Editing Xerox Star (section)

==History==
===The Xerox Alto===
{{Main|Xerox Alto}}
The Xerox Star system's concept owes much to the [[Xerox Alto]], an experimental workstation designed by the [[PARC (company)|Xerox Palo Alto Research Center]] (PARC). The first Alto became operational in 1972. The Alto had been strongly influenced by what its designers had seen previously with the [[NLS (computer system)|NLS]] computer system at the [[SRI International|Stanford Research Institute]] and [[PLATO (computer system)|PLATO]] at University of Illinois.<ref name=clement>"The History of the Xerox Alto". Carl J. Clement. March 2002.</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Dear|first=Brian|title=The Friendly Orange Glow: The untold story of the PLATO System and the dawn of cyberculture|date=2017|publisher=Pantheon Books|isbn=978-1-101-87155-3|pages=186–187}}</ref> At first, only a few Altos had been built.<ref>{{cite magazine|last1=Canfield Smith|first1=David|last2=Irby |first2=Charles |last3=Kimball |first3=Ralph |last4=Verplank |first4=Bill |last5=Harslem |first5=Eric |title=Designing the Star User Interface|magazine=[[Byte (magazine)|BYTE]] |date=April 1982 |volume=7 |issue=2 |pages=242–282 |url=https://archive.org/stream/byte-magazine-1982-04/1982_04_BYTE_07-04_Human_Factors_Engineering#page/n243/mode/2up}}</ref> Although by 1979 nearly 1,000 Ethernet-linked Altos had been put into operation at Xerox and another 500 at collaborating universities and government offices,<ref name="parchis">{{cite web |url=http://www.parc.com/about/history/ |title=PARC Milestones |access-date=November 13, 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081217164857/http://www.parc.com/about/history/ |archive-date=December 17, 2008 |url-status=dead}}</ref> it was never intended to be a commercial product.<ref name=fumble>{{cite book
 | author = Douglas K. Smith
 | author2=Robert C. Alexander
 | title = Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented, Then Ignored, the First Personal Computer
 | publisher = William Morrow
 | location = New York
 | year =  1988
 | isbn = 0-688-06959-2
}}</ref> Then in 1977,<ref name="The Xerox Star">{{Cite web |title=The Xerox Star |url=http://toastytech.com/guis/star.html |access-date=April 18, 2022 |website=toastytech.com}}</ref> Xerox started a development project which worked to incorporate the Alto innovations into a commercial product; their concept was an integrated document preparation system, centered on the expensive [[laser printing]] technology and targeted at large corporations and their trading partners. When the resulting Star system was announced in 1981,<ref name="parchis"/> the cost was about {{US$|75,000|1981|round=-3}} for a basic system, and {{US$|16,000|1981|round=-3}} for each added workstation.  A base system includes an 8010 Star workstation, and an 8010 dedicated as a server (with RS232 I/O), and a floor-standing laser printer. The server software includes a File Server, a Print Server, and distributed services (Mail Server, Clearinghouse Name Server / Directory, and Authentication Server). [[Word processor (electronic device)|Xerox Memorywriter]] typewriters connect to this system over Ethernet and send email, using the Memorywriter as a [[teletype]].

===The Star development process===
The Star was developed at Xerox's Systems Development Department (SDD) in [[El Segundo, California]], which had been established in 1977 under the direction of Don Massaro.<ref>{{Cite web |last= |date=February 15, 2012 |title=Tech before its time: Xerox's shooting Star computer |url=https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328521-800-tech-before-its-time-xeroxs-shooting-star-computer/ |access-date=April 18, 2022 |website=New Scientist |language=en-US}}</ref><ref name="The Xerox Star"/> SDD North was located in [[Palo Alto, California]], including some people borrowed from PARC. SDD's mission was to design the "[[Office of the future]]", a new system to incorporate the best features of the Alto, have ease of use, and to automate many office tasks.<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Xerox "Star": A Retrospective |url=http://www.dcn.org/go/dwnelson/XeroxStarRetrospective.html |access-date=April 18, 2022 |website=www.dcn.org}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Xerox Star Research |url=https://xeroxstar.tripod.com/ |access-date=April 18, 2022 |website=xeroxstar.tripod.com}}</ref>

The development team was headed by [[David Liddle]], and grew to more than 200 developers. Much of the first year was taken up by meetings and planning, resulting in an extensive and detailed functional specification, internally termed the ''Red Book''. This became the bible for all development tasks. It defined the interface and enforced consistency in all modules and tasks. All changes to the functional specification had to be approved by a review team which maintained standards rigorously.

One group in Palo Alto worked on the underlying [[operating system]] interface to the hardware and programming tools. Teams in El Segundo and Palo Alto collaborated on developing the user interface and user applications.

The staff relied heavily on the technologies they were working on: file sharing, print servers, and email.<ref>{{cite news |last=Ollig |first=Mark |date=October 31, 2011 |title=They could have owned the computer industry |work=Herald Journal |url=http://www.herald-journal.com/archives/2011/columns/mo103111.html |access-date=February 26, 2021}}</ref> They were even connected to the [[Internet]], then named [[ARPANET]], which helped them communicate between El Segundo and Palo Alto.

The Star was implemented in the programming language [[Mesa (programming language)|Mesa]], a direct precursor to [[Modula-2]] and [[Modula-3]].<ref>{{cite web
 | url = http://www.modulaware.com/mdlt52.htm
 | title = A Brief History of Modula and Lilith
 | author = Niklaus Wirth
 | date=January 1995
 | work = The ModulaTor Oberon-2 and Modula-2 Technical Publication
 | publisher = modulaware.com
}}</ref> Mesa is not [[object-oriented]], but includes processes (threads) and monitors (mutexes) in the language.<ref>{{cite web
 | url = https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~brewer/cs262/Mesa.pdf
 | title = Experience with Processes and Monitors in Mesa
 | author = Butler Lampson and David Redell
 | date=February 1980
 | work = Communications of the ACM 23:2
}}</ref> Mesa requires creating two files for every module: a definition module specified data structures and procedures for each object, and one or more implementation modules contained the code for the procedures.  Traits is a programming convention used to implement object-oriented capabilities and multiple inheritance in the customer environment of Star and Viewpoint.<ref>{{cite conference
 | title = Traits: An approach to multiple-inheritance subclassing
 | first1 = Gael | last1 = Curry
 | first2 = Larry | last2 = Baer
 | first3 = Daniel | last3 = Lipkie
 | first4 = Bruce | last4 = Lee
 | date= June 21–23, 1982
 | book-title = Proceedings of the SIGOA conference on Office Information Systems
 | pages = 1–9
 | doi = 10.1145/800210.806468 |doi-access=free
 | s2cid = 2847188
 }}</ref>

The Star team used a sophisticated [[integrated development environment]] (IDE), [[codename]]d Tajo and externally named [[Xerox Development Environment]] (XDE). Tajo has many similarities with the [[Smalltalk]]-80 environment, but has many added tools, such as the [[version control]] system DF, which requires programmers to check out modules before they are changed. Any change in a module which force changes in dependent modules are closely tracked and documented. Changes to lower level modules require various levels of approval.

The software development process was intense. It involved much [[prototyping]] and user testing. The [[software engineering|software engineers]] had to develop new network [[communications protocol]]s and data-encoding schemes when those used in PARC's research environment proved inadequate.

Initially, all development was done on Alto workstations. These were not well suited to the extreme burdens placed by the software. Even the processor intended for the product proved inadequate and involved a last minute hardware redesign. Many software redesigns, rewrites, and late additions had to be made, variously based on results from user testing, and marketing and systems considerations.

A [[Japanese language]] version of the system was produced in conjunction with [[Fuji Xerox]], code named J-Star, and full support for international customers.

In the end, many features from the Star Functional Specification were not implemented. The product had to get to market, and the last several months before release focused on reliability and performance.