20 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.
DonHopkinsJan 2022Strongly recommends
Previous HN discussion about that video: [link] ▶ this video I posted about PCR: [link] This is a great video! They discussed and demonstrate Cedar's early text selection, copy and move commands, and compare them to Larry Tesler’s cut and paste (which didn't require any special keys or more than one mouse button). The Tioga text editor and other Cedar applications made common operations like repeatedly copying text into a document from different places very easy and streamlined (fewer actions than cut, copy and paste), by using the shift key while selecting text. Cedar took full advantage of the three button mouse as well as the control and shift keys (for 12 combinations of actions in any context, that worked the same everywhere). I think SunView and maybe even OpenWindows also supported a similar (but obscure) “quick paste” mode, where you hold down the special “Copy” function key, select some text without disturbing the current input focus, cursor position, or text selection, and then when you release the key, that text is pasted into the current input focus at the current position, moving the cursor forward. That way you didn’t have to lose your current selection or position, in order to just select some other text and copy it in. Here, I found the code to do it in an old version of NeWS -- it was the cut key to move, or the paste key to copy, and it's called the "Secondary" selection (rank=Secondary): [link] % Cut key: Either delete the primary selection (stashing it % on the
in “Xerox PARC Mesa Programming Language 5.0 (1979) [pdf]” · View on HN
DonHopkinsOct 2024Recommends
Here's another great historic oral history panel with a live demo of Xerox PARC's Cedar, including Eric Bier, Nick Briggs, Chris Jacobi, and Paul McJones: Eric Bier Demonstrates Cedar This interpretive production was created from archival footage of Eric Bier, PARC research scientist, demonstrating the Cedar integrated environment and programming language on January 24, 2019. Cedar was an evolution of the Mesa environment/language, developed at PARC’s Computer Science Laboratory originally for the Xerox Alto. Mesa was modular and strongly-typed, and influenced the later Modula family of languages. Cedar/Mesa ran on the D-machine successors to the Alto (such as the Dorado) and added features including garbage collection, and was later ported to Sun workstations. Cedar/Mesa’s integrated environment featured a graphical window system and a text editor, Tioga, which could be used for both programming and document preparation, allowing for fonts, styles, and graphics to be embedded in code files. The editor and all its commands were also available everywhere, including on the command console and in text fields. The demo itself is running through a Mac laptop remotely logged into Bier’s Sun workstation at PARC using X Windows. Bier demonstrates the Cedar development environment, Tioga editor, editing commands using three mouse buttons, sophisticated text search features, the command line, and the Gargoyle graphics editor, which was developed as part of Bier’s UC Berkeley Ph.D. diss
in “The Future of Big Iron: An Interview with IBM’s Christian Jacobi” · View on HN
DonHopkinsMar 2020Recommends
There are definitely a lot of difficult issues and trade-offs about implementing true "WYSIWYG" editors that let you layout text and graphics that looks exactly the same on the screen and when printed. This Cedar demonstration video has some great examples of many of these issues. The Tioga text editor was "WYSIMOLWYG": what you see is more or less what you get. ▶ this video Some problems were due to technology and aren't as bad any more. Cedar and NeWS used black-and-white screens and didn't have anti-aliased fonts. CPUs were much slower and memory was much tighter and graphics were not accelerated, so even with color displays (which were usually only 8 bits with a colormap that makes anti-aliasing very difficult), anti-aliased text wasn't practical. And fonts rendered at screen resolutions have totally different measurements than high resolution printed fonts, so words have different widths and get flowed and wrapped differently, so the formatting is quite different. NeWS had a "setprintermatch" primitive that makes the font rendering machinery use the official precise printer measurements for fonts, instead of the actual pixel screen measurements. That was useful for the PostScript previewer, and for editors previewing how formatted text will look. (There was a nice port of FrameMaker to NeWS, but I don't remember how its preview features worked.) But text rendered with printer metrics looks terrible and is hard to read, so you wouldn't want to actually edit text like that. NeW
in “Sun's NeWS was a mistake, as are all toolkit-in-server windowing systems (2013)” · View on HN
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linguaeOct 2025Cites it
I remember trying out Plan 9 a few years ago. I like its underpinnings; I like how the designers pushed the Unix notion of "everything is a file" to its limits, with various services being presented to the operating system as file servers implemented using a protocol named 9P. It's a cool research operating system with a lot of very interesting ideas, but ultimately it's not my daily driver due to a lack of hardware and software support, though I am working on a research project (but for conventional *nix operating systems) that takes advantage of 9P. Carmack's description of the rio GUI is apt; rio is heavily based on Xerox PARC's Cedar environment from the mid-1980s ( ▶ this video ). I had a hard time getting used to rio, though eventually I learned it. I even purchased an old Sun three-button mouse (with no click-wheel) since Plan 9 didn't like my click-wheel mouse. rio does not adopt a lot of the conventions that were introduced by the Apple Lisa, Apple Macintosh, and Microsoft Windows, resulting in a completely foreign experience for most new Plan 9 users. There is a misconception that Apple and Microsoft simply stole the idea of GUIs from Xerox PARC without further innovating on it. This misconception is false; the Apple Lisa and the Apple Macintosh introduced many GUI conventions that were not present in Xerox PARC's GUIs (this video comparing the Apple Lisa to the Xerox Star highlights the differences: [link] ), and Windows introduced additional innovations. Back to Plan 9
in “Carmack on Operating Systems (1997)” · View on HN
pjmlpSep 2025Cites it
It is basically cargo cult, whole graphical workstations have been built with GC based languages 50 years ago. - Interlisp => [link] - Cedar => ▶ this video Imagine what we could have today with hardware that is mostly busy running Electron crap and CLI tools from the 1970s.
in “Zig feels more practical than Rust for real-world CLI tools” · View on HN
pjmlpSep 2024Cites it
Now imagine using such a language for a full blown graphical workstation! "Eric Bier Demonstrates Cedar" ▶ this video "Project Oberon" [link] "The Midori Operating System Overview" [link] [link]
in “Google says replacing C/C++ in firmware with Rust is easy” · View on HN
DonHopkinsNov 2023Cites it
Rumors of my Death, LLMification, and Enshittification are greatly exaggerated, Gumby! PS: about you comment below: The Novix NC4016 was FORTH coming. [link] DonHopkins on Jan 20, 2022 | parent | context | favorite | on: Xerox PARC Mesa Programming Language 5.0 (1979) [p... Previous HN discussion about that video: [link] Eric Bier Demonstrates Cedar: ▶ this video >This interpretive production was created from archival footage of Eric Bier, PARC research scientist, demonstrating the Cedar integrated environment and programming language on January 24, 2019. Cedar was an evolution of the Mesa environment/language, developed at PARC’s Computer Science Laboratory originally for the Xerox Alto. Mesa was modular and strongly-typed, and influenced the later Modula family of languages. Cedar/Mesa ran on the D-machine successors to the Alto (such as the Dorado) and added features including garbage collection, and was later ported to Sun workstations. Cedar/Mesa’s integrated environment featured a graphical window system and a text editor, Tioga, which could be used for both programming and document preparation, allowing for fonts, styles, and graphics to be embedded in code files. The editor and all its commands were also available everywhere, including on the command console and in text fields. The demo itself is running through a Mac laptop remotely logged into Bier’s Sun workstation at PARC using X Windows. Bier demonstrates the Cedar development environment, Tioga editor, editing comman
in “Revival of Medley/Interlisp” · View on HN
pjmlpJul 2023Cites it
Well, I also disagree. Just because a language has some form of automatic memory management, that doesn't mean it doesn't provide the same mechanisms of a language like C for low-level programming. Plenty of options, D, Go, Swift, C#, Nim, Eiffel, Common Lisp, Haskell, OCaml,.... Dead options that unfortunely didn't manage to win market adoption, Oberon, Oberon-2, Active Oberon, Component Pascal, Modula-2+, Modula-3, Cedar, Speaking of Cedar, when will Rust managed to have a full workstation OS? "Eric Bier Demonstrates Cedar" ▶ this video Redox still has a bit to catch with what a full graphical workstation OS was capable of in 1980's hardware, using a systems programming language with automatic memory management. Naturally, there are other examples out from Xerox PARC, Genera and Texas Instruments on that regard.
in “Async rust – are we doing it all wrong?” · View on HN
DonHopkinsDec 2022Cites it
You know what's a lot like Ada in a good way is Mesa, which evolved into Ceder, from Xerox PARC. I know people who really loved programming in it. They'd call it "Industrial Strength Pascal". It was a successful experiment in code reuse. A strongly typed language with strong separation between interfaces and implementations, which encouraged creating robust, hardened code. [link] >Mesa and Cedar had a major influence on the design of other important languages, such as Modula-2 and Java, and was an important vehicle for the development and dissemination of the fundamentals of GUIs, networked environments, and the other advances Xerox contributed to the field of computer science. Demonstration of the Xerox PARC Cedar integrated environment (2019) [video] (youtube.com) [link] Computer History Museum: Eric Bier Demonstrates Cedar ▶ this video Mark Weiser and others at Xerox PARC's ported the Cedar environment to Unix, which resulted in the development of the still-widely-used Boehm–Demers–Weiser conservative garbage collection. [link] I believe that stuff is the port of Cedar to the Sun. Xerox PARC developed "Portable Common Runtime", which was basically the Cedar operating system runtime, on top of SunOS (1987 era SunOS, not Solaris, so no shared libraries or threads, which PCR had to provide). He demonstrates compiling a "Hello World" Cedar shell command, and (magically behind the scenes) dynamically linking it into the running shell and invoking it. Experiences Creating a Portable
in “Most(LY Dead) Influential Programming Languages (2020)” · View on HN
masswerkJul 2022Cites it
However, RISC OS (Acorn), 1987, with an icon bar. :-) Project lead Paul Fellows is quoted in this article [1] as follows ("Arthur" being the code name for one of two competing projects, which became RISC OS), > "I found this page I was very pleased by: 'Apple acquired the Dock from Steve Jobs' NeXTstep OS which stole it from Acorn's Arthur Operating System of 1987.'" and, > "There was a guy at Colton Software with us… who joined Microsoft in Seattle, and it was shortly after that that Windows acquired an icon bar. I know how that idea got there." And on the rationale behind it, > "In case anyone ever asked where it came from, we were sat in a room thinking 'how do we design this to be different, so we don't get sued by Apple?' The Mac had a menu bar of text across the top, so we thought 'we can't go across the top, we'll have to go across the bottom – and we can't use text, so we'll have to use icons.' That's why it's like that," [1] [link] Edit: That said, Xerox PARC had the Cedar development environment in the 1980s and this featured sort of a task/icon bar already. Notably, the second, long ongoing project for an Acorn operating system, written in Modula 2, was conducted at ARC (Acorn Research Center) in Palo Alto, next to PARC. There may have been some exchange (and inspiration) involved. [2] [link] [3] Video, "Eric Bier Demonstrates Cedar", CHM YT channel, ▶ this video
in “Everyone seems to forget why GNOME and GNOME 3 and Unity happened” · View on HN
teleforceJan 2022Cites it
Mesa was later replaced by the more modern Cedar programming language integrated with Tioga programming and desktop environment by Xerox, after they've evaluated few languages for potential replacement including Lisp for the later part of the 80s and 90s [1],[2],[3]. Apple and Microsoft copied their modern GUI desktop idea from Xerox in the 70s but interestingly nobody has copied the excellent Cedar/Tioga programming environment until today. [1] A Description of the Cedar Language: [link] [2] Eric Bier Demonstrates Cedar: ▶ this video [3] The Tioga Editor: [link]
in “Xerox PARC Mesa Programming Language 5.0 (1979) [pdf]” · View on HN
DonHopkinsJan 2022Cites it
I recently posted some info and links about Mark Weiser to the HN discussion of "Calm Technology": Calm Technology (calmtech.com) [link] [link] [link] >Mark Weiser was my friend and mentor at the University of Maryland, so I've posted some stuff about his work and life here in the past. >As usual, I've checked and updated the broken links to archive.org. (One of my favorites is the 1995 Computer Chronicals video at the end with a profile of Mark's band, Severe Tire Damage, the first band to ever perform live over the internet, who upstaged the Rolling Stones over MBone, using up half the bandwidth of the internet on Friday, November 18, 1994!) [...much more at the article I linked to, and in the HN discussion of Calm Technology...] Also some recent comments I wrote about the term "Pervasive Technology": [link] I've also mentioned his work with Chris Torek on the Maryland Window System, which was based on Gosling's Emacs display driver: [link] And only yesterday there was an HN discussion about the Mesa Programming Language: Xerox PARC Mesa Programming Language 5.0 (1979) [pdf] (bitsavers.org) [link] [link] I posted to that about his work on PCR (Portable Common Runtime, for porting Cedar apps to Unix) and conservative garbage collection, and linked to an HN discussion of a video demo of Cedar and Tioga running on Unix with PCR: [link] Demonstration of the Xerox PARC Cedar integrated environment (2019) [video] (youtube.com) [link] ▶ this video
in “Remembering Mark Weiser: Chief Technologist Xerox PARC (2000) [pdf]” · View on HN
pjmlpSep 2021Cites it
Well, have a look at [link] Then follow up with "The Interlisp Programming Environment" [link] "Graphical Programming in Interlisp-D" [link] "Eric Bier Demonstrates Cedar" ▶ this video Cedar was the very first graphical workstation for something like .NET and Java would later kind of try to become.
in “The operating system: should there be one? (2013) [pdf]” · View on HN
teleforceJul 2021Cites it
This is a very exciting development, similar in spirit to the proposal by Bret Victor for Learnable Programming [1]. I'm also excited by the fact that from their website the CRDT for local-first collaborative editing and Jupyter like alternative are also in the pipeline [2]. For those who are interested in the history of structure editor you can check the venerable Tioga editor in Xerox's Cedar programming environment [3],[4]. [1] [link] [2] [link] [3] [link] [4] ▶ this video
in “Tylr: Demo of tile-based editing, a new kind of structure editing” · View on HN
pjmlpJul 2021Cites it
Well ideas there are plenty to steal from, that is true. But maybe we could start by actually catching up with having full stack OSes written in safe systems programming languages. ▶ this video [link]
in “Rust for Linux redux” · View on HN
lioetersMay 2020Cites it
Ah, what a delightful rabbit hole your comment led me down.. I've got about twenty tabs open now, articles on the history of (and the relationships between) programming languages and graphical user interfaces. Will enjoy this food for thought! My recent reading has included: Unix: A History and a Memoir (Brian Kernighan) - [link] The Development of the C Language (Dennis Ritchie) - [link] JavaScript: The First 20 Years (Brendan Eich) - [link] (PDF) This morning, this little phrase jumped out: > C was created on a tiny machine as a tool to improve a meager programming environment. What this made me realize is that a language is a user interface. It makes sense how C evolved with UNIX as an operating system, that a language is deeply fundamental to a computing environment (and its development). There's a parallel with JavaScript and Netscape. The language was meant to provide users with an interface to operate the web browser, create dynamic documents, and (as it turned out) to let users develop the web environment. ..Which brings me back to the Cedar/Tioga programming environment you mentioned. While searching around, I happened across another comment of yours (I see it's a favorite topic! :) and found the good stuff: Eric Bier Demonstrates Cedar - ▶ this video (video) Active Tioga documents: an exploration of two paradigms - [link] (PDF) The Mesa Programming Environment - [link] (PDF) Fascinating. I saw a phrase, "active document applications", which interestingly is what the web
in “The naked truth about writing a programming language (2014)” · View on HN
teleforceApr 2020Cites it
I'm surprised nobody mentioning the similarity of TeXmacs to Tioga editor within the legendary CEDAR desktop environment from Xerox [1]: I've read somewhere some years ago that if you can create a usable hybrid combination of MS Office Word document (WYSIWYG) and TeX then you have a killer application for document editor. Additionally, similar to Tioga with the fact that you can also use other programs inside TeXmacs (e.g. spreadsheet, Octave, etc) is a huge boon for productivity [2]. I think the naming of the TeXmacs does create confusion though since it creates the impression that this is combination of TeX and Emacs but it's neither of them. Just like the Holy Roman Empire after the collapsed of Roman Empire, it's neither Holy nor Roman nor an Empire. Now hoping for the modern incarnation version of CEDAR desktop environment. [1] ▶ this video [2] [link]
in “The Guile in TeXmacs (2019) [pdf]” · View on HN