Originally published by Hacker News
During the “throw everything at the wall and see what sticks” years of home computing, up to around 1995, a lot was thrown and a lot failed to stick. Sometimes clumps would form that appeared to have the combined friction necessary to maintain wall grip, each holding the other up. But, like Mitch Hedberg’s observation of belts and belt loops, it was difficult to discern who was helping who stick to what.
Take for example, our focus today. We have a completely novel CPU, built by a tiny team of engineers who had never designed a processor before, running a bespoke operating system squeezed out in a rush to meet the shipping deadline of a computer that wanted to carry on the legacy of a system beloved by British schoolchildren, hosting a productivity suite that completely rethought what the term “productivity suite” even meant.
Together, they formed a complete computing dead-end. Yet separately, they each achieved life beyond expectations, given their shaky beginnings.
Let’s start with the hardware, Acorn Computer Ltd.’s follow-up to the famous 8-bit BBC Micro, the Archimedes. Feeling the 16-bit processors of the day didn’t deliver enough bang-for-the-quid, they began an investigation into 32-bit processor options. After reading a U.C. Berkeley paper extolling the virtues of the RISC architecture, and seeing firsthand the ease with which chips could be designed, in 1983 Acorn launched the Acorn RISC Machine project to develop the 32-bit brain of their next system.
The fruit of that labor, the ARM processor, defined the Archimedes line. Try as they might, Acorn could never crack the home market the way they did education. Still, those ARM CPUs had longevity well beyond the life of the company that commissioned it. Your smartphone likely has ARM in it right now, and Apple’s entire current hardware ecosystem is built on its spec.
That powerful hardware needed a preemptive multitasking operating system that befit its computing prowess.That was to be ARX, whose troubled development missed the product launch window. In the meantime, so the computer could havesomethingdriving it at launch, a stop-gap operating system called Arthur was shipped. It was similar to Acorn’s previous BBC Micro MOS (Machine Operating System), with a graphical layer grafted on top; hit F12 and that text interface will peek out from behind the curtain. Over time it was decided that Arthur was doing a bang-up job and ARX was cancelled.
Thus was born RISC OS, a cooperative multitasking WIMP (windows, icons, menu, pointer) with possibly the first application “dock” on a home computer. Its mandatory three-button mouse summons an application’s current context menu at the pointer location; there are no menu bars whatsoever. Drag-and-drop is embraced as a central file management metaphor, even to save documents. On top of all that, it was the first to offer scalable, anti-aliased font rendering, even if its fonts were a little “off brand.”
On top of this unique foundation, we havePipeDream. Developer Mark Colton was convinced that the boundaries between word processor, spreadsheet, and database were artificial and could be eliminated. A document should be able to do any of those functions at any time, anywhere on the page, he posited. One might think, “Oh, likeGoogle Sheets.” butPipeDreamhandles word processing more elegantly. Another might think, “Oh, likeApple Pages” but the spreadsheet and database functions are more robust inPipeDream. This particular balance of the three productivity functions feels unique amongst even its modern peers.
Does a productivity suite work better when it’s just a single app? Did Colton successfully execute his vision? And where is the Homerton documentary we deserve?
(I didn’t know Ghost blogging platform forces images to 2000px max; I’ve revised my design workflow to mitigate this in the future. To make amends for this timeline’s illegibility at 2000px, please accept this PDF version)
RPCEmuv371 on Windows 11RISC OS v3.71024 x 768 15-bit color64MB RAM
1024 x 768 15-bit color
My process when first examining unfamiliar systems is as follows:
launch my application of interest
make a dummy document
quit the emulator entirely and reboot
load my saved document
I do that across a variety of emulators to see which gives me the least grief; I need to be sure I can trust a basic productivity loop. I usually try to give it a go without research, to see how far I can get on pure skillz (with a Z).
It’s unusual to sit down at what appears to be a computer I understand and be baffled every step of the way. I’ve heard this system described as “elegant” and “easy to learn.” This has me questioning if maybe I’m actually a very dumb person because my impression is “uncomfortable.”
You know that modern horror story, aka “creepypasta”,The Backrooms? It’s a hidden world that co-exists with our own, which can be entered only by clipping through a seam of reality which separates the two. In there, buzzing fluorescents light an infinite maze of featureless, yellow-wallpapered office-style floor layouts.
If one were to find a running computer there, I suspect RISC OS would drive it.
It’s just common enough in its GUI metaphors to feel familiar, and just off-kilter enough to turn that familiarity against you. Liam Proven wrote inThe Register, “Youwillfind it very disorienting, especially if all you know is post-1990s OSes.” My dude, I’ve been computing since the1970sand I find it disorienting.
Nothing is unlearnable (I’m dumb, not incompetent), but I genuinely had to work through its manual to acclimate myself. To be clear, I enjoyed the thrill of venturing into the unknown. After all, one of the goals of this blog is to investigate the less-trodden paths in software history. Still, there are times when I feel RISC OS is"having me on."(trying to ingratiate myself with British readers in today’s post)
I’ll start with the three-button mouse. From left to right the buttons are “Select”, “Menu”, and “Adjust.” After weeks working with the system, I still can’t figure out what problem the “Adjust” button solves. It’s semi-analogous toCTRL + Left-clickon modern systems, as when clicking to add/remove elements to/from a set of selected items. Then, sometimes it does something unexpected like, “drag a window by its title bar without bringing that window to the front.”
Other times it is baffling.Select-dragginga file icon to a new folder location doesn’t move the file to the new location. Itcopiesthe file. If you want tomovethe file, you mustSHIFT + Select-drag. Why are we “SHIFT” dragging anything when we have a perfectly good “Adjust” button?
Sometimes the “Adjust” button does “opposite” actions. Click a “down” scroll arrow with “Adjust” and it will to scrollupinstead. Is that an “adjustment?” What does it even mean, to “Adjust” a mouse click? It seems like it could meananything, and that’s kind of my point. It’s unguessable and unintuitive.
An interesting UI element (which predates NeXT and Windows 95) is the Icon Tray, an important tool inexplicablynot described at allin the RISC OS 3 manual. Situated along the bottom of the screen, currently running applications and directory icons sit on a little shelf. Double-click “Select” on an application icon to launch it and… nothing.
Its icon displays in the Icon Tray, and that’s it. We must now Single-click “Select” onthaticon to actually bring the application to the forefront and activate it. I don’t know what that’s all about, but that’s how it works.
Menus are fascinating in both the positive and negative meanings of the word. There are no menus on screen whatsoever, they are only made visible by the middle “Menu” mouse button. “Menu” clicking opens a given menu at the current mouse pointer location. Icons in the Icon Tray can be “Menu” clicked to get application-level menus, like “Make a new document.” Within a document, “Menu” click will give us document-level options. Conceptually, I like the “Menu” button a lot.
Within a menu, any choices which open dialog boxes or control panels tend to open in-menu. It’s kind of cool, being able to type, or flip switches and radio buttons, directly inside the menu itself, rather than popping up a modal window. However, it is jarring to have large panels suddenly lunge out like a xenomorph’s inner jaws when scrolling through menus. These can obscure the root menu, depending on screen position.
The last point to get our collective heads around is file saving. When saving a new document, simply typing in a file name is not sufficient. Save dialog boxes expect and require the full path to your save destination; no assumptions or default folder locations are provided.
You can manually type in the full path to your desired save location like this:HostFS::HostFS.$.Apps.Documents.Examples.Tutorial.StoneDoc
While you type, the system willnotassist you in navigating the directory structure; no autocompletion here. You must know the path by heart.
The other option, as described in manuals, is to drag-and-drop your document to its save location. Drag-and-drop really seems to be the RISC OS idiomatic way to manipulate files. In a Save dialog box there is a little icon for the application. It looks like decoration, but it physically represents your document. Type a name into the text field, thendrag that iconto your desired save folder.
I don’t want to get bogged down enumerating RISC OS’s idiosyncrasies, but a few more things need mentioning. There is a kind of “programmer’s art” ugliness to the user interface; those folder icons are terrible. There are graphical glitches, as when scrolling a window too quickly (though moving windows around shows full contents, which wasn’t typical during that period). Everything you set up to customize the system, like desktop icons, window positions, desktop resolution, and other settings is reset every boot unless you manually tell the system to save the current state as the “boot file.” The list goes on like that.
OK,nowlet’s get to work
Sheesh, what a journey just to understand the basics. I expect that kind of learning curve for the text-based systems, as those DOS-like commands are unknown to me. For a GUI system to throw this"spanner in the works"(continuing my pandering) is unexpected, but a fun challenge. I can’t feel myself growing to love it, but the initial feeling of discombobulationisreceding.
Colton’s grand unified theory of spreadsheets
A spreadsheet is an ordered matrix of cells, each of which can hold text or math. Cells with text are typically used as labels for columns and rows of numbers, and the math cells do the work of calculating relationships between those numbers. It’s all very simple. No, wait, I mean it’s"easy-peasy."(commitment to the bit)
Lotus 1-2-3felt “columns and rows” could also be useful for textual data. They said the line between spreadsheets and databases is pretty fuzzy, and even today spreadsheets are used to hold and manipulate simple databases.
Then racecar driver Mark Colton pierced the veil entirely. It wasn’t just spreadsheets and databases that had a fuzzy separation. If we can type arbitrary text into a cell in a spreadsheet, why couldn’t we type an entire book? What if all applications were really just one application, in the end? He fired his first shot at uniting everything inView Professional.
This was released asPipeDreamon the Cambridge Z88, a portable Z80 machine by Sir Clive Sinclair’s Cambridge Computer. Built into the ROM itself, it was insta-boot, insta-launch right into a multi-purpose integrated document suite. Jerry Pournelle, inBYTE Magazine’s February 1989 issue, was moderately enamored with the hardware, butPipeDreamwas, “disappointingly hard to use.”
With Acorn evolving their BBC Micro via the Archimedes, Colton continued to support their hardware line. In interviews, he seemed to really be leaning toward Windows for the future of his company. However, since he switched development to C and there was a C compiler for the Archimedes, he said it wasn’t hard to provide his product to the Acorn crowd. Running on Arthur, the precursor to RISC OS, he embraced and extended the “one document, many forms” approach.
Much like today’sGoogle Sheets,we can add arbitrarily long sections of text, insert images, set up database information, perform spreadsheet calculations, run spellcheck, and generate inline graphs. However, try typing a chapter of a book intoGoogle Sheetsif you want to drive yourself"mental."(there’s no stopping me) InPipeDream, that’s frictionless (within a certain definition of “friction”).
Like RISC OS itself,PipeDreamalso requires certain shifts in thinking to not lose a finger to its sharp edges. I suppose that when a developer offers a truly new paradigm, it is fair to ask users to meet it halfway. I’m not convinced the advertising (see “Historical Record” at the end) gave customers a full understanding of how drastic that shift was.
“Menu” click the Icon Tray icon (i.e. the application-level menu) forPipeDreamto start up a new “Text” file and begin typing into cell A1. You’ll find that text overflows, across cell boundaries, until it hits the “row wrap marker” seen in the rightmost column header (shown as a “down arrow” icon).
Every line of text is its own row, in spreadsheet terms. As you type,PipeDreamfills the current row, then silently inserts a new row to catch overflow. Until a paragraph break, these rows are internally associated as a logical unit. Edits which alter or disrupt text flow across rows within a paragraph are not reflected immediately in the UI. Or maybe they are? It’s hard to tell with the graphic glitches in the screen redraw, a constant source of frustration while working on this article.
PipeDreamconcedes the reflow point itself. When in doubt about the current visual structure of your text,CTRL + R, a manual action, will forcePipeDreamto recalculate text wrapping and line spacing. This can be mitigated a bit through a hidden toggle in the “Options” screen, the confusingly named “Insert on Return.” This reduces the need to force a manual reflow, but can still leave visual chaos.
I’ve altered the text flow and initiated a recalculation of the lines. It does the work, but visually shows no change until I trigger a graphics refresh in some way. Selecting the text works, but then leaves its own graphic artifacts behind. I’ve"gone nutter!"(yes, these are in the captions as well!)
Interestingly, I saw similar redraw issues inView Professionalon the BBC Micro. It would appear this is, to some extent, part of the software’s DNA. Honestly, this is all"a bit of a shambles."(the hits keep coming)
Have you ever wanted a word processor that won’t indent paragraphs?PipeDreambeing a chimera, navigation idioms are forced to choose which parent they love most. An examination of theTABkey demonstrates this.
In a word processor, we usually have a horizontal page ruler with tab stops. Tab over
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