March 2000
Intermediate to advanced
256 pages
6h 43m
English
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Appendix B. SwyftCard Interface Theory of Operation
Some of the principles discussed in this book were first published in the SwyftCard manual, released in 1984. SwyftCard, which plugged into the then highly successful Apple II, was simple by today's standards. Appendix B of its manual contained an unusual feature: Along with the usual theory of operation of the hardware, it also contained a theory of operation of the software and what is probably the first appearance of a user interface theory of operation in any commercial product. In a way, that appendix was the beginning of this book. The quoted material is from the second edition (Alzofon and Raskin 1985).
The paradigms used in SwyftCard were invented to cure a host of problems shared by ...