3 ms·
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 other
by knuckleheadsmif 3y 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 3y agoI 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 3y agoI 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.