history of multiple undo, history palette, etc.
Tom Van Vleck
>
> >"Vanessa von Hessert" <vvonh...@sprint.ca> wrote in message
> >news:3A0DCFAA...@sprint.ca...
> >> Hi all,
> >> I'm a university student studying multimedia. I'm trying desperately to
> >> find information about the history and evolution of the "history
> >> palette" multiple undo, etc. Does anyone know what program first used
> >> undo, multiple undo and history undo, or where I can find this
> >> information?
> >> Any help would be much appreciated.
> >> Thanks,
> >
> >My first guess would have been the CDC Plato systems made popular in certain
> >educational circles in the 1979-1984 timeframe.
The Lincoln Reckoner was a computing environment supported
on the 360/67 at MIT Lincoln Laboratory in about 1968.
It provided multiple undo.. one could undo all the way back
to the beginning of the session. Leader of this effort was
Douwe B. Yntema. He went on to be director of The Cambridge
Project, a computer social science research project with
researchers from MIT and Harvard, funded by ARPA. The
Cambridge Project spent the summer of 1969 writing a
proof-of-concept program to duplicate features of the
Lincoln Reckoner on Multics: the program was informally
called "TOSS" (Terminal Oriented Social Science) and the
unlimited-undo feature was a major requirement that made
the system expensive to implement. I provided some advice
to this group on how best to use Multics. TOSS was tossed,
as planned, and The Cambridge Project worked for multiple
years building a more robust environment called The Consistent
System. I am not sure if CS had the multiple undo feature.
Brian Inglis
>"D. Scott Secor" <se...@mn.rr.com.NO$PAM> wrote:
>
>>"Vanessa von Hessert" <vvonh...@sprint.ca> wrote in message
>>news:3A0DCFAA...@sprint.ca...
>>> Hi all,
>>> I'm a university student studying multimedia. I'm trying desperately to
>>> find information about the history and evolution of the "history
>>> palette" multiple undo, etc. Does anyone know what program first used
>>> undo, multiple undo and history undo, or where I can find this
>>> information?
>>> Any help would be much appreciated.
>>> Thanks,
>>
>>My first guess would have been the CDC Plato systems made popular in certain
>>educational circles in the 1979-1984 timeframe. Their Turtle graphics were
>>years ahead of their time and featured several levels of undo. Most of the
>>early S100 system CP/M apps (early 1980's) with which I was intimately
>>familiar featured at least one level of undo ... things like Vector
>>Memorite, Electric Pencil (started on the TRaSh-80), and several other apps
>>that escape me.
>>
>>Then I got to thinking (dangerous in and of itself) and I recall being told
>>by friends in the mainframe side of the business that VAX VMS, IBM CMS, CDC
>>Cronos, and other big iron offering such features. I suspect that the
>>earliest most primitive undo systems probably date back into the 1960's.
>>
>>What say ye, computer history buffs?
>
>Allow me to forward this to alt.folklore.computers, where I lurk
>sometimes.
Can't quote names or dates, but may be able to suggest questions
to ask. FWIH a number of usability features were first
implemented at user sites and subsequently adopted by the
development teams.
I know CMU contributed various bits to IBM CP/CMS -- command line
history recall command was retrieve in CP, CMS, and XEDIT. Don't
know when it was added or by who, but it may be from CMU. Lynn
Wheeler may have some pointers to add here.
Were there earlier Unix shell command history features than csh
(!) on Sun/OS? When was command history added to csh?
I believe VMS command line editing and history (recall?) may have
come from TOPS-20; was it available on TOPS-10, TENEX?
Don't think multiple undo really flourished until GUIs appeared
-- Xerox PARC Star system may have been the first.
Single undo by line and of last command is available in vi --
don't know whether it was added before, by or after Bill Joy.
In vi, the last 9 chunks of lines deleted/replaced are available
in buffers 1-9 -- who added these when?
Emacs must have similar features -- were they in ITS TECO Emacs,
later?
Thanks. Take care, Brian Inglis Calgary, Alberta, Canada
--
Brian_...@CSi.com (Brian dot Inglis at SystematicSw dot ab dot ca)
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