[Pd] OT: this is the kind of interface I want

Mathieu Bouchard matju at artengine.ca
Sun Nov 12 20:43:03 CET 2006


On Sun, 12 Nov 2006, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:

> If you want to see a real killer demo, check out the 1968 demo of Doug 
> Engelbart's Augmentation Research Center.

Yes, I often mention that one.

> They should a actual, functional system with hyperlinks, a basic GUI, 
> the mouse, video conferencing, custom computer furniture, etc.

AFAIK, he invented a lot of things: not only the mouse, but also 
undo/redo, copy/cut/paste, and foldable trees; also it might have been the 
first implementation of hyperlinks, but the concept is usually attributed 
to Vannevar.

> when most people were excited to be using the terminal:

BTW, back then, a "terminal" usually didn't have a monitor. If you had 
one, then what you had had to be called "Video Terminal" (VT) to make sure 
that people knew that you had those newfangled monitors. Else, terminals 
were usually typewriters equipped with a serial port. This explains some 
things in computer history, like how old UNIX "plain text" often used the 
backspace code (0x08) to mean "superimpose two characters", and especially 
in combination with underscore to mean underline.

  _ _ __ ___ _____ ________ _____________ _____________________ ...
| Mathieu Bouchard - tél:+1.514.383.3801 - http://artengine.ca/matju
| Freelance Digital Arts Engineer, Montréal QC Canada


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