was born the "High , a workstation developed initially as a computer to be used internally by Xerox but soon to be distributed among some universities. El Alto was revolutionary. Instead of using a text terminal to communicate data to the user, used an interface based on bitmaps. This is the system used by all modern operating systems , which, like Upper use icons, windows and a mouse to interact with the user. This computer was great, even had a network interface called "Ethernet " to share data with others, but I was not mature enough to become a commercial product.
First had no uniformity. Each program was written by a different group of programmers, and although it worked very well, all lacked a common interface. And since he was born as a machine to be operated by Xerox personnel were needed to use sound technical skills. Despite having a word processor (" Bravo"), an email system (Hardy "), a vector drawing program (" Sil ") and a bitmap editor (" Markup "), the Alto was not exactly user friendly, and was far from being used in company. In addition, it lacked some essential software for such work as a database manager or spreadsheet. But Xerox knew that this computer could become a real star, and in 1977 created the Department Systems Development (SDD by System Development Department) , the " dressed" with about 200 developers, many of them from PARC - and assigned the task of designing a computer with the features of the High but that would be useful in an office supply.
The challenge was enormous. Xerox wanted to automate most of the tasks of a company, and under the direction of David Liddle was born the project " The Office of the Future ( The Office of the Future ). Liddle was to create a computer as the Alto, that to abandon the typical "dumb terminals" based on the text and bringing computers to everyone. For nearly a year, project leaders held countless meetings, which were defined the characteristics that should be the system. From there came the Red Book, a sort of road map detailing where each piece of the puzzle, including the graphical interface and its main elements. From that point on, any changes to the specifications contained in the "red book " needed to be approved a review team manager maintain overall consistency. The idea was to reproduce on the screen a typical office environment, for an untrained secretary could work with the computer intuitively. WYSIWYG, stands for "What You See Is What You Get " (" what you see is what you get ") became a holy word in the SDD .
WYSIWYG was the key to everything . Until then, you do not "saw " on your screen would look like once it was printed the text he was writing. Xerox's computer using black letters on a white background, mimicking a sheet of paper thanks to software called "Interpress " was duplicated exactly by the printer. was Interpress page description language previously developed in PARC, which later drew Postscript. The rest of the interface was very similar to what we use today: icons representing resources and documents that could be opened in windows using the mouse, and the right programs appear automatically when the user to " click on the icon of a document. The similarity with the current interfaces is no accident. Both Apple and Microsoft, as we shall see in a future article, is inspired the work of Xerox to develop its products.
The concept of " object" was the heart of Star In this computer, everything was considered an object. From a document to a character, all this was the same way: when the user to click on an item, it displayed a list of actions - Open , Move, Delete , Copy , etc, which could be applied to it. These commands could also be invoked through the keyboard, in much the same manner and with the same keys as we do today, 30 years later. Thanks to the Red Book all programs using the same keys and commands to do the same things, something that seems obvious but so far nobody had to standardize. Star applications were programmed with a l anguage object-oriented programming s called Mesa, which later would be based and Modula-2 Modula-3 . Each module had two files. In one specifying the data structures, methods and events of each object, and the second was implemented code acting on them. A rigid system of control established by Xerox forced programmers to fully document each module, and any change that was done on a module required the approval of the project managers.
The software developed for the Star raised hard challenge to the project team hardware. Dolphin , the code name of the initial platform, soon proved inadequate. Half of the project, the software was so demanding that the Star delayed half an hour to start. The team developed a new version called Dandelion equipped with 384KB of RAM (expandable to 1.5MB), 10MB hard disk (later up to 40MB), 8-inch floppy drive, monochrome monitor (black and white ) of 17 inches, mouse and Ethernet. To get an idea of \u200b\u200bthe strength of this team, just remember that the IBM PC , presented August 1981, with its text-based interface, available only 64KB of RAM and, eventually, 5MB hard drive. Of course, all this had a price.
The " 8010 Star Information System " was sold at $ 16 000, approximately three times the that cost a PC. But it was not designed to work "alone " because their scheme based on file servers, print servers and Ethernet connections meant that fulfill the dream of having the "personal office system " cost a lot more. A typical system equipped with two or three Xerox Star, a file server and print server cost about $ 100 000. And if I put some coins, you could include a Xerox laser printer and turn your office into the most geek of the street. Unfortunately, the Star did not become a bestseller. The reasons were many but perhaps the most important have been its price and lack of experience as a supplier Xerox computer equipment. The company was a leader in the market for copying machines, but it seems that too had no idea how to sell computers. is estimated that only sold about 25 000 Xerox Star before they were recalled.
But despite this commercial failure, the Xerox Star computer was impressive. Much of the technology we have enjoyed PC users over the past three decades had its origin in this machine. The Apple Lisa, the system GEM Digital Research, the interface Atari ST or Commodore Amiga the of Adobe Systems PostScript and Windows to the very "inspired " in the Xerox job. Hundreds of lawyers got rich because of the lawsuits and counter lawsuits related to the rights and patents for these technologies, and almost always, because of the lack of case law that was on the legal protection of elements such as software or a GUI - Xerox lost the battle. However, managed something very important: to lay the foundations of modern computing. And that's no small thing. Do not you think?
Source:
http://www.neoteo.com/retroinformatica-xerox-star-1981.neo
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