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Sadly, the hardware was underpowered. The same hardware was sold for InterLisp workstations but it was so slow as to be frustrating. Like all D machines they

by gumby 4y ago

Sadly, the hardware was underpowered. The same hardware was sold for InterLisp workstations but it was so slow as to be frustrating. Like all D machines they could also boot into the Smalltalk and Cedar/Mesa environments. A problem was that the InterLisp, Smalltalk, and Mesa development was done on the beefier Dolphin and Dorado (an ECL barn-burner) machines and as far as I can tell never tuned for the wimpy machines. I only used them when I tested some custom microcode on them; I did all my work on the faster machines too.

knuckleheadsmif 4y ago
XDE, the Mesa development environment was run on the same hardware as Star. Star’s biggest issue was that it had far too little real memory and was always thrashing. XDE did much better than Star on a small memory footprint and did not feel slow and generally did not get into a thrashing state. The issue was not the language or the OS, Star and XDE ran on the same Pilot OS, but the architecture of the Star software and the amount or simultaneous this it did in its integrated application which increased its memory foot print. You are perhaps confusing Cedar rather than Mesa which normally ran on the larger machines. The other machines you mention were far too large and noisy to use in an office or normal work environment. NO ONE for example had a Dorado in their office, it was always in another room.
knuckleheadsmif 4y ago
If you look close one of the photos labeled Star was really XDE. Rather than object Icons it had a process bar (running applications) at the bottom. It’s the photo with only the XDE mail tool window open.
AlbertCory 4y ago
There's a guy, Bill Fisher, who's battled with Xerox Legal for decades to get them to open source the Star code. He says it runs lightning-quick on modern hardware. The Dorado came along later and played no part in Star, as knucklehead says. Dolphins were referred to as "dog-zeros" because they were so flaky.
- Aloha 4y ago
  Does it have a website or some examples? Was he successful in getting it open sourced?
  - knuckleheadsmif 4y ago
    Here is one interesting manual for Viewpoint (which I called Basic Work Station in other posts) that was the rewritten version of Star that it was open to others writing apps. It’s a good document with examples or the Mesa APIs for usage. This is from 1986. http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/viewpoint/programming/610E00260_ViewPoint_Programming_Course_Dec86.pdf http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/viewpoint/programming/610...
    - pholbrook 4y ago
      I don't think I'd ever seen that document. Thank you! I worked on the Basic Workstation team; my part was the desktop and folders code. As I recall, the whole BWS rewrite was the result of Robert Ayers coming along and trying to rewrite the bottom layers of Star from scratch. The framework he came up with became the basis for BWS.
      - knuckleheadsmif 4y ago
        I was one aisle over on the editor team. Your memory matches mine about how the BWS came about. It was about opening the system up to allow apps to easily be added unlike the original “trait”-based system that was closed by design. Traits was the object oriented multiple inheritance archetypes layered on top of Mesa that Star was based upon and required a static analysis step of all objects in the system to optimize object layouts—this is why it was a closed system. After the changeover to BWS, a few years later, only the document editor, and all object types represented in documents (graphics, tables, equations…) continued to use traits.
- knuckleheadsmif 4y ago
  Open sourcing would also require open sourcing all the development tools. Also open sourcing the original code while interesting to look at would be impossible to extend (not impossible but very hard). It would make the most sense to open source BWS (the basic workstation code used for the later version of Star) with all the tools. It had a ton of well written documentation that was all given to universities to use along with XDE.

by gumby 4y ago

knuckleheadsmif 4y ago

XDE, the Mesa development environment was run on the same hardware as Star. Star’s biggest issue was that it had far too little real memory and was always thrashing. XDE did much better than Star on a small memory footprint and did not feel slow and generally did not get into a thrashing state. The issue was not the language or the OS, Star and XDE ran on the same Pilot OS, but the architecture of the Star software and the amount or simultaneous this it did in its integrated application which increased its memory foot print. You are perhaps confusing Cedar rather than Mesa which normally ran on the larger machines. The other machines you mention were far too large and noisy to use in an office or normal work environment. NO ONE for example had a Dorado in their office, it was always in another room.

knuckleheadsmif 4y ago

If you look close one of the photos labeled Star was really XDE. Rather than object Icons it had a process bar (running applications) at the bottom. It’s the photo with only the XDE mail tool window open.

AlbertCory 4y ago

There's a guy, Bill Fisher, who's battled with Xerox Legal for decades to get them to open source the Star code. He says it runs lightning-quick on modern hardware. The Dorado came along later and played no part in Star, as knucklehead says. Dolphins were referred to as "dog-zeros" because they were so flaky.

Aloha 4y ago
Does it have a website or some examples? Was he successful in getting it open sourced?
- knuckleheadsmif 4y ago
  Here is one interesting manual for Viewpoint (which I called Basic Work Station in other posts) that was the rewritten version of Star that it was open to others writing apps. It’s a good document with examples or the Mesa APIs for usage. This is from 1986. http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/viewpoint/programming/610E00260_ViewPoint_Programming_Course_Dec86.pdf http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/viewpoint/programming/610...
  - pholbrook 4y ago
    I don't think I'd ever seen that document. Thank you! I worked on the Basic Workstation team; my part was the desktop and folders code. As I recall, the whole BWS rewrite was the result of Robert Ayers coming along and trying to rewrite the bottom layers of Star from scratch. The framework he came up with became the basis for BWS.
    - knuckleheadsmif 4y ago
      I was one aisle over on the editor team. Your memory matches mine about how the BWS came about. It was about opening the system up to allow apps to easily be added unlike the original “trait”-based system that was closed by design. Traits was the object oriented multiple inheritance archetypes layered on top of Mesa that Star was based upon and required a static analysis step of all objects in the system to optimize object layouts—this is why it was a closed system. After the changeover to BWS, a few years later, only the document editor, and all object types represented in documents (graphics, tables, equations…) continued to use traits.
knuckleheadsmif 4y ago
Open sourcing would also require open sourcing all the development tools. Also open sourcing the original code while interesting to look at would be impossible to extend (not impossible but very hard). It would make the most sense to open source BWS (the basic workstation code used for the later version of Star) with all the tools. It had a ton of well written documentation that was all given to universities to use along with XDE.