PenPoint OS
Encyclopedia
The PenPoint OS was a product of GO Corporation and was one of the earliest operating system
s written specifically for graphical tablets
and personal digital assistant
s. It ran on AT&T
's EO Personal Communicator
as well as a number of Intel x86 powered tablet PC
s including IBM
's ThinkPad
700T series, NCR
's 3125, 3130 and some of GRiD Systems' pen-based portables.
Developers of the PenPoint OS included Robert Carr
, who was involved with the Alto computer at Xerox PARC
.
awarded PenPoint best Operating System in the 1992 Byte Awards. PenPoint won in the Standards and Operating Systems category in PC Magazine
's 1991 Technical Excellence awards.
The PenPoint operating system had novel early implementations of several computing advances, including:
In April 2008, as part of a larger federal court case, the gesture features of the Windows/Tablet PC operating system and hardware were found to infringe on a patent by GO Corp.
concerning user interfaces for the PenPoint OS.
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
s written specifically for graphical tablets
Tablet computer
A tablet computer, or simply tablet, is a complete mobile computer, larger than a mobile phone or personal digital assistant, integrated into a flat touch screen and primarily operated by touching the screen...
and personal digital assistant
Personal digital assistant
A personal digital assistant , also known as a palmtop computer, or personal data assistant, is a mobile device that functions as a personal information manager. Current PDAs often have the ability to connect to the Internet...
s. It ran on AT&T
AT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...
's EO Personal Communicator
EO Personal Communicator
The EO was an early commercial tablet computer created by GO/Eo and released in April 1993. Eo was the hardware spin-out of GO. Officially named the AT&T EO Personal Communicator, it was similar to a large personal digital assistant with wireless communications, and competed against the Apple...
as well as a number of Intel x86 powered tablet PC
Tablet computer
A tablet computer, or simply tablet, is a complete mobile computer, larger than a mobile phone or personal digital assistant, integrated into a flat touch screen and primarily operated by touching the screen...
s including IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
's ThinkPad
ThinkPad
ThinkPad is line of laptop computers originally sold by IBM but now produced by Lenovo. They are known for their boxy black design, which was modeled after a traditional Japanese lunchbox...
700T series, NCR
NCR Corporation
NCR Corporation is an American technology company specializing in kiosk products for the retail, financial, travel, healthcare, food service, entertainment, gaming and public sector industries. Its main products are self-service kiosks, point-of-sale terminals, automated teller machines, check...
's 3125, 3130 and some of GRiD Systems' pen-based portables.
Developers of the PenPoint OS included Robert Carr
Robert Carr (Programmer)
Robert Carr is credited as the architect of GO Corporation's PenPoint OS. He was profiled in the book Programmers at Work , where he was credited as the author of Framework....
, who was involved with the Alto computer at Xerox PARC
Xerox PARC
PARC , formerly Xerox PARC, is a research and co-development company in Palo Alto, California, with a distinguished reputation for its contributions to information technology and hardware systems....
.
Awards and innovation
Byte magazineByte (magazine)
BYTE magazine was a microcomputer magazine, influential in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s because of its wide-ranging editorial coverage...
awarded PenPoint best Operating System in the 1992 Byte Awards. PenPoint won in the Standards and Operating Systems category in PC Magazine
PC Magazine
PC Magazine is a computer magazine published by Ziff Davis Publishing Holdings Inc. A print edition was published from 1982 to January 2009...
's 1991 Technical Excellence awards.
The PenPoint operating system had novel early implementations of several computing advances, including:
- a large set of gesturesGesture recognitionGesture recognition is a topic in computer science and language technology with the goal of interpreting human gestures via mathematical algorithms. Gestures can originate from any bodily motion or state but commonly originate from the face or hand. Current focuses in the field include emotion...
such as circle to edit, X to delete, and caret to insert - using the same gestures at all levels of the operating system and applications
- press and hold for moving any selection, which showed the selection as a floating icon to be dropped into a destination
- a rich notebook user interface metaphorInterface metaphorAn Interface metaphor is a set of user interface visuals, actions and procedures that exploit specific knowledge that users already have of other domains. The purpose of the interface metaphor is to give the user instantaneous knowledge about how to interact with the user interface...
: Documents existed as pages in a notebook with tabs (this was not new in PenPoint, but PenPoint was the first to make it a primary OS interface; Microsoft later did it in Windows for Pen ComputingWindows for Pen ComputingWindows for Pen Computing was a software suite for Windows 3.1x, that Microsoft designed to incorporate pen computing capabilities into the Windows operating environment...
) - a document architecture where each document was a directory nested in another document's directory (in some sense, this was an extension of the document architecture on MulticsMulticsMultics was an influential early time-sharing operating system. The project was started in 1964 in Cambridge, Massachusetts...
) - dynamic toolkit layout: this allowed applications to rescale for landscape and portrait orientation
- a system-wide pluggable address bookAddress bookAn address book or a name and address book is a book or a database used for storing entries called contacts. Each contact entry usually consists of a few standard fields...
In April 2008, as part of a larger federal court case, the gesture features of the Windows/Tablet PC operating system and hardware were found to infringe on a patent by GO Corp.
GO Corp.
GO Corporation was founded in 1987 to create portable computers, an operating system, and software with a pen-based user interface. It was famous not only for its pioneering work in Pen-based computing but as well as being one of the most well-funded start-up companies of its time.Though the...
concerning user interfaces for the PenPoint OS.
Third-party applications
The novel user interface of PenPoint and the mobile form factor of pen computers inspired many startup software companies, including:- Inkwriter by Aha! Software which was purchased by Microsoft and became the basis for Microsoft's Windows JournalWindows JournalWindows Journal is a notetaking application, created by Microsoft and included in Windows XP Tablet PC Edition as well as Home Premium or superior editions of Windows Vista and Windows 7. It allows the user to create and organize handwritten notes and drawings and to save them in a JNT-File...
- FutureWave SoftwareFutureWave SoftwareFutureWave Software was a software developer and publisher based in San Diego, California. The company was founded by Charlie Jackson and Jonathan Gay in early 1993. VP of Marketing was Michelle Welsh who also came from Silicon Beach Software, then Aldus....
(SmartSketchFutureSplash AnimatorFutureSplash Animator was a vector-based animation editor written by Jonathan Gay for this company FutureWave Software. The company and the product were later bought by Macromedia then Adobe Systems, and became Adobe Flash ....
, a vector-drawing program that evolved into Adobe FlashAdobe FlashAdobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...
) - Glyphic Technology (Glyphic Script prototype-basedPrototype-based programmingPrototype-based programming is a style of object-oriented programming in which classes are not present, and behavior reuse is performed via a process of cloning existing objects that serve as prototypes. This model can also be known as classless, prototype-oriented or instance-based programming...
programmingComputer programmingComputer programming is the process of designing, writing, testing, debugging, and maintaining the source code of computer programs. This source code is written in one or more programming languages. The purpose of programming is to create a program that performs specific operations or exhibits a...
languageProgramming languageA programming language is an artificial language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a machine and/or to express algorithms precisely....
, with Codeworks direct interactive programming environmentIntegrated development environmentAn integrated development environment is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development...
) - PenMagic (Numero spreadsheet and LetterExpress document fill-in templates)
- Pensoft (Perspective personal data manager, winner of a BYTE award in 1992). Pensoft was acquired by EoEO Personal CommunicatorThe EO was an early commercial tablet computer created by GO/Eo and released in April 1993. Eo was the hardware spin-out of GO. Officially named the AT&T EO Personal Communicator, it was similar to a large personal digital assistant with wireless communications, and competed against the Apple...
. - Slate (several pen applications). Slate's founders included industry luminaries Dan Bricklin and Bob FrankstonBob FrankstonRobert M. Frankston is the co-creator with Dan Bricklin of the VisiCalc spreadsheet program and the co-founder of Software Arts, the company that developed it....
. - Gaia Software (Personal Media personal productivity applications)
- Conic Systems (LocatorGIS survey/mapping application that briefly went into production at Ordnance Survey in the UK)
- Ink DevelopmentEShopeShop was a company founded in May, 1991. It was started as a software company to develop products for Go Corporation's PenPoint operation system. In later years, it developed software for the Windows for Pen Computing and Magic Cap platforms...
released InkWare NoteTaker and InkWare Photo. Pierre OmidyarPierre OmidyarPierre Morad Omidyar is a French-Iranian American entrepreneur and philanthropist/economist, and the founder/chairman of the eBay auction site...
and Greg SteinGreg SteinGreg Stein , living in Fairfax, VA, USA, is a programmer, speaker, sometime standards architect, and open-source software advocate, appearing frequently at conferences and in interviews on the topic of open-source software development and use.He is a director of the Apache Software Foundation, and...
were two of the founders. Ink Development renamed themselves eShop when they pivoted to electronic commerce software and was later acquired by Microsoft.
Further reading
- Jennifer Edstrom, Marlin Eller, Barbarians Led by Bill Gates, ISBN 0-80-505755-2, Holt, 1999.
External links
- Thoughts on The Power of PenPoint
- Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure
- Barbarians led by Bill Gates — Contains two chapters dealing with the story of GO Corporation and the PenPoint OS from a view inside Microsoft.
- Microsoft found to infringe PenPoint gesture patent