DISPLAY(ID:3042/dis007)Graphical system driven by text commands designed as a querying subsystem for TDMS, and written on top of (and shelling out to) TINT System Development Corporation Related languages
References: in [AFIPS] Proceedings of the 1968 Spring Joint Computer Conference SJCC 32 view details The DISPLAY system The DISPLAY system was written at System Development Corporation, Santa Monica, California, in 1967, see Bowman and Lickhalter (1968). DISPLAY, a system for graphical data management in a timeshared environment, was written as a forerunner of the display component of TDMS (Time-Shared Data Management System) being implemented on the IBM System 360 family of computers. (TDMS became operational in the summer of 1968, see Datamation, August 1968, p. 95.) The three goals in designing DISPLAY were: to provide satisfactory response within a timeshared computer; to produce a system easy for the nonprogrammer to use; and, by achieving the first two goals, to gain users for the system in order to obtain feedback to improve the system. These three goals have been achieved by the DISPLAY system implemented on the SDC Q-32 machine, running under the time-sharing system with no special consideration from the executive. The primary function of the system is to allow graphical examination of stored data. However, excursions into TINT (a higher order Algol-type interpreter) are allowed whereby a user can perform nonstandard operations on the data. For example, assume we are using DISPLAY and we have already specified the data to be retrieved (time for data retrieval varies from 15 seconds to 5 or 6 minutes). At this point we could call TINT and specify a TINT program (from a list of already written programs), or write a new TINT program on-line. The TINT program then operates on the data and outputs a graphic data array which is fed into DISPLAY, and DISPLAY presents the graphic output on the scope. This capability could be used to do data-fitting similar to that provided by PEG (see Section 2.4: PEG system) if the appropriate TINT programs were available. in [ACM] ACM Computing Surveys 2(4) Dec1970 view details |