{"id":2111,"date":"2024-09-11T18:52:18","date_gmt":"2024-09-12T01:52:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/?p=2111"},"modified":"2025-02-25T00:52:22","modified_gmt":"2025-02-25T08:52:22","slug":"software-preserving-the-pen-based-computing-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/2024\/09\/software-preserving-the-pen-based-computing-past\/","title":{"rendered":"software: preserving the pen-based computing past"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I’m fortunate to have been a minor supporting character to some some ground-breaking software that failed in the marketplace: the PenPoint operating system<\/a> from GO Corporation, the NeWS<\/a> network\/extensible window system from Sun Microsystems, ingenious forward quadratic texture mapping<\/a> from Nvidia (when it was struggling), and the Shockwave<\/a> interactive multimedia platform from Macromedia. The tragedy is these efforts preceded digital cameras, PDFs, .png<\/code> screenshots, hardware emulators, and other affordances that make it easy to preserve these great software efforts. So the Wikipedia pages I linked above for those software projects are sorely lacking in screenshots of the software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The hardware exists…<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Someone recently auctioned off a bunch of PenPoint hardware<\/a> and software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"photo
prototype GO pen computer hardware and EO 440 communicator
photo by Ed Devinney<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"photo
I wrote some of that SDK and made an early version of that class diagram in Aldus FreeHand!
photo by Ed Devinney<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

With permission I added the photo of GO’s “Lombard” prototype 286 pen computer<\/a> “slate” hardware (as in “after holding it for a while and trying to handprint flawless letters with a stylus, you feel like you’re holding up a solid piece of slate”) to Wikimedia Commons and added it to the English Wikipedia GO Corporation article.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The software must be out there…<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

All this reminded me of the lack of pictures for this interesting footnote in personal computer history. Here are my notes on where pieces of the software and documentation are available online and where I can contribute (should I ever catch up on my other TODOs…).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PenPoint resources<\/h3>\n\n\n\n