[vwnc] name of spreadsheet-dtp-text processing product

Can't remember the name of one of the first successful Smalltalk products, containing all this and also Humble, an expert system.
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Are you thinking of Analyst? As I recall, it was used by the US

intelligence agencies to manage data.

 

Terry

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Terry Raymond
Crafted Smalltalk
80 Lazywood Ln.
Tiverton, RI  02878
(401) 624-4517      [hidden email]
<http://www.craftedsmalltalk.com>
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From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Rob Vens
Sent: Wednesday, March 11, 2009 2:00 PM
To: VWNC
Subject: [vwnc] name of spreadsheet-dtp-text processing product

 

Can't remember the name of one of the first successful Smalltalk products, containing all this and also Humble, an expert system.

I would be grateful if someone could refresh my memory, and even more when you can provide links with more info.

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Hi Rob,
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Analyst it was! Strange that this was so hard to google! I tried smalltalk, spreadsheet, humble. Anyway, glad you helped me get on track. Found a more extended post from Roland Wagener:
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Rob

 

 

Do the search on

 

Smalltalk-80 “Analyst”

 

Quoting analyst will reduce the number of variations like ‘analyze’.

 

Terry

===========================================================
Terry Raymond
Crafted Smalltalk
80 Lazywood Ln.
Tiverton, RI  02878
(401) 624-4517      [hidden email]
<http://www.craftedsmalltalk.com>
===========================================================

---

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Rob Vens
Sent: Wednesday, March 11, 2009 5:26 PM
To: VWNC
Subject: Re: [vwnc] name of spreadsheet-dtp-text processing product

 

Analyst it was! Strange that this was so hard to google! I tried smalltalk, spreadsheet, humble. Anyway, glad you helped me get on track. Found a more extended post from Roland Wagener:

 

http://osdir.com/ml/lang.smalltalk.vwnc/2005-05/msg00179.html 

 

Thank you Terry and others.

 

2009/3/11 Terry Raymond <[hidden email]>

Are you thinking of Analyst? As I recall, it was used by the US

intelligence agencies to manage data.

 

Terry

===========================================================
Terry Raymond
Crafted Smalltalk
80 Lazywood Ln.
Tiverton, RI  02878
(401) 624-4517      [hidden email]
<http://www.craftedsmalltalk.com>
===========================================================

---

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Rob Vens
Sent: Wednesday, March 11, 2009 2:00 PM
To: VWNC
Subject: [vwnc] name of spreadsheet-dtp-text processing product

 

Can't remember the name of one of the first successful Smalltalk products, containing all this and also Humble, an expert system.

I would be grateful if someone could refresh my memory, and even more when you can provide links with more info.

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Analyst was developed by Xerox Special Information Systems (XSIS) in
Pasadena, CA, a division that had a lot of business with "the
Customer". Probably dates from the early 1980s.

At that time, word via the XSIS team was that Analyst was used to
give then-President Reagan his daily briefing. Since Reagan was not
considered to be a man who wanted to listen to an involved verbal
presentation, Analyst included a module to generate a map of the
world with superimposed icons and text indicating "situations" deemed
worthy of executive attention.

M. Roberts
Cincom Systems, Inc.

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The Analyst (I think its original name was "The Analyst's Workbench",
"analyst" being a job description at the CIA) was the first big
commercial Smalltalk app.  When XSIS started on it, there were no
machines that ran Smalltalk other than the ones that Xerox made, and
Xerox didn't sell them.  But in 1984/1985, Tektronix started selling
Smalltalk workstations and so they were able to deliver the first
system on it.  Then ParcPlace was founded and Smalltalk R2.4 would run
on Sun 3s, so it was easy for the CIA to get networks with hundreds of
machines running the Analyst.  XSIS sold the Analyst commercially for
awhile.  This was before Office started to dominate, and there was no
other system that integrated spreadsheets, documents, and databases.
Its spreadsheet could perform image processing, so analysts could
download satellite photos and process them before inserting them into
their documents on crop production in the USSR.  They stripped out the
features for ensuring security before they sold it, so the commercial
version wasn't quite the same as what the government got.  However,
the Analyst never took off commercially.  It only made sense for
companies that had a Smalltalker on site to customize it.  It was
complex and took a long time to learn.  Probably XSIS didn't do a good
job of marketing it.  I never worked on the project or used it, but I
talked with XSIS people at OOPSLA, was impressed by demos, and
collected their glossy brochures.  It was a cool system, and it was
too bad that XSIS dropped it.    I bet that if they had tried selling
it in the early 90s, when Smalltalk seemed to be rocketing up, they
could have made it more successful.  But then they probably would have
been hit by the Smalltalk crash in the late 90s.

-Ralph Johnson
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