fosstodon.org is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
Fosstodon is an invite only Mastodon instance that is open to those who are interested in technology; particularly free & open source software. If you wish to join, contact us for an invite.

Administered by:

Server stats:

10K
active users

Paolo Amoroso

Using the mouse-driven graphical user interface of a personal computer to write a document with a WYSIWYG word processor, check new messages with an email client, and create an organization chart with a drawing program. Just an ordinary day at Xerox PARC in 1978. When email spam was apparently already a thing.

The demo features the Alto workstation and the Bravo word processor. You can hear the noise of the hard disk.

archive.org/details/Xerox_Palo

@amoroso

Really very impressive for the late 1970's.

For anyone interested then @curious_marc and his team have restored an Alto from broken to working state a few years ago.

The hardware, networking and other functions are quite interesting and challenging to repair especially the disk storage 😊

youtube.com/watch?v=YupOC_6bfM

@simonzerafa The Alto design is still slick and modern to this day.

@amoroso @simonzerafa I tried getting used to the portrait form factor. Everything (UI assumptions, display physical properties) fight you on that, these days.
But then again... I'm typing this on a phone 🤔

@signaleleven Interestingly, back then there were fewer expectations on the aspect ratio and orientation of screens. Think for example of circular screens in the 1960s.

@simonzerafa

@amoroso 👆 TEdit still supports mouse gestures for text selection similar to the ones of Bravo demonstrated in this 1978 Xerox PARC videotape. The TEdit rich text editor of Interlisp-D and later Medley was developed at PARC after Bravo, the first WYSIWYG word processor.