T171 ECA - Significant Technology - WYSIWYG
Significant Technology - WYSIWYG
WYSIWYG is an acronym for "What You See Is What You Get" and was first coined in relation to computers in the 80's. "What you see is what you get" was a catchphase from the old TV show Rowan and Martin's Laugh In.
A WYSIWYG (pronounced "wiz-ee-wig") editor or program is one that allows an interface or content developer to create a Graphical User Interface (GUI) or page of text, artwork or pictures so that the developer can see what the end result will look like while the interface or document is being created.
The advent of WYSIWYG and its associated Graphical User Interface (GUI) opened up the world of computing to the masses. No longer did people have to use Command Line Interfaces (CLIs) to control the computer, the WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus and Pointers) interface that was part of this new technology meant for the first time people didn't need to learn the low level commands of the CLI. The new interfaces were intuitive with their Icons which showed a picture of the program or task and all the user now had to do was click on it to run it and not have to go through the complicated CLI commands. The Commodore Amiga GUI (Workbench) even called it's WIMP handler "Intuition".
Xerox PARC and WYSIWYG
In
1975 Xerox PARC
introduced "WYSIWYG" interfaces, the Xerox
Alto started the graphical user interface revolution which has swept
through the computer industry. The desk-sized Alto and its commercial
descendant the Xerox
Star, were the first GUI-based computers. Researchers at Xerox PARC
(Palo Alto Research Center) developed the basic idea of the GUI along
with its associated innovations - the mouse, desktop, icons, windows,
menus etc. Adapting the technology known as "bitmapping" enabled
Xerox PARC to display very precise images on the screen. The World's first
WYSIWYG text editor Bravo was developed at PARC. Several of Xerox's researchers
left to join Apple and Microsoft.
Apple and WYSIWYG
In
1979 Steve Jobs of Apple had a tour of Xerox PARC and on seeing the Alto
realised that this was the future of computing. Realising that this was
the way to progress he began to work to bring this technology to the market.
Many of the ideas from the Alto turned up in the Apple
Lisa in 1982, and finally making the mass market as the Apple
Macintosh.
WYSIWYG and the development of the GUI at Xerox PARC opened up computing
to the masses. The neat intuitive interfaces meant that people could operate
computers easily with very little training and so they could benefit from
all that the computer can bring, education, information, games, Internet
etc. in a rich multimedia environment. The origins of today's PC operating
systems and applications can be traced back to the Xerox Alto and its
WYSIWYG and GUI developed by Xerox PARC in the late seventies/early eighties.
The Apple Mac's O/S, T's Gem, X-Windows on Unix, Sun's Solaris and many more
have their roots in the work done at Xerox PARC. Applications such as
Microsoft Word can be traced back to the Bravo text editor developed at
Xerox PARC.
Credits
Home pages of Companies mentioned on this page
Picture Sources
- Pic 1 downloaded from http://www.parc.xerox.com/history.html on 27-Sep-2001
- Pic 2 downloaded from http://xeroxstar.tripod.com on 27-Sep-2001
- Pic 3 downloaded from http://www.apple-history.com/lisa.html on 27-Sep-2001
- Pic 4 downloaded from http://www.apple-history.com/quickgallery.html?where=128k.html on 27-Sep-2001
Further Resources