On: Oberon OS Walkthrough (2009)

[pjmlp]

> Another good example is TempleOS where you can render graphics into the cli and interact with them.

Lisp and Smalltalk did it first. :)

[mikelevins → pjmlp]

Yes, and the logical extremes, to my mind, were Symbolics Genera (a Lisp-machine OS) and Apple's Sk8 (a "HyperCard on steroids" rapid-application-development environment built on Macintosh Common Lisp).

In Genera, any output to a repl window was not dead text; it was a live and mouse-sensitive reference to the actual object in memory. You could mouse on it to get a dynamically-generated menu of operations supported by the pointed-to value, or call functions on it, or whatever.

In Sk8 you could grab an arbitrary widget anywhere on the screen and drop it on a MessageBox window to obtain a named variable referring to it. You could then operate on it in a manner similar to that described above.

[pjmlp → mikelevins]

Interlisp-D did it as well, however we only have the written documentation and manuals.

Maybe with the new revival project it can be relieved again.

[mikelevins → pjmlp]

I do hope so.

I have their current software running locally. It's essentially a museum piece in its present state, but what I understand from Larry Masinter is that they've got the license unencumbered and intend to turn it back into a going project. I can't wait!