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Hi, Laine<br>
<br>
FWIW, I recall menus in games - in the sames of an up-front,
mid-screen panel listing options such as 'new game', 'load saved
game', etc. - in titles going back to the very early 1980s and
beyond. Even before anyone but Xerox and computer science academics
were aware of what we today call menus (ie. drop-downs and pop-ups).<br>
<br>
Indeed, if you look back at ealry 1970s games like Star Trek, Hunt
the Wumpus, Colossal Cave, they generally presented a numbered list
of options - hit the appropriate number key to make a selection - as
soon as the game was run. <br>
<br>
Tony Smith<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://search.theregister.co.uk/?q=archaeologic">http://search.theregister.co.uk/?q=archaeologic</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 17/03/2014 16:44, Laine Nooney
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAPigbL_nuC19NX7MuRJ9oe0uhi6t+qE2D1yOJ35_uJR5L=8HWg@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">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?
<div>
<br>
</div>
<div>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.<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>best,</div>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br clear="all">
<div>
<div dir="ltr">Laine Nooney<br>
<div>Department of Cultural Analysis and Theory<br>
</div>
<div>
<div>Stony Brook University</div>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Editorial Assistant to the Journal of Visual Culture<br>
</div>
<div><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://vcu.sagepub.com/" target="_blank">vcu.sagepub.com</a><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.lainenooney.com" target="_blank">www.lainenooney.com</a><br>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<br>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, Mar 16, 2014 at 5:11 PM, Thomas
Haigh <span dir="ltr"><<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:thaigh@computer.org" target="_blank">thaigh@computer.org</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
Hello everyone,<br>
<br>
Pop up and pull down menus had a specific genesis in the
PARC/Xerox/Apple<br>
trajectory of GUI work and have been an object of historical
curiosity. IIRC<br>
PARC had popup menus and Apple added pull down menus.<br>
<br>
In contrast, menus in general are a fairly fundamental
concept in<br>
interactive computing and I suspect would have appeared very
early in the<br>
development of commands and applications for timesharing
systems. The<br>
alternative to a menu was a command line system, but these
required commands<br>
to be typed with no mistakes in exactly the right syntax. A
menu guided<br>
users through valid options, which reduced the error rate
and effectively<br>
let "help" information be integrated with the entry of
commands. Menus could<br>
be used with teletypes as well as VDUs.<br>
<br>
So my personal guess on the origin of menus would be in a
very early<br>
interactive system such as MIT's CTSS, RAND's JOSS, or
something from SDC.<br>
If you are interested in a specific "first" you would also
need to develop a<br>
clear definition of "menu" to distinguish it from a command
prompt.<br>
<br>
Best wishes,<br>
<br>
Tom<br>
<div>
<div class="h5"><br>
-----Original Message-----<br>
From: <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:members-bounces@sigcis.org">members-bounces@sigcis.org</a>
[mailto:<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:members-bounces@sigcis.org">members-bounces@sigcis.org</a>]
On<br>
Behalf Of William McMillan<br>
Sent: Sunday, March 16, 2014 3:42 PM<br>
To: Laine Nooney; sigcis<br>
Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Resources re: history of
menus in computing?<br>
<br>
Hello, Laine.<br>
<br>
Menus were central to the UI of UCSD Pascal, Ken
Bowles's project in the<br>
1970s. Bowles talked with Steve Jobs int he early days
(and later, Gates)<br>
and some of the students who worked on UCSD Pascal went
to Apple and<br>
influenced the development of the Lisa etc. Apple
Pascal (an OS as well as<br>
a programming environment) for the Apple II was UCSD
Pascal.<br>
<br>
There are a lot of good web resources on UCSD Pascal,
and I had a magazine<br>
article on its history in IEEE Spectrum.<br>
<br>
This was certainly an early and influential deployment
of a menu-driven UI.<br>
Games were developed in UCSD Pascal, but I don't know if
they were notable<br>
at all.<br>
<br>
- Bill<br>
- Hide quoted text -<br>
<br>
On 3/15/14, Laine Nooney <<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:laine.nooney@gmail.com">laine.nooney@gmail.com</a>>
wrote:<br>
> Hi all,<br>
><br>
> I'm currently pulling together a short essay for a
game history<br>
> lexicon on the emergence of the menu in games. This
topic is running<br>
> me a bit in circles--menus seem to be one of those
components that are<br>
> so "obvious," or taken for granted in the game dev
realm, that they<br>
> aren't deeply, explicitly talked about.<br>
><br>
> I'm wondering what the respective literature around
"menus" might be<br>
> in the history of computing. Are there obvious
touchstones or<br>
> definitive transitions to be aware of (especially
beyond the visible<br>
> PARC/Apple/Windows GUI histories)?<br>
><br>
> And to be clear, I'm trying to keep this distinct
from UI issues<br>
> (insofar as that's possible!)<br>
><br>
> Any leads, food for thought, or general chatter
would be much appreciated!<br>
><br>
> Best,<br>
><br>
> Laine Nooney<br>
> Department of Cultural Analysis and Theory Stony
Brook University<br>
><br>
> Editorial Assistant to the Journal of Visual
Culture <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://vcu.sagepub.com" target="_blank">vcu.sagepub.com</a><br>
><br>
> <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.lainenooney.com" target="_blank">www.lainenooney.com</a><br>
><br>
</div>
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