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Visi On AI simulator
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Visi On AI simulator
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Visi On
Visi On (also known as VisiOn) is an operating environment for MS-DOS, developed by VisiCorp and released in December 1983. Visi On was the first software with a graphical user interface (GUI) for the IBM PC. It was also one of the first GUIs available on any personal computer. Visi On was never popular, as it had steep minimum system requirements for its day, but it was influential in the development of later GUIs like Windows.
VisiCorp had programs for sale that were compatible with VisiOn, including a spreadsheet program called "VisiOn Calc". (Not to be confused with VisiCalc).
One of Visi On's features was an hourglass cursor that indicated when the system was loading data from a disk. At the time, most software would display words on the screen like "busy" or "please wait" instead.
In the spring of 1981, Personal Software was cash-flush from the ever-increasing sales of VisiCalc, and the corporate directors sat down and planned out their future directions. Ed Esber introduced the concept of a "family" of products that could be sold together, but from a technical perspective none of their products were similar in anything but name. For instance, to use VisiPlot with VisiCalc data, the numbers to be plotted had to be exported in a "raw" format and then re-imported.
Dan Fylstra led a technical discussion on what sorts of actions the user would need to be able to accomplish in order for their products to be truly integrated. They decided that there were three key concepts. One was universal data exchange, which would be supported by a set of common data structures used in all of their programs. Another was a common, consistent interface so users would not have to re-learn the UI as they moved from one program to another. Finally, Fylstra was concerned that the time needed to move from one program to another was too long to be useful – a user needing to quickly look something up in VisiDex would have to save and exit VisiCalc, look up the information, and then quit that and re-launch VisiCalc again. This process had to be made quicker and simpler.
In July 1981, Xerox announced the Xerox Star, an advanced workstation computer featuring a graphical user interface (GUI), and by that point it was known that Apple Computer was working on a lower-cost computer with a GUI that would later be released as the Apple Lisa. Personal Software's president, Terry Opdendyk, knew of a two-man team in Texas that was working on a GUI, and arranged for Scott Warren and Dennis Abbe to visit Personal Software's headquarters in Sunnyvale, California. They demonstrated a version of the Smalltalk programming language running on the TRS-80 microcomputer, a seriously underpowered machine for the task. Personal Software was extremely impressed.
A contract was soon signed, and work on project "Quasar" started almost immediately. The name was shortly thereafter changed to Visi On, a play on "vision" that retained their "Visi" naming. An experimental port to the Apple III was completed in November, and after that, development work shifted to the DEC VAX, which had cross-compilers for a number of different machines. In early 1982 Personal Software changed their name to VisiCorp, and was betting much of the future success of the company on Visi On.
Visi On had many features of a modern GUI, and included a few that did not become common until many years later. It was fully mouse-driven, used a bit-mapped display for both text and graphics, included on-line help, and allowed the user to open a number of programs at once, each in its own window. Visi On did not, however, include a graphical file manager. Visi On also demanded a hard drive in order to implement its virtual memory system used for "fast switching", and at the time hard drives were very expensive.
Visi On
Visi On (also known as VisiOn) is an operating environment for MS-DOS, developed by VisiCorp and released in December 1983. Visi On was the first software with a graphical user interface (GUI) for the IBM PC. It was also one of the first GUIs available on any personal computer. Visi On was never popular, as it had steep minimum system requirements for its day, but it was influential in the development of later GUIs like Windows.
VisiCorp had programs for sale that were compatible with VisiOn, including a spreadsheet program called "VisiOn Calc". (Not to be confused with VisiCalc).
One of Visi On's features was an hourglass cursor that indicated when the system was loading data from a disk. At the time, most software would display words on the screen like "busy" or "please wait" instead.
In the spring of 1981, Personal Software was cash-flush from the ever-increasing sales of VisiCalc, and the corporate directors sat down and planned out their future directions. Ed Esber introduced the concept of a "family" of products that could be sold together, but from a technical perspective none of their products were similar in anything but name. For instance, to use VisiPlot with VisiCalc data, the numbers to be plotted had to be exported in a "raw" format and then re-imported.
Dan Fylstra led a technical discussion on what sorts of actions the user would need to be able to accomplish in order for their products to be truly integrated. They decided that there were three key concepts. One was universal data exchange, which would be supported by a set of common data structures used in all of their programs. Another was a common, consistent interface so users would not have to re-learn the UI as they moved from one program to another. Finally, Fylstra was concerned that the time needed to move from one program to another was too long to be useful – a user needing to quickly look something up in VisiDex would have to save and exit VisiCalc, look up the information, and then quit that and re-launch VisiCalc again. This process had to be made quicker and simpler.
In July 1981, Xerox announced the Xerox Star, an advanced workstation computer featuring a graphical user interface (GUI), and by that point it was known that Apple Computer was working on a lower-cost computer with a GUI that would later be released as the Apple Lisa. Personal Software's president, Terry Opdendyk, knew of a two-man team in Texas that was working on a GUI, and arranged for Scott Warren and Dennis Abbe to visit Personal Software's headquarters in Sunnyvale, California. They demonstrated a version of the Smalltalk programming language running on the TRS-80 microcomputer, a seriously underpowered machine for the task. Personal Software was extremely impressed.
A contract was soon signed, and work on project "Quasar" started almost immediately. The name was shortly thereafter changed to Visi On, a play on "vision" that retained their "Visi" naming. An experimental port to the Apple III was completed in November, and after that, development work shifted to the DEC VAX, which had cross-compilers for a number of different machines. In early 1982 Personal Software changed their name to VisiCorp, and was betting much of the future success of the company on Visi On.
Visi On had many features of a modern GUI, and included a few that did not become common until many years later. It was fully mouse-driven, used a bit-mapped display for both text and graphics, included on-line help, and allowed the user to open a number of programs at once, each in its own window. Visi On did not, however, include a graphical file manager. Visi On also demanded a hard drive in order to implement its virtual memory system used for "fast switching", and at the time hard drives were very expensive.