Kevin Lindsey
3836 Inverness Road
Fairfax, VA
22033
Many thanks,
Kevin
>
> Steve asked ...
>
> > Why has the Lisa team remained silent? Isn't there a book here? I'd
> > personally love to have all the anecdotes and the like concerning
> the
> > Lisa's development to read. There's a little bit about it on the
> Mac
> > Folklore site, but everything is so Mac-centric. It would be
> refreshing to
> > read about the Lisa from a Lisa-centric perspective.
>
> I have a 2 CD set called LISA COLLECTED PAPERS which has such
> information. I
> created this CD set about a year ago based on many Lisa documents
> I've
> collected from 1984 onwards when I used the Lisa Workshop for
> Macintosh
> development. These CDs contain a large number of scanned documents
> covering
> the Lisa's history, development, articles, and comments by the Lisa
> development team themselves. Includes some very rare Lisa materials
> such as
> the original Lisa requirements document, the Lisa product
> introduction plan,
> the Lisa boot ROM source listing, and the Lisa Tool Kit application
> object-oriented framework listing (the Tool Kit was the predecessor
> to the
> Macintosh MacApp framework).
>
> If anyone wants a copy of this set just send me a mailing address and
> I will
> send them.
>
> Concerning Lisa books, KURT SCHMUCKER wrote a great Lisa book in the
> mid
> 1980s about the Lisa which I highly recommend. Called THE COMPLEATE
> LISA, it
> is out of print but sometimes a copy appeares on eBay for lots of $s.
>
> Here's some Lisa development answers to several Lisa questions I
> asked from
> one of the Lisa developers I received just this month which may
> interest
> you:
>
> Q: What was the hardest part about writing programs for the Lisa? I
> assume
> developing the underlying support libraries such as the event manager
> were
> the biggest obstacles. I also assume the fine tuning which occured at
> the
> end of the development to improve the Lisa's performance was
> difficult too.
>
> A: We faced a number of very interesting challenges. Lack of
> development
> tools was one. We all got to be very good at crawling up the call
> chain by
> looking at the 68000 registers, and then looking for symbols in the
> code to
> find out where we were. Brainstorming one day we came up with the
> idea to
> have the compiler automatically put the name of the procedure just
> before
> the start of the code block, and then modifying the debugger to
> automatically display the call chain. Brad Silverberg and I also had
> fun
> developing a rudimentary set of command line programs.
>
> Another category of challenging projects was coming up with the GUI
> for
> various apps and UI elements. It is fascinating to me how an
> interface that
> we take so much for granted today as obvious and intuitive was
> everything
> but that before we "discovered" it. Most impressive was how
> developers got
> some ideas that were different than the prevailing wisdom and did a
> skunkworks prototype for comparison. At times the prototype hit the
> target
> in such an obvious way that it put an end to any further discussion.
> Other
> times it didn't feel quite right but led to further refinements in a
> different direction.
>
> We all built on each other's code. The first one to come up with a
> new kind
> of alert or dialog often saw their code become the standard interface
> for
> that kind of behavior in other apps as well. These early libraries
> got
> refactored as the implementation matured.
>
> Q: Looking back at the Lisa from a 22 year perspective (1983-2005),
> what do
> you see as the best features of the Lisa? Worst?
>
> A: The Lisa was way ahead of its time. It took the Mac more than 10
> years
> to get similar features in the OS. However, the Mac was much more
> successful. The greatest contribution that Lisa made to the industry
> was
> the UI elements, libraries, and apps that gave birth to the Mac.
>
> Q: What was the hardest part about porting LisaDraw to MacDraw? I
> assume
> the memory constraints on the original Mac 128K and 512K machines.
>
> A: Squeezing the code into a limited physical memory space was the
> biggest
> challenge. I had to factor the code into a 48KByte core and a dozen
> or so
> 16KByte overlay segments.
>
> I will also send another email to the LisaList mailing list which
> details
> the development of the Lisa's user interface and which was written by
> one of
> the Lisa's devlopers.
>
> - David Craig
>
> ----------
> >From: sauersr_at_email.domain.hidden
> >To: "LisaList" <lisalist_at_email.domain.hidden>
> >Subject: Lisa History
> >Date: Tue, May 10, 2005, 11:53 PM
> >
> > Why has the Lisa team remained silent? Isn't there a book here? I'd
> > personally love to have all the anecdotes and the like concerning
> the
> > Lisa's development to read. There's a little bit about it on the
> Mac
> > Folklore site, but everything is so Mac-centric. It would be
> refreshing to
> > read about the Lisa from a Lisa-centric perspective.
> >
> > Is everyone who was on the team still with us? It would be really
> useful
> > for the Lisa's History to be recorded while it's still possible.
> >
> > Steve
>
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