[SIGCIS-Members] Resources re: history of menus in computing?

[Laine Nooney]

Very helpful, Tom and William, thank you. I'm especially interested in
Tom's suggestion re: the general use of a menu as an efficient alternative
to a command line--are there any specific resources anyone knows of that
could offer a citation on that observation?

for those interested, the 1996 Federal Standard 1037C (the Glossary of
Telecommunication Terms) defines a menu as "a displayed list of options
from which a user selects actions to be performed." (ATIS adopted this
definition without change). The specificity of "list" is one of the ways
games are confounding in this context, as games often replace what could be
expressed in a list with lush manipulable simulations.

best,

Laine Nooney
Department of Cultural Analysis and Theory
Stony Brook University

Editorial Assistant to the Journal of Visual Culture
vcu.sagepub.com

www.lainenooney.com


On Sun, Mar 16, 2014 at 5:11 PM, Thomas Haigh <thaigh at computer.org> wrote:

> Hello everyone,
>
> Pop up and pull down menus had a specific genesis in the PARC/Xerox/Apple
> trajectory of GUI work and have been an object of historical curiosity.
> IIRC
> PARC had popup menus and Apple added pull down menus.
>
> In contrast, menus in general are a fairly fundamental concept in
> interactive computing and I suspect would have appeared very early in the
> development of commands and applications for timesharing systems. The
> alternative to a menu was a command line system, but these required
> commands
> to be typed with no mistakes in exactly the right syntax. A menu guided
> users through valid options, which reduced the error rate and effectively
> let "help" information be integrated with the entry of commands. Menus
> could
> be used with teletypes as well as VDUs.
>
> So my personal guess on the origin of menus would be in a very early
> interactive system such as MIT's CTSS, RAND's JOSS, or something from SDC.
> If you are interested in a specific "first" you would also need to develop
> a
> clear definition of "menu" to distinguish it from a command prompt.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Tom
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: members-bounces at sigcis.org [mailto:members-bounces at sigcis.org] On
> Behalf Of William McMillan
> Sent: Sunday, March 16, 2014 3:42 PM
> To: Laine Nooney; sigcis
> Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Resources re: history of menus in computing?
>
> Hello, Laine.
>
> Menus were central to the UI of UCSD Pascal, Ken Bowles's project in the
> 1970s.  Bowles talked with Steve Jobs int he early days (and later, Gates)
> and some of the students who worked on UCSD Pascal went to Apple and
> influenced the development of the Lisa etc.  Apple Pascal (an OS as well as
> a programming environment) for the Apple II was UCSD Pascal.
>
> There are a lot of good web resources on UCSD Pascal, and I had a magazine
> article on its history in IEEE Spectrum.
>
> This was certainly an early and influential deployment of a menu-driven UI.
> Games were developed in UCSD Pascal, but I don't know if they were notable
> at all.
>
> - Bill
> - Hide quoted text -
>
> On 3/15/14, Laine Nooney <laine.nooney at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I'm currently pulling together a short essay for a game history
> > lexicon on the emergence of the menu in games. This topic is running
> > me a bit in circles--menus seem to be one of those components that are
> > so "obvious," or taken for granted in the game dev realm, that they
> > aren't deeply, explicitly talked about.
> >
> > I'm wondering what the respective literature around "menus" might be
> > in the history of computing. Are there obvious touchstones or
> > definitive transitions to be aware of (especially beyond the visible
> > PARC/Apple/Windows GUI histories)?
> >
> > And to be clear, I'm trying to keep this distinct from UI issues
> > (insofar as that's possible!)
> >
> > Any leads, food for thought, or general chatter would be much
> appreciated!
> >
> > Best,
> >
> > Laine Nooney
> > Department of Cultural Analysis and Theory Stony Brook University
> >
> > Editorial Assistant to the Journal of Visual Culture vcu.sagepub.com
> >
> > www.lainenooney.com
> >
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