Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!mailrus!ames!oliveb!sun!hanami!landman
From: landman%hanami@Sun.COM (Howard A. Landman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: A Programmer Praises the Mac (r
Message-ID: <70528@sun.uucp>
Date: 28 Sep 88 00:01:59 GMT
References: <76000192@uiucdcsp>
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Reply-To: landman@sun.UUCP (Howard A. Landman)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
Lines: 33

[This was buried in my dead.article file due to a system error some
 time ago.  I thought it might still be of interest. HAL]

In article <76000192@uiucdcsp> gillies@uiucdcsp.cs.uiuc.edu writes:
>The multiple monitors trick is nice, but it's really just a trick.
>Apple didn't pioneer it -- it's been running on Xerox Dorado computers
>for at least three years.

Make that "at least seven years".  I worked on such a system in 1980 or
1981.  Maureen Stone had a wonderful color "MacDraw-like" program, and
it was hard to tell whether you had your colors right on a B&W display.
Of course, you could always print it out on your color "LaserWriter",
but that took a while, and cost the company $1 per page.  Anyway, one
machine I worked on had a large color screen AND a normal Alto-style
full-page B&W display to its left.  The cursor moved freely between the
two screens.  I think this was one of the first 2 or 3 Dorados in existence.

Maureen's program (Griffin) had some nice features due its being experimental,
like being able to select the spline method for curve-fitting on a
curve-by-curve basis.  Cubic, Catmull-ROM, Bezier, and more, on a nice
little menu.  Apple didn't invent menus either ...

In September 1980, I printed out a Griffin drawing and had it come out
VERY bizarre.  Polygon points were translated all over the page, leading
to a jagged abstract effect.  It turned out that there was a slightly
bad chip in the color printer; when they replaced it a few days later,
everything went back to normal.  I thus have a unique art work, partially
designed by myself and partially mutilated by a bit of errant circuitry,
which I probably could never duplicate.

	Howard A. Landman
	landman@hanami.sun.com
	UUCP: sun!hanami!landman