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Larry Tesler pioneered cut-and-paste, the one-button mouse, WYSIWYG (2005)

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Re: Larry Tesler pioneered cut-and-paste, the one-button mouse, WYSIWYG (2005)

#31

Post by II2II »

amszmidt wrote: post #9
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #3

Larry Tesler was a great figure in computing history, but why is this being reposted now? "Inventor of Cut/Paste" is such a ... limited ... way to describe his accomplishments.

Limited, and also wrong -- Tesler didn't invent any of those. They existed already by 1973 (supposed date of these inventions at Xerox PARC); e.g. TECO from MIT and E from Yale had functionality for cutting/pasting, replacing strings, etc.

The wording of the article suggests that he came up with the term "cut and paste", rather than the concept:

> In 1969 Tesler volunteered to help create a catalog for the Bay Area’s Mid-Peninsula Free University. He and Jim Warren, founder of the West Coast Computer Faire, did the paste-up for that catalog. Around the same time, Tesler saw a demo of a computer command that allowed you to bring back something that you had deleted. The command was called “Escape P Semicolon” (or something similarly arcane). Several years later, when Tesler was at Xerox PARC writing a white paper about the future of computing, he drew on the memory of those two experiences to predict that you would be able to “cut and paste” within computer documents.

Re: Larry Tesler pioneered cut-and-paste, the one-button mouse, WYSIWYG (2005)

#34

Post by kps »

bluGill wrote: post #29

One button mouse was one of the worst inventions. Mice need at least 3 buttons to be useful. You sometimes need to select something and sometimes you need to launch it. Or you need to select in several different ways. Because of this miss-invention they had to invent the double-click and all the complexity of timing (try making double click for someone old an nearing senile and someone young and fast with the same ti…

Double-clicking is also undiscoverable. People had to be taught about it. Nothing natural or previously familiar works that way.

Re: Larry Tesler pioneered cut-and-paste, the one-button mouse, WYSIWYG (2005)

#35

Post by II2II »

bluGill wrote: post #29

One button mouse was one of the worst inventions. Mice need at least 3 buttons to be useful. You sometimes need to select something and sometimes you need to launch it. Or you need to select in several different ways. Because of this miss-invention they had to invent the double-click and all the complexity of timing (try making double click for someone old an nearing senile and someone young and fast with the same ti…

I don't know what the ideal number of mouse buttons, but agree that it is more than one. The odd thing is it's appearance in the Macintosh: a computer where the user was supposed to orient most of their actions around the mouse.

That said, I'm pretty sure the double click came about because certain operations were costly. There is no particular reason why would couldn't use a single click to launch and application or load a document, except an accidental click would force the user to wait for the process to complete (and it could take an unreasonably long period of time on older systems). Assigning that function to a secondary button would potentially make the problem worse since the user would have to keep the functions straight while learning the system, while accidentally clicking the wrong button would be more frequent than accidentally clicking a button.

Re: Larry Tesler pioneered cut-and-paste, the one-button mouse, WYSIWYG (2005)

#36

Post by kps »

mark-r wrote: post #6

It amazes me that something as simple and obvious as cut and paste had to be invented. Even more amazing that we can actually point to the person that did it.

The alternative, as used e.g. by the Xerox Star, was select-and-copy/move. The advantage over cut-and-paste is that you don't have invisible fragile state.

However, the Star implementation had copy and move modes (select source, COPY, mouse to destination, CLICK) and Tesler hated modes. I don't know why Star didn't use the modeless version (select source, mouse to destination, COPY).

Re: Larry Tesler pioneered cut-and-paste, the one-button mouse, WYSIWYG (2005)

#37

Post by PopAlongKid »

Just as others have pointed out that cut-and-paste was a term around a long time before this reference, so too was WYSIWYG. The Dramatics had a top popular song in 1971[0] using the same phrase as its title (albeit spelled slightly differently).

I hope we don't hear next about the computer hero who "invented" the term "desktop", or "folder".

[0]https://www.discogs.com/master/185397-The-Dramatics-Whatcha-...

Re: Larry Tesler pioneered cut-and-paste, the one-button mouse, WYSIWYG (2005)

#38

Post by bluGill »

II2II wrote: post #35
bluGill wrote: post #29

One button mouse was one of the worst inventions. Mice need at least 3 buttons to be useful. You sometimes need to select something and sometimes you need to launch it. Or you need to select in several different ways. Because of this miss-invention they had to invent the double-click and all the complexity of timing (try making double click for someone old an nearing senile and someone young and fast with the same ti…

I don't know what the ideal number of mouse buttons, but agree that it is more than one. The odd thing is it's appearance in the Macintosh: a computer where the user was supposed to orient most of their actions around the mouse. That said, I'm pretty sure the double click came about because certain operations were costly. There is no particular reason why would couldn't use a single click to launch and application or…

Apple wanted to advertise you couldn't press the wrong button, which meant they couldn't have more than one button.

Re: Larry Tesler pioneered cut-and-paste, the one-button mouse, WYSIWYG (2005)

#40

Post by no_wizard »

readthenotes1 wrote: post #32
mark-r wrote: post #6

It amazes me that something as simple and obvious as cut and paste had to be invented. Even more amazing that we can actually point to the person that did it.

Sliced bread was invented in the 20th century

Important to note: mechanically, uniformly and massively available sliced bread.

Of course bread has been served sliced for centuries before

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