Xerox Alto - Software

Software

Early software for the Alto was written in the programming language BCPL, and later in Mesa, which was not widely used outside PARC but influenced several later languages, such as Modula. The Alto keyboard lacked the underscore key, which had been appropriated for the left-arrow character used in Mesa for the assignment operator. This feature of the Alto keyboard may have been the source for the CamelCase style for compound identifiers. Another feature of the Alto was that it was microcode-programmable by users.

The Alto helped popularize the use of raster graphics model for all output, including text and graphics. It also introduced the concept of the bit block transfer operation, or BitBLT, as the fundamental programming interface to the display. Despite its small memory size, many innovative programs were written for the Alto, including:

  • the first WYSIWYG document preparation systems, Bravo and Gypsy;
  • the Laurel e-mail tool, and its successor Hardy;
  • the Sil vector graphics editor, used mainly for logic circuits, printed circuit board, and other technical diagrams;
  • the Markup bitmap editor (an early paint program);
  • the first WYSIWYG integrated circuit editor based on the Conway and Mead paradigm;
  • the first versions of the Smalltalk environment
  • Interlisp
  • one of the first network-based multi-person video games (Alto Trek by Gene Ball).

There was no spreadsheet or database software.

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