🚀 go-pugleaf

Date: 9 Jul 84 14:32:11 PDT (Monday)
From: uw-beaver!Halbert.PA@XEROX.ARPA
Subject: Re: Scripts for Mac/Lisa
In-Reply-To: Peterr%toronto.csnet's message of 8 Jul 84 2:29:39 EDT
 (Sun)
To: Peterr%toronto.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA
Cc: info-mac@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA

Building scripts or programs for the user interface of something like
the Macintosh is an interesting program, and Peter Rowley has done a
good job of summarizing the issues, and why one might want such a
facility.

Some people are indeed working on this problem. One of them is me. For
the past several years, I've been doing thesis research on something
called "programming by example", which is to have a system record the
commands you give it, and turn the trascript into a program you can run.
That is, it's "Do what I did." In particular, I am trying to make it
possible for ordinary non-programming users to write programs to
automate what they would like to do. As Peter said, doing a simple
version of this is easy; generalizing the resulting program, adding
control structure, and finding ways for users to say why they chose the
data they did are problems that makes this a thesis topic.

I've been doing this work as a grad student at Berkeley and a research
intern at the Xerox Office Systems Division in Palo Alto. I have built a
simulation of the Xerox Star office system with a programming-by-example
facility. (Star is the original icon/mouse/integrated-application office
system product.) Things are progressing nicely and I believe I have some
answers for Peter's "open question for point-and-press systems"; it does
indeed seem possible for users to write programs in the user interface
of systems like Star, Lisa, and Macintosh. So take heart, folks, maybe
there's something better than shell scripts on the way.

--Dan Halbert