naiman-1984-introduction-to-the-lisa

Introduction to the Lisa

Also by Arthur Naiman 

Every Goy's Guide to Common Jewish Expressions 

Introduction to WordStar 

Word Processing Buyer's Guide 

Computer Dictionary for Beginners 

The First Book to Read about the IBM Personal 

Computer

Introduction to the Lisa 

Arthur Naiman 

... 

...... 

Addison-Wesley Publishing Company 

Reading, Massachusetts Menlo Park, California 

London Amsterdam Don Mills, Ontario Sydney

Lisa is a trademark of Apple Computer, Inc. Macintosh is a 

trademark licensed to Apple Computer, Inc. 

"Master and Boatswain," copyright 1944 by W. H. Auden. Reprinted 

from W H. Auden: Collected Poems, edited by Edward Mendelson, 

by permission of Random House, Inc. 

"The Eye," copyright 1941, 1944, and renewed 1969, 1972 by Donnan 

Jeffers and Garth Jeffers. Reprinted from Selected Poems, by 

Robinson Jeffers, by permission of Random House, Inc. 

Copyright© 1984 by Arthur Naiman 

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, 

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any 

means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or 

otherwise, without the prior written permission of the Publisher. 

Printed in the United States of America. Published simultaneously 

in Canada. 

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data 

Naiman, Arthur. 

Introduction to the lisa. 

Includes index. 

1. Lisa computer. I. Title. 

QA76.8.L55N35 1984 001.64 

ISBN 0-201-15895-7 

84-327 

Jacket design by Marshall Henrichs. Text design by Lori Snell. 

Set in 11-point Aster by Kingsport Press. 

ISBN 0-201-15895-7 

ABCDEFGHIJ-HA-8987654

for Kai 

and 

for Ellie

Contents 

Acknowledgments 

IX 

Introduction 1 

1 The Lisa's Hardware 

and How It's Different from Other Computers' 5 

2 The Lisa's Software 

and How It's Different from Other Computers' 23 

3 Using a Lisa for the First Time 85 

4 Word Processing with LisaWrite 93 

5 Managing a Data Base with LisaList 117 

6 Predicting the Future with LisaCalc 123 

7 Making Business Charts with LisaGraph 135 

8 Scheduling and Job Tracking with LisaProject 153 

9 Drawing Diagrams and Pictures with 

LisaDraw 169 

10 Communicating with LisaTerminal 193 

11 Doing More with a Lisa 197 

Index 201

Acknowledgments 

When the editor of a book is mentioned in the acknowledgments, 

it's often interesting to look for what's not 

said. Since there are almost always difficulties between 

author and editor, and since there's no point in writing 

an acknowledgment if it's going to be negative, authors 

tend to "accentuate the positive." But you won't have 

to read between the lines here-working with Ted Buswick 

has been a complete delight in every way. 

Ron Lichty continues his unbroken string of acknowledgments 

in my books (six for six). He read a 

draft of the first three chapters and made many helpful 

suggestions-as did that computer wizard and inexhaustible 

source of ban mots, Fred Davis. For their reading 

of the same draft, Mike Bradley and Meg Holmberg 

tried to pretend they knew less about computers than 

they do; their comments helped me see where my writing 

was obscure, confusing and-worst of all-not 

funny. 

I also want to express my appreciation to five small 

islands of competence and sanity in a sea of bureaucratic 

ineptitude so vast and deep it would flabbergast 

even an employee of the New York City Board of Education 

(connoisseurs of world-class passive aggression will 

appreciate the enormity of this statement). How the Apple 

Computer Company managed, in a few short years, 

to grow into something beyond Kafka's wildest nightix

x 


mares will no doubt fascinate scholars for centuries to 

come; I'm just grateful that a handful of its employees 

Linda Goff en, Ron Perrotta, Burt Cummings, Bill Libbey 

and Karen Steele-somehow managed to buck the tide. 

A few others at Apple also tried to help, but found 

themselves as powerless as that ancient king who sat 

on his throne and ordered the advancing sea to halt, 

futilely continuing even as the water washed about his 

ankles, then his knees . . . 

Pete Lundstrom (or Lungstrom-the records are 

unclear) suggested I write this book and encouraged· 

me in the early stages. Mike Nadelman of Apex Information 

Systems tried to do what Apple couldn't-give me 

an opportunity to look at LisaTerminal-but the fates 

conspired against us. 

Janice Byer did her usual fine job of copy-editing. 

Marshall Henrichs made the cover of the book look 

beautiful, and Lori Snell did the same for the inside. 

I also want to thank Charlie Rubin, Ira Rosenberg, 

Tom Crosley, Bill Finzer, Steve Rosenthal, Tony Pietsch, 

Kathleen MacEnroe, Gloria Zarifa, Yvette Manson, 

Nancy Shine, Matthew Lasar, Dave Brast, Victor 

Fischer, Cheryl Nichols, Albert and Nettie Naiman, 

Rita Gibian, Jane Margold, Eric Angress and Eva Walen 

for aid and comfort of various kinds.

Introduction to the Lisa

Introduction 

If you're looking for a personal computer and wonder 

if Apple's Lisa might be right for you, this book will 

give you a very good feeling for its strengths and weaknesses. 

If you already own a Lisa (or have definitely 

decided to buy one), this book will get you started using 

it much more quickly and easily than Apple's own user 

manual and training program-because, unlike them, 

it presents information in the order you need to know 

it, and explains things clearly and simply. 

Chapter 1 describes the Lisa's hardware and how 

it's different from more traditional computer equipment. 

Since this book was written before the Lisa 2 

was introduced, some of the comments in it refer specifically 

to the original Lisa system, the "Lisa 1." However, 

by means of an elaborate series of deceptions and 

bribes-not to mention a daring commando raid that 

was the talk of Rangoon for months afterwards-I was 

able to learn the basic facts about the Lisa 2, and they 

are included as well (you'd think Apple was planning 

a military coup, rather than a product introduction, 

from the maniacal ferocity with which they guarded 

what was essentially mundane information). 

Chapter 2 describes the Lisa's unconventional approach 

to software in great detail. The screens produced 

by the new, faster Lisa 2 software may differ slightly 

from those shown in this book. But most of the differ- 

1

2 Introduction to the Lisa 

ence is simply speed-the basic approach remains unchanged, 

and Chapter 2 gives you an excellent sense 

of it. 

Chapter 3 provides some tips on how to avoid anguish 

when getting started on a Lisa. Chapters 4 through 

10 describe the seven standard software "tools" that 

come with the Lisa: 

• Lisa Write, a word processing program 

• LisaList, a data base manager 

• LisaCalc, an electronic spreadsheet 

• LisaGraph, a program for producing several different 

kinds of business charts 

• LisaProject, a job tracking and scheduling program 

• LisaDraw, a very sophisticated graphics program 

• LisaTerminal, a telecommunications program 

The order in which I present these programs is not 

random; what you learn about each program helps you 

understand the next-from Lisa Write, which introduces 

skills basic to all the other tools, to LisaDraw, which 

incorporates and enhances techniques from most of the 

others. (Lisa Terminal is simply stuck on the end because 

Apple itself stuck it on at the end-introducing it a year 

after the other standard tools.) You don't have to read 

the chapters in order, of course, but if you do skip 

around, be prepared to refer back to earlier chapters 

occasionally. 

The Apple manuals for these seven programs are 

quite good and I don't try to duplicate what they do. 

It takes a while to get the hang of the Lisa's approach 

to software, but once you're comfortable with it, specific 

applications are a snap. The organization of this book 

reflects that: Chapter 2 (on the basics) is quite long, 

Chapters 4 through 10 (on the applications) are much 

shorter. 

Rather than bore you (and myself) with the fake 

business letters and such that are typically used as examples 

in training manuals and introductory books, I've 

given you poems, jokes and deranged rants. These are

3 Introduction 

a lot more fun, and you won't have any trouble making 

the transition to actual business or personal uses. 

Chapter 11 talks about how you can go beyond the 

standard Lisa-both by adding hardware and software. 

It also discusses the differences between the original 

Lisa system, announced in January, 1983, and the Lisa 

2, announced in January, 1984 (guess what month of 

the year Apple holds its annual shareholders' meeting). 

Finally, there's a very complete index, so you can 

use this book as a reference, not merely as a thrilling 

one-time read. 

Introduction to the Lisa is written in simple, everyday 

English. I assume you have a basic understanding 

of how computers work and of elementary computer 

technology, but I avoid jargon as much as possible. 

When I do find it necessary to use a technical term, I 

typically boldface it and define it. If you need more 

help than that, there are several good beginning computer 

dictionaries on the market (since I wrote the best 

of them, modesty prevents me from recommending 

one).


and How It's Different 

from Other Computers' 

Whether or not you decide you like the Lisa, and 

whether or not you think it's worth what it costs, there's 

no question about one thing-it's not just another hohum, 

me-too machine. 

The Lisa's innovations can be found both in hardware 

and software, but since hardware is what you see 

first, that's what I'll cover first (and naturally I'll cover 

the Lisa's noninnovative features as well as its innovative 

ones). 

A standard Lisa system consists of a console, a keyboard, 

a mouse (which I'll describe in a little while) 

and one or more storage devices. 

The console is the computer itself, the screen, and 

the cabinet that contains them. On the original Lisa, 

the "Lisa 1," it also enclosed two 5-inch minifloppy 

disk drives that each held 860K; on the Lisa 2, it encloses 

a 3Yi-inch microfloppy disk drive that holds 400K (with 

SOOK on the way) and an optional hard disk drive that 

holds either 5 MB or 10 MB (the Lisa 2/5 and 2/10, 

respectively). 

A major advantage of the 3Yi-inch drive is that it's 

the same one used in the Macintosh, a machine for 

which a lot of software will be written. For the other 

advantages, see Chapter 11. 

Since no hard disk was built into the Lisa 1, it was 

always hooked up to one or more of Apple's external 

5


Figure 1-1 

Figure 1-2 

ones, called ProFiles. A Profile holds somewhat less 

than five megabytes. 

The standard system for the Lisa 1 is shown in 

Figure 1-1, with the Profile and the mouse to the right; 

Figure 1-2 shows the Lisa 2 (as you can see, there's 

only one slot for floppy disks and the front panel is 

also somewhat different).

7 

The Lisa's Hardware 

One additional piece of hardware is needed to make 

a Lisa system really complete-a printer. Both dot-matrix 

and formed-character (daisy wheel or thimble) 

printers are available, but the dot-matrix printer is standard. 

There are a lot of things you can do with it that 

you can't do with a formed-character printer, although 

it's not as good at producing professional-looking business 

letters and manuscripts. 

The system I used when I wrote this book was a 

Lisa 1 with Apple's old dot-matrix printer, so that's what 

I'll be describing-with appropriate asides about the 

Lisa 2 whenever necessary. Here's one now: when the 

Mac and Lisa 2 were introduced, Apple also brought 

out a new, improved dot-matrix printer called the 

Imagewriter. 

These components are discussed at various points 

below, but the chapter isn't organized around them; instead, 

it focuses on various qualities of the Lisa, its virtues 

and its failings. 

Ease of use 

This is the quality that Apple brags about the most when 

promoting the Lisa. Ease of use is mostly a function 

of software, but the Lisa's hardware also incorporates 

many advanced ergonomic features. (Ergonomicsalso 

called human engineering-is the science of designing 

a product as if human beings were going to 

use it.) 

Let's start with the screen. I'm convinced that most 

of the eyestrain that people who work at VDT's complain 

about is due to things like flicker, glare, flashing cursors 

and so on. Flicker is caused by the fact that the image 

on the screen is not constant but is continually renewed 

by the cathode-ray gun at the back of the tube. (This 

is called rewriting or updating the screen, and the number 

of times per second it's done is called the refresh 

rate.) 

The picture on the screen appears to be more or 

less constant because both our eyes and the phosphor 

(which coats the inside of the screen and glows when


the cathode-ray gun hits it with an electron) hold on 

to images for a little while. In the case of our eyes, 

this is called the persistence of vision; it's the reason 

why movies seem continuous rather than jerky (since, 

after all, they're made up of a series of distinct, separate 

images). 

The Lisa's screen image is very steady and easy 

to look at, for a number of reasons: 

• The screen is updated 60 times a second (instead of 

the more common 30 times a second). 

• It has dark characters on a light background, rather 

than the usual light characters on a dark background. 

• You can adjust the contrast between the characters 

and the background to your own taste (but you should 

know that a grey background is much easier on your 

eyes than a white one). Sixteen levels of contrast are 

under software control, and going from one to the 

other is simple. 

• The screen is relatively nonreflective, and it comes 

with an optional glare guard for difficult situations. 

• The pointer-the symbol that tells you where you are 

on the screen (called the cursor on most other systems 

)-doesn't flash. There is a blinking vertical bar 

that shows up when you're inserting text, but it's quite 

thin and blinks fairly slowly. 

• Ghost images are a problem on some screens. They're 

caused when the same display remains a long time 

on a brightly lit screen and gets burned into-or exhausts 

certain parts of-the phosphor. To prevent this, 

the Lisa's screen automatically dims itself when the 

image on it remains unchanged for a while. (It comes 

back up to normal brightness the moment you touch 

the keyboard or the mouse.) You can even adjust how 

long the Lisa waits before dimming the screen. 

The Lisa's keyboard is also well designed for comfort 

and ease of use. It's laid out like a standard typewriter 

keyboard (with the addition of a few keys), which 

makes it easy to learn. But some of the keys could be 

better placed. For example, the backspace key (used con-


stantly by incompetent typists like myself) is stuck off 

in a corner where it's hard to reach, farther away than 

other keys that are much less important (like those for 

square and curly brackets). 

The keyboard incorporates a numeric keypad (like 

the one on a calculator )-a useful feature when you're 

working with a lot of figures. The numeric keypad has 

a raised dot on the 5 key, to help you position your 

fingers quickly. 

The keyboard is attached to the console with a fourfoot 

coiled cord. This allows you to place the keyboard 

in the most comfortable position for working (which 

is usually lower and closer to you than the console). 

The keytops are concave to fit your finger tips, and they 

have a textured, nonslip surface. 

Underneath the keyboard are four pull-out reference 

cards. The first tells you which keys can be used 

to generate special symbols; others provide handy summaries 

of the Lisa's basic operations. These cards are 

a helpful touch. 

Although the keyboard and the screen are impressive, 

the Lisa's claims for easy-to-use hardware rest 

largely on the mouse-a little box with a ball bearing 

on the bottom and a button on the top, connected to 

the computer with a wire. It's called a mouse because 

it's small (though not as small as an actual mouse), grey 

(though not as grey as an actual mouse), and has a wire 

sticking out of it that looks a little like a tail (if you 

have a vivid imagination). 

When you roll the mouse on a flat surface, the 

pointer moves in the same direction on the screen (although 

not the same distance-the pointer moves about 

2Yz inches for every inch the mouse moves). 

The benefit claimed for the mouse is that it allows 

people to take advantage of their natural hand-eye coordination, 

and also that moving the pointer with a mouse 

is more intuitive-more like what we do in everyday 

life-than hitting various keys to direct it. 

When you really get used to the mouse, you forget 

that it's there; it feels like you're simply moving the 

pointer with your hand. As a result, the mouse lets you


move the pointer faster and more accurately than you 

can using the keyboard. 

But the mouse has one big disadvantage: it forces 

you to take your hand off the keyboard. This is not so 

much of a problem if you plan to use the Lisa primarily 

for graphic applications, but if you want to do much 

writing on it, having to constantly move your hand from 

the keyboard to the mouse will drive you nuts. 

The Lisa was designed primarily for use in corporate 

offices, and part of the reason the mouse was developed 

has to do with a basic fact about that market: most 

corporate executives would sooner touch a leper than 

a keyboard. They feel it diminishes their stature to be 

doing what someone walking by their office might perceive 

as clerical work. Secretaries use keyboards; executives 

call secretaries into their offices and dictate to 

them. To be seen with your own little pink hands at 

the keyboard is demeaning; beggars will leer at you in 

the street and snigger to their friends, "He sits at a keyboard." 

Ah, but the mouse is different! Most secretaries 

don't even know what it is. So if there were a computer 

that used a mouse instead of a keyboard for most of 

its major functions, executives could buy it without embarrassment 

and remorse (and presumably, therefore, 

by the carload). 

As you can tell from these evenhanded remarks, 

I totally sympathize with executives in this crazed fear 

of theirs. But there are better reasons for using a mouse 

than keyboardphobia-it is a great way to move the 

pointer around. So what's the solution 

I'm glad you asked. The solution is a mouse-like 

device on the keyboard-a touchpad, joystick, trackball 

or the like-that takes advantage of all the hand-eye 

intuitive stuff, but keeps your hands on the keyboard 

where they belong. 

Actually, the ultimate solution is two devices that 

fit over your hands like gloves. You wiggle your fingers 

in one to produce characters and in the other to move 

the pointer around. (If you stop to think about it, this


can be easily done. Each finger can move up and down, 

and the thumb can move back and forth in at least three 

different positions. That makes a total of fourteen distinct 

movements on each hand, and therefore 142 (196) 

possible combinations-more than enough, on the one 

hand, to produce every conceivable character, and on 

the other, to move the pointer anY""·here in the known 

universe.) 

You lie in a hammock with these glove things on 

and look at a screen which fills the wall. (Naturally 

there are no wires; this is 1990, after all.) Your hands 

twitch idly and the image on the screen dances at your 

command. What a wonderful-almost magical-device! 

And to think that Naiman dreamt it up so many years 

ago. 

But even this isn't the ultimate solution. They're 

working on a device that shines infrared beams into 

your eyes, so you can position the pointer merely by 

looking where you want it to go! (I don't use exclamation 

marks often, but that deserves one.) Of course you do 

have to push a button to tell the pointer to obey this 

device; if the pointer were always following your eyes, 

it could end up in some embarrassing places. 

Ah, well-back to the dreary, primitive 1980s. Another 

advantage of the mouse-built-into-the-keyboard 

approach is that you don't have to leave a clear space 

on your desk for the mouse to move around in. (If you're 

like me, the concepts "desk" and "clear space" are mutually 

exclusive. Apple recommends a square space six 

inches on a side for the mouse; on my desk, they might 

as well be asking for six miles.) 

Aside from the space for the mouse, the Lisa doesn't 

require much room. The console is about fourteen 

inches high, nineteen inches wide and fifteen inches 

from front to back (sixteen inches with the keyboard 

stowed under the front). And at forty-eight pounds for 

the console and four pounds for the keyboard, it's not 

terribly hard to move around. 

The ProFile hard disk drive is just four inches high, 

seventeen inches wide and nine inches from front to

12 


back. It weighs eleven pounds and sits comfortably on 

top of the console (which is the usual place for it, Figure 

1-1 notwithstanding). The Lisa 2/5 and 2/10 consoles 

will weigh more than the Lisa 1 console, but of course 

you won't need a ProFile with them. 

Another thing that makes the Lisa easy to use is 

how quiet it is. By taking advantage of convective cooling, 

the Lisa's designers were able to eliminate the need 

for a fan. Unfortunately, the ProFile makes as much 

noise as a fan does, even though it's quiet for a hard 

disk drive. 

The directions for setting up a Lisa are explicit, 

clear and well illustrated, and most of the installation 

procedures are quite simple. For example, all you have 

to do to connect either a ProFile or a dot-matrix printer 

is to run a cable from it to the Lisa and a power cord 

from it to the wall. 

That pretty much covers ease of use from a hardware 

standpoint; as I said, much of the Lisa's ease of 

use has to do with software and is discussed in the next 

chapter. 

Safety 

For my money, the most important question you can 

ask about a computer or a program is: "Is it safe" By 

"safe" I mean that it doesn't crash if you sneeze and 

isn't full of snares and pitfalls that destroy hours of 

work for no good reason (as if there could be a good 

reason for destroying your work). This is an area in 

which the Lisa really shines-it's by far the safest computer 

system I've ever worked with. 

Software deserves most of the credit for this; there 

are a huge number of error messages (text on the screen 

that tells you something is wrong) and each is a masterpiece 

of clarity and relevance. But there are several significant 

hardware safety features as well. 

For example, the Lisa's idiot-proofing is quite 

extensive: 

• When you remove the front or rear panel, the power 

automatically turns off and any residual voltage is


drained away. (Only service personnel can get into 

the high-voltage CRT and video board circuitry.) 

• Offset connectors prevent you from putting expansion 

cards into their slots backwards. 

• Because both the loading and ej ection of floppies is 

controlled by software, you can't hurt a floppy disk 

by turning the machine off while a disk is in the drive, 

or by pushing the ej ect button while information is 

being written to the disk. 

Another aspect of idiot-proofing is self-testing, and 

the Lisa does a lot of it. When you turn a Lisa on, it 

automatically checks out the CPU, memory and all 

I/O ports before letting you go to work. While you're 

working, diagnostics programs scan for problems and 

warn you about them before any harm is done. 

When you turn on the Profile, it automatically 

checks out all of the disk surface. If there's any problem, 

it tries to remedy the situation before letting you know 

something is wrong. 

But the Lisa's most impressive safety feature is 

what happens when you turn it off. It displays the message 

you see in Figure 1-3 and automatically saves all 

the work you've done-additions, deletions, substitutions, 

whatever-thus making it impossible for you to 

accidentally lose it. This is really terrific and I've never 

heard of another computer that does it. 

Figure 1-3 

The Lisa is putting everything away before turning off. 

''· 

·*" 

WARNING: If you intend to turn the Profile off, wait 

until the light in the Lisa's on-off button goes off. 

To terminate the operation, hold down the Apple key 

while you type a period.

14 


Reliability and 

ease of service 

The Lisa is built not to break and to be easy to fix on 

those rare occasions when it does break. Let's talk about 

reliability first. 

Each Lisa component is thoroughly tested and 

burned in. To burn in something, you turn it on and 

leave it on for a solid week (or for 200 hours). This is 

important because components fail much more frequently 

during the first 200 hours of use-sort of the 

computer equivalent of infant mortality. If a manufacturer 

doesn't burn in a system for you, you inevitably 

end up doing it yourself. 

The inside of the Lisa console cabinet is made of 

metal. This is called shielding and it reduces the chance 

that extraneous electromagnetic "noise" in the environment 

will interfere with the electronics inside. 

The floppy disk drives only spin when you're using 

them; naturally, this makes them last a lot longer. The 

Profile is designed to offer an MTBF-"mean [i.e., average] 

time between failures"-of better than 10,000 

hours. 

If, in spite of all this, you have a hardware problem 

with a Lisa, you can deal with it quite readily. All the 

internal components-including the disk drives and 

power supply-are modular, so even an ordinary user 

with no technical expertise can remove them for servicing. 

The instructions for how to do that are specific, 

detailed and simple. 

The Lisa uses Apple's standard dot-matrix printer, 

which makes finding ribbons for it less of a chore (especially 

when you know that the same printer is also sold 

as the NEC 8023 and the C. Itoh 8510). But getting the 

ribbon into the little slot is slightly harder than cramming 

a camel through the eye of a needle. Apple has 

the incredible gall to call replacing the ribbon "easy"; 

"impossible" is more like it. 

The print head is replaceable by the user (which 

isn't the case on most dot-matrix printers). I haven't 

tried to do it, but it's got to be simpler than changing 

the ribbon.

15 


Last but not least, Apple maintains a toll-free number 

Lisa users can call with their questions, problems, 

etc.-(800) 553-4000. Like most such numbers, sometimes 

it's "temporarily busy." (Are there numbers that 

are "permanently busy" Probably there are; I've certainly 

come across some that seemed to be. But this 

Apple number seems to be adequately staffed.) 

Power 

For all its ease of use, the Lisa is a very powerful personal 

computer. Much of the reason for this is the CPU 

chip it's built around-the Motorola 68000 microprocessor, 

one of the most highly praised chips of recent years. 

Unlike the eight-hit chips used in many personal 

computers (which process data in eight-bit chunks), and 

unlike the 8088, the 8/16-hit chip used in the IBM PC 

and its imitators (which processes data in sixteen-bit 

chunks internally but takes it in and sends it out eight 

bits at a time), the 68000 is a 16/32-hit chip. 

As you may have guessed from its name, a 16/32- 

bit chip processes data 32 bits at a time, but takes it 

in and sends it out 16 bits at a time. The biggest computers 

in the world only process data 64 bits at a time, 

and many computers that cost millions of dollars are 

32-bit machines. So the Lisa is no slouch in terms of 

raw computational power. 

Unfortunately, the Lisa asks far too much of the 

68000. Almost 40% of its time is spent simply dealing 

with the screen, and this is compounded by the slowness 

of the Profile, which is constantly being accessed. 

This overloading of the 68000 (and overuse of the 

Profile) makes the Lisa quite slow in many vital operations-in 

spite of the fact that there are three other chips 

to handle input/ output functions. Long delays in updating 

the screen and sending data to the printer are the 

result; this is the Lisa's single greatest failing. The Lisa 

2 software is two to four times as fast, but even that 

may not be enough; this is an area where the Lisa really 

needs a lot of improvement.


The Lisa has a lot of memory for a personal computer. 

A megabyte (over one million characters-about 

170,000 words) is standard, and expansion up to two 

megabytes is planned as an option (God only knows 

what you need two megabytes of memory for). Most 

other personal computers give you much less memory; 

between 16K and 128K-1/64th to 1/8th as much-is 

common, and few machines let you expand up to a 

megabyte even as an option. 

The Lisa also provides a lot of permanent storagealthough 

somewhat less than Apple says it does, as we 

shall see. The two high-density minifloppy disk drives 

that came built into the Lisa 1 each hold 860K; the Lisa 

2's 3Yi-inch microfloppy holds 400K. The ProFile hard 

disk drive is supposed to hold five megabytes, but it 

doesn't. In fact, Apple seems to be playing tricks with 

some basic computer terms. Let me review them for 

you: 

A byte is eight bits-the amount of information 

necessary to define one character (a letter, number or 

symbol). A kilobyte, or K, is 1024 bytes; a megabyte, 

or meg, is 1024K, or 1,048,576 bytes. 

The reason for those funny numbers has to do with 

the fact that computers are based on the binary number 

system, in which all numbers are represented as multiples 

of 2. Thus, 2 x 2 = 4, 2 x 4 = 8, and so on up 

through 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512 and 1024 (aha!). Some 

people have suggested changing the meaning of these 

terms to make a K equal to exactly a thousand bytes 

and a meg equal to exactly a million. But that is not 

what these words mean today. Just to make sure, I 

looked them up in four-count 'em, four-recent computer 

dictionaries, and all of them (without exception) 

agreed with the values I've given above. 

o, five megabytes is equal to 5120K (5 x 1024); 

the ProFile holds 4845K. This comes out to 4. 73 megabytes, 

a shortfall of more than 5%. I'm not splitting 

hairs here-the difference is 275K and that's a significant 

amount of storage. Even if you called a million


characters "a megabyte," the ProFile would still fall almost 

38K short of the mark. 

(Presumably the Lisa 2's built-in "five-megabyte" 

and "ten-megabyte" hard disks also hold less than those 

amounts; I have no way of knowing without actually 

using one. It's easy for you to find out, though-just 

go into a dealer who has a Lisa 2, get the hard disk 

display up on the screen, and see how many blocks 

of data it holds. A block is 512 bytes-half a K.) 

Apple plays the same game with the Lisa l's 5Y4inch 

floppy disk drives. The claim is that the two of 

them together hold 1. 72 megabytes; in fact the correct 

figure is 1.68 (860K times 2 divided by 1024). Now 

there's nothing clumsy about saying "13-) megabytes" or, 

for that matter, "1.68 megabytes"; it's certainly no different 

from saying "1.72 megabytes" (except that it's accurate). 

Misusing the terms "K" and "megabyte" to your 

own advantage strikes me as the kind of sleazy marketing 

that gives us prices like $69.95 instead of $70. 

Now I'm told that this sort of-shall we call it "exaggeration"-is 

a common practice among hardware 

manufacturers; Apple simply made it easier for me to 

discover the truth. One person I spoke to at Apple said 

that they would call the Profile a "five-megabyte disk 

drive" even if it held somewhat more than five megs; 

they're simply rounding off. 

Well, that may be true, and I'm sure this particular 

person would do that himself. But roundig off doesn't 

explain "1.72 megabytes." And remember that Apple is 

the company that claimed in its advertising that it "invented" 

the personal computer-even though Apple 

didn't even exist until years after the first personal computers 

came out. So when someone tells me that Apple 

would round off 5.1 or 5.2 megabytes to an even 5 megs, 

I'm tempted to quote the last line of The Sun Also Rises: 

" 'Yes.' . . . 'Isn't it pretty to think so' " 

The disk in the Profile rotates at 3600 RPM and 

data is transferred to and from it at five million bits a 

second-about ten times faster than on a conventional


floppy disk drive. Fast as this sounds, the ProFile is 

one of the main things that slows the Lisa down. What 

the Lisa really needs is not more external storage, with 

its slow access speeds, but a RAM disk-a large hunk 

of extra memory that acts like a disk but accesses much 

more quickly. 

It will become clear as you read on in this book 

that some of the Lisa's most impressive capabilities are 

in the area of graphics. Graphics requires a high-resolution 

screen (one with a very fine, detailed picture) and 

the Lisa definitely has that. Its twelve-inch CRT displays 

more than a quarter of a million pixels (the little dots 

of light that make up the picture)-364 lines of 720 dots 

each. On a more practical level, this amounts to 45 lines 

of 144 characters (most personal computers display 24 

lines of 80 characters-less than a third as many). 

One of the most significant benefits of this high 

resolution is the hundreds of different type face, size 

and style combinations it allows. (I'll give you more 

details on this when I cover LisaWrite and LisaDraw.) 

The Lisa's screen is hit-mapped. This means that 

for every dot on the screen there's a corresponding on/ 

off switch in memory that controls it (so the screen 

can be updated almost the very instant the computer 

figures out what it wants to display). 

As I mentioned above, the Lisa l's dot-matrix 

printer was the same one used with the Apple II and 

III. But with the Lisa's intelligence behind it, it could 

work wonders. Because there's a corresponding dot on 

the printer for every pixel, the printer can make a precise 

copy of the screen (except that the image on the 

screen is about 6 x 8Yz inches and the image on paper 

is about 7¥4 x 10 inches-almost half again as large). 

I've used the Lisa's ability to print the screen to produce 

most of the illustrations in this book. 

Normally, of course, you don't want to reproduce 

the screen; you want to take what's on the screen and 

reconfigure it for placement on a sheet of paper. The 

Lisa does this at three levels of quality. The highest is 

high-resolution mode. There's also normal mode-it's


a third as detailed, prints out faster, and is ideal for 

informal memos and notes. And finally there's draft 

mode-it's much faster (and much uglier); you can only 

use it for text, not graphics. 

Having the choice of three different speeds and 

three different levels of quality is quite handy; I've 

shown you the difference between them in Figure 1-4. 

(I didn't change any of the typefaces in the draft mode 

sample; that's just the way draft mode handles them. 

It also eliminates underlining and screws up the spacing 

between words and sentences. But your text is there 

to be checked.) 

In draft mode, both the Imagewriter and Apple's 

old dot-matrix printer reach a nominal speed of 120 

characters per second, which is equivalent to about 1200 

actual words per minute (or 1440 official, typing-class, 

four-letters-and-a-space words per minute). I say "nominal" 

because most dot-matrix printers don't actually 

achieve their advertised speeds (although my subjective 

impression is that these came close). 

In high-resolution mode, the printer sometimes sits 

and waits for the computer to figure out what it wants 

to do; this is one of the clearest examples of the 68000 

chip being overloaded. Even in normal mode, printouts 

take a while. 

Some people feel that the dot-matrix printer in 

high-resolution mode produces a better-looking business 

letter than a formed-character (daisy wheel) printer 

can. Two clear advantages are that you can easily shift 

back and forth between type fonts, and you can integrate 

charts and other graphics into the text. 

The Lisa lets you do background printing. This 

means you can work on Document B while the Lisa 

is printing out Document A "in the background." Unfortunately, 

although the Lisa's spirit is willing, its electronics 

are weak. When a printout is in progress, most other 

activities slow to a crawl. Working while printing in 

the background demands more patience than it's worth. 

Communicating with other computers is yet another 

thing the Lisa is equipped for. It has two RS-232


Figure 1-4 

High-resolution mode: 

'ffhen a. critic wrote (something like): "of course we 

ha.ve to expect thiB Bort of fooliBhneBB from Coleridge; 

a.fter a.11, a.11 poets a.re fools," Coleridge resporded with 

the following epigra.m: 

S1r, I adJll1t your ge.neral rule, 

· 

That every poet ts a fool, 

But you yourself 1114.J' serve to shov 1 t, 

That every fool ts not a poet. 

Norn1al rnocle: 

When a critic wrote (something lil{e): "of course 

1Re have to expect this sort of foolishness from 

Coleridge; after all, all poets are fools, " Coleridge 

responded with the following epigram: 

Sir, I ad»it your general rule, 

lhat every poet is a fool, 

But you yourself 116J' serve to show it, 

lhat every fool is not a poet. 

Dra-f1: mode: 

l,Jhen a critic wrote (something like): "of course 

we have to expect this sort of foolishness from 

Coleridge; after all, all poets are fools," Coleridge 

responded with the following epigram: 

·sir, I admit your general rule, 

That every poet is a fool, 

But you yourse If may serve to show it, 

That every fool is not a poet.

21 


(serial) ports on the rear panel, one of which comes 

all ready to have an auto-dial, auto-answer modem connected 

to it. Data can be transmitted as fast as 19,200 

bits per second, and the rate is controlled by software. 

(For more on the Lisa's communications abilities, see 

Chapter 10.) 

All 73 keys on the Lisa's keyboard can be programmed 

by the software to act as function keys. The 

Clear key, the Enter key, the arrow keys in the upper 

right corner of the keyboard, and the Apple key (which 

has a picture of an apple on it) all do different things 

depending on the software you're running. The Caps 

Lock key works like the Shift Lock key on a typewriter, 

except that it only affects the letter keys, not the keys 

with numbers, punctuation or other symbols on them. 

The two Option keys allow you to produce a whole 

slew of special characters and symbols. So if you hold 

the Option key down and hit W, you get (the Greek 

letter sigma) instead; if you hit 5, you get oo (the infinity 

sign) instead. In this way, the Lisa provides you with 

all the accent marks and special letters used in French, 

Spanish, German, Swedish, Danish and Norwegian, as 

well as symbols used in mathematical and scientific formulas 

and other useful ones like ®, , ©, ¢ and £. 

Expandability 

As if the Lisa weren't powerful enough in its standard 

configuration, the system can be expanded extensively 

and easily. Three expansion slots for special-purpose 

cards are built into the console. In addition to the two 

serial ports mentioned above, there's a jack for connecting 

external high-resolution video monitors or camera 

imaging systems. 

In addition to the built-in parallel port, up to three 

parallel interface hoards can be installed in the Lisa's 

expansion slots. If parallel boards are in all three slots, 

it's possible to connect six Profiles and a dot-matrix 

printer-although, as I said earlier, a RAM disk would 

be a lot more useful than more external storage.


The parallel board incorporates self-test diagnostics 

that trouble-shoot many problems. Like all expansion 

boards for the Lisa, it's easy to install-thanks to zero 

insertion force connectors. (On most computers, you 

have to push down hard on a board to get it into a 

slot; on a Lisa, you just pull and twist a rod and that 

opens the slot for you.) 

The Lisa has several other nice little features, like 

a real-time clock and a built-in speaker with a tone generator 

that's controlled by software. But the main point 

is simple: with a few exceptions-like the overloading 

of the system's capabilities and the slow response time 

that's the result-the Lisa's hardware is quite well 

designed. 

But the Lisa's software, not its hardware, is what's 

truly innovative. So let's move on to the next chapter, 

where I cover that software in some detail.


and How It's Different 

from Other Computers' 

The Lisa comes with one of two standard software packages-the 

Development System, designed for expert 

computer programmers who want to write new software 

for the Lisa, and the Office System, designed for 

people like you and me who want to use already-written 

programs for specific tasks like word processing, graphics 

and financial analysis. Since virtually all Lisa users 

fall into the second group, I'll only discuss the Office 

System in this chapter. 

The best way to give you a sense of what's innovative 

about the Lisa's software is simply to walk you 

through its basic concepts. I'll make it a reasonably detailed 

walk-through-although much less than you need 

to know to actually use the Lisa with any grace-so 

you can begin to get a sense of whether the Lisa's approach 

is what you're looking for, or at least so you 

can sit down and play with a Lisa in a store without 

having to go through a lengthy and confusing orientation. 

This chapter will also be useful to you if you already 

own a Lisa (or have definitely decided to get one), because 

it will get you started using the machine with 

less anguish than diving right into the Lisa's introductory 

training program, LisaGuide. Although LisaGuide 

is better than most training programs, and the Lisa Owner's 

Guide is better than most computer manuals, they 

23

24 


both have one great weakness: they lack an easy-to-understand 

overview of the Lisa's basic operations. 

Apple says you can learn to "do useful work" on 

the Lisa in half an hour. So far as I can see, this is 

only possible in the same way that it's possible to learn 

to use any tool in half an hour-that is, in a very limited 

and clumsy way. Although certain aspects of the Lisa's 

operations are simpler and easier to learn than on conventional 

computers, other aspects are much more complex 

and confusing. 

For example, most computers have just two kinds 

of files on a disk: programs, which tell the computer 

how to do things, and data files, which you fill up with 

information of your own (text, numbers, or whatever). 

You use programs to work on data files and that's all 

you need to understand about the basic structure of 

things (unless you're doing programming of your own). 

The Lisa, on the other hand, presents you with a bewildering 

multiplicity of file types and related conceptsicons, 

windows, folders, tools, stationery pads, documents, 

shadows, and so on. 

The first of these concepts you encounter is the 

Desktop. The Lisa uses its screen to simulate an actual 

physical desk top with file folders and other things lying 

around on it. This is a good example of what's new 

and unusual about the Lisa's approach-it always tries 

to present abstract computer activities as if they were 

concrete, visual and ordinary. 

Icons 

As you can see from Figure 2-1, the Lisa makes the 

Desktop grey and the objects white, and it labels each 

object. For example, there's a little picture of a clipboard 

that's labeled "Clipboard" and a little picture of a trash 

can that's labeled "Wastebasket." These pictures are 

called icons. 

The way a computer interacts with a user is called 

its user interface. The Lisa's is often informally referred 

to as "the mouse/icon user interface," because the


Figure 2-1 

Fi le/Print Edit Vi ew Disk 

mouse is its main feature in hardware and icons are 

its main feature in software. 

One of the essential parts of any computer's user 

interface is its operating system-the basic program, 

or context, within which all other programs operate. 

Because the Desktop concept is fundamental to the 

Lisa's user interface, its operating system is called the 

Desktop Manager. It's mostly the Desktop Manager I'll 

be describing in this chapter, although I'll also refer 

to other tools that work within it. 

The four icons you see in Figure 2-1 are always 

on the Desktop (assuming that you have a Profile connected 

to your Lisa).


Wastebasket is the place where the Lisa puts objects 

you throw out. They stay in Wastebasket until the 

room is needed for objects you discard later. This means 

you can go into Wastebasket and retrieve objects for 

a while after you've thrown them out. (Some objectslike 

the ProFile, for example-can't be thrown out. If 

you put them in Wastebasket, they bounce back out 

and return to their original position.) 

Clipboard holds text or graphics you've deleted 

from within some object, or that you're in the process 

of moving from one place to another. You can look 

into Clipboard but you can't affect its contents in any 

way. 

Since the Preferences icon is a picture of a little 

Lisa, you don't need to be psychic to figure out that it 

deals with your preferences about the Lisa (basically, 

it lets you customize a Lisa to your own taste). I'll use 

Preferences to demonstrate how you open an iconthat 

is, how you gain access to the things inside it, so 

you can look at them and alter them if you want. 

In the middle of the screen in Figure 2-1 is a black 

arrow. This is the pointer. As I mentioned in the last 

chapter, you use the mouse to move the pointer around 

the screen. An arrow is only one of the shapes a pointer 

can take; I'll describe the others as they come up. 

(In Figure 2-1, the arrow is pointing toward a small 

white streak that looks something like a comet or a 

meteor. This comes from a minor defect in the printer 

and has nothing at all to do with what actually appears 

on the screen. You'll also notice that the Desktop is not 

a consistent tone of grey; that's the printer's fault too. 

Both of these problems vary from one illustration to 

the next. Just ignore them; on the Lisa's screen, the Desktop 

will be a smooth, streak-free grey.) 

The Lisa uses a two-step process for almost all of 

its operations. First you select the object you want to 

do something to, then you tell the Lisa what you want 

to do to it. You select an icon by moving the pointer 

to it and then clicking the button on the mouse's back 

(which I'll call "the mouse button"-or simply "the button"-from 

now on).


Figure 2-2 

File/Print Edit View Disk 

Figure 2-2 shows the pointer in position on the 

Preferences icon. (On the arrow pointer, it's the tip that 

counts. All of the arrow can be off the icon, just as long 

as the tip is in. Conversely, if all of the arrow except 

the tip is on the icon, nothing will happen when you 

push the mouse button. You can point to either the picture 

or the label-they're both part of the icon.) 

An icon indicates that it's been selected by changing 

from white to black (or-to be precise-from a black 

figure on a white ground to a white figure on a black 

ground). This is called highlighting. In all Lisa software, 

whenever you want to know what is currently selected, 

you just look for what is highlighted. Figure 2-3 shows 

how the screen looks after you push the mouse button.


Figure 2-3 


Menus 

Now that you've selected Preferences, you have to tell 

the Lisa what you want to do with it. For that, you 

need a menu. 

"Menu" is computerese for a list of commands on 

the screen. The Lisa's menus are a lot snazzier than 

most-they pop down onto the screen when you need 

them, and disappear when you don't. To make a menu 

pop down, you select its menu title. 

Menu titles run across the top of the screen, starting 

from the left side. (The line they do that on is called 

the menu bar.) Four basic menu titles are on the screen 

now: File/Print, Edit, View and Disk.


Figure 2-4 

To open an icon, you need to get into the File/Print 

menu, so you move the pointer to that title (as in Figure 

2- 4), then press the mouse button and hold it down. 

This produces Figure 2-5. (If you press the mouse button 

and immediately release it, the menu will pop down 

and pop right up again. This is exciting the first few 

times you do it, but the thrill fades fast.) 

Menus are made up of menu items. Not all menu 

items are active at any one time-you can ·only select 

the ones that are in black, not the ones that are grey. 

Only the items that let you Open "Preferences" and Monitor 

the Printer are active in Figure 2-5.


Figure 2-5 

Edit Vi ew Disk 

\nve fr Pui Hrv


Figure 2-6 


When you have Open "Preferences" highlighted (as 

it is in Figure 2-6), you lift your finger from the mouse 

button and . . . shazam! . . . the Preferences icon becomes 

a window (Figure 2-7).


Figure 2-7 

File/Print 

...... ... ... ... ... ... ... 

111111 Preferences 111111 

D Startup D Device Connections 

Dset All Convenience Settings to Lisa Defaults 

Screen (ontrost 

Normal Level 

dark D D D D D D D I D D D D D D D D bri ght 

Minutes Unti l Screen Dims 

D 1-2 I 2-4 D s-10 D 10-20 D 15-30 D 30-60 

Dim Level 

dark D D D I D D D D D D D D D D D D bri ght 

Speaker Vo lume 

Silent (Flash menu bar) 0 

Soft I D D D D Loud 

Repeating Keys 

Delay 

Short D 0 D I 0 D Long 

Rote 

Fast 

I D 0 0 0 0 Slow 

House Double (lick Deloy 

Short D D 0 I Long

33 

The Lisa's Software 

Windows 

As you can see, a window is a big box that fills up a 

lot of the screen. Not all windows are this large, and 

you can expand or shrink them (I'll describe how to 

do that later). 

Because the Preferences window is selected (the 

official term is active or activated, but it means the 

same thing as selected), its title-the word "Preferences" 

at the top-is highlighted. Later on we'll get into situations 

where several windows are open on the Desktop; 

only the title of the active window will be highlighted. 

Notice that the pointer is just where we left it, on 

the upper left edge of the screen, although the menu 

item it was pointing to has disappeared (along with the 

rest of the File/Print menu). 

I won't spend a lot of time explaining what the 

display in Figure 2-7 is all about. Obviously it allows 

you to change a number of the Lisa's convenience settings 

to your own taste. They come set to the Lisa's 

defaults (a default is what you get if you don't ask for 

something different). The black squares represent the 

current settings and you can use the pointer to reset 

them. 

The actual settings in Figure 2-7 are not, in every 

case, the Lisa's defaults; I'd already changed a couple 

of them before I printed out this screen. For example, 

the screen contrast (normal level) comes set on the tenth 

box from the left, instead of the eighth; I moved it because 

I find black on grey easier to look at than black 

on white. Once you express a preference, the Lisa remembers 

it and gives it to you as your own personalized 

default until you change it again. 

To reset a setting, you move the pointer into the 

appropriate box and click the mouse button. When the 

pointer enters a box, it changes from an arrow to a 

check mark (this check pointer lets you know you're 

on the box). In Figure 2-8, I've moved the check pointer 

into the normal default box for screen contrast. If I 

clicked the mouse button now, that box would turn 

black, the eighth box from the left-which is now


File/Print 

Figure 2-8 

.. 

lml I Preferences 11111 

I Convenience Settings D Startup D Device Connections 

Oset All Conveni ence Settings to Lisa Defaults 

Screen Contrast 

Normal Level 

dark 0 D D 0 D D D I 0 S' D D D 0 D D bright 

Minutes Until Screen Dims 

D 1-2 12-4 D 5-10 010-20 D 15-30 0 30-60 

Dim Leve l 

dark D 0 D I D 0 0 0 D 0 0 0 0 0 D D bright 

Speaker Vo lume 

Silent (F l ash menu bar) 0 Soft I D D D D Loud · 

Repeating Keys 

Delay 

Short 0 0 D I 0 0 Long 

Rate 

Fast I D D 0 0 0 Slow 

Mouse Double Click Deloy 

Short 0 0 I 0 Long

3 5 The Lisa's Software 

Figure 2-9 

0 Convenience Settings 

Connectors 

0 Expansion 2 lower 

D Expansion 2 upper 

D Parallel 

D Serial A 

D Serial B 

Devices Cuf"l"ently Connected 

Nothing Connected 

Dot Matrix Printer 

Profile 



black-would turn white, and the screen contrast would 

increase. 

If you've changed the settings and can't remember 

what the Lisa originally had them set for, you can use 

the box on the second line of this window (Set All Convenience 

Settings to Lisa Defaults). 

The line above that switches you between the three 

different Preferences displays. So if you put the pointer 

in the Device Connections box and click the mouse button, 

you get Figure 2-9 (the little line sticking out of 

the top of the Device Connections box is the top of the 

check pointer). This display simply records what you've 

got hooked up to the Lisa (you have to tell it when 

you connect each device-otherwise it doesn't know).


Figure 2-10 

File/Print 

-=,--- 

111111 Preferences 111111 

Dconvenienc:e Setti ngs !'startup DDevice Connections 

Start Up From: 

DDi skette in Drive 1 (Upper) 

DDiskette in Drive 2 (Lower) 

I Disk Attached to Para I lel Connector 

Memory Test 

I Brief 

DThorough 

To see the Startup display, you put the pointer in 

that box and click the mouse; that gives you Figure 

2-10. This lets you tell the Lisa where it should go for 

the information it needs when you turn it on (typically, 

to your ProFile-i.e., "Disk Attached to Parallel Connector"), 

and also whether you want it to test its memory 

briefly or thoroughly. 

That may have been a bit more than you wanted 

to know about Preferences. I went into detail so you'd 

get a sense of how completely the Lisa explains the options 

it gives you, and how easy those explanations are 

to understand.


Figure 2-1 1 

===-.....,.....,.=•e 1 (Upper) 

DDiskette in Drive 2 (Lower) 

•Disk Attached to Para I lel Connector 

Memory Test 

I Brief 

D Thorough 

To close the Preferences window (that is, to shrink 

it back into an icon and put it back on the Desktop), 

you go to the File/Print menu (Figure 2-1 1). Notice 

how the menu pops down over the window. You may 

find displays like this a little confusing at first, what 

with menus on top of windows on top of the Desktop, 

but you'll soon get used to it and won't have any problem, 

even when half a dozen windows are overlapping 

each other. 

Compare the menu items in Figure 2-1 1 with those 

in Figure 2-5 to see how they've changed to reflect the 

current situation. If you go to the File/Print menu when


Figure 2-12 

File/Print Edit Vi ew Disk


no icon is selected-from Figure 2-1, say-all the menu 

items (except Monitor the Printer) will be grey, and it 

will be impossible to do anything. With the Lisa, you 

always have to select something before you can do anything 

to it. 

There are usually two ways to close a window, but 

with Preferences you have Robson's choice: Set Aside. 

(Later on in the chapter, I'll contrast Set Aside with 

the other method - -Save & Put Away.) Here again, the 

Lisa is making an analogy with an everyday actionclosing 

a folder and putting it off to the side of your 

desk so you can open another folder in the middle of 

your desk. 

When you Set Aside a window, the Lisa shrinks 

it into an icon-in a very graphic and dramatic fashion-and 

puts the icon near the bottom edge of the Desktop. 

In Figure 2-1 1, Set Aside "Preferences" is selected 

on the File/Print menu; Figure 2-12 shows the result. 

Notice that the Preferences icon is still highlighted, 

even though it's been set aside. That's because it's still 

selected. If you went back up to the File/Print menu, 

it would look the way it did in Figure 2-5. If you want 

to open some other icon-or do a n' ything at all with 

any icon other than Preferences-you have to first select 

it. (I don't mean to harp on this, but it's the single most 

confusing thing that comes up when you're learning 

about the Lisa.) 

Most of the work you do with the Lisa is done inside 

the Profile icon. That's typically where you keep all 

your programs and data files. So let's select Profile. 

You do that, of course, by moving the pointer to the 

Profile icon and clicking the mouse. Now to open Pro 

File, you go to the Print/File menu (Figure 2-13). Notice 

that the menu has adjusted itself to reflect the fact that 

ProFile and not Preferences is now selected. 

In addition to Open "Profile" and Monitor the 

Printer, the menu gives you the option of duplicating 

the Profile-that is, of making a backup copy of everything 

on the disk. (You weren't offered this choice with


Figure 2-13 

Ed it Vi ew Disk 

Preferences, because it doesn't make any sense to duplicate 

Preferences.) 

Notice that at the end of the Duplicate line there's 

an Apple symbol and the letter D. This lets you know 

that instead of moving the pointer to the Print/File 

menu and down to the Duplicate line (pressing and releasing 

the mouse at the appropriate times), you can 

achieve the same result simply by holding the Apple 

key and the D key down simultaneously (whenever the 

ProFile is selected). 

Many Lisa functions have substitute commands 

like this. They're useful when you're at the keyboard 

and don't want to move your hand over to the mouse.


Figure 2-14 

File/Print Edit Vi ew Disk 

untitled 

1st picture 

Typef.;;: e. 

lliJ 

There's also a simpler way of opening an icon than 

going to the File/Print window-it's called douhleclicking. 

Instead of clicking the mouse button once on 

an icon to select it, you click twice in rapid succession. 

This eliminates the File/Print menu step. 

Either way you choose to open Profile, when you 

do you get a display like the one in Figure 2-1 4-quite 

different from the displays in the Preferences window 

(which contain, in effect, a bunch of multiple-choice 

questions). Instead of boxes to check, the Profile icon 

contains other icons. 

Naturally, the Profile window won't always look 

exactly like Figure 2-14. For one thing, the icons dis-

42 


played reflect what's on a particular disk and thus vary 

from Profile to Profile. For another thing, the icons 

won't always be displayed quite this neatly. They're usually 

arranged a little sloppily when you first get your 

Profile from the dealer. Fortunately for total obsessives 

like me, it's possible to move them around to straighten 

them out. (I'll show you how to do that in a moment.) 

Tools 

Across the bottom of this (compulsively arranged) Profile 

window are icons for six tools. Tool is simply the 

Lisa's name for a program; the two words mean the 

same thing. (To be perfectly precise, "tool" means "applications 

program," but this subtle distinction needn't 

concern you.) 

As I've mentioned before, the six tools shown here 

come as standard equipment on every Office Systems 

Lisa-as does a seventh one, LisaTerminal. Chapters 4 

through 10 describe the seven tools individually. 

LisaTerminal is missing from these illustrations 

simply because it hadn't been released when I was writing 

the book (and printing out these screens). So, although 

I sometimes refer to the six standard tools in 

this chapter, remember that now there are seven. 

In order to use a tool, its icon must be in the active 

window. But you can't open these icons, or do anything 

else with them except duplicate them. 

At the right end of the bottom line of icons are 

two more tools-Calculator and Clock. Calculator duplicates 

the functions of a (fairly versatile) pocket calculator 

and Clock duplicates those of a calendar watch. 

Opening Clock to find out the date and time has 

to be the slowest and most troublesome way of doing 

that imaginable; how many people can afford a Lisa 

but .can't afford a $10 digital watch Clock's real purpose 

make . s more sense-it tags each piece of your work with 

the date and time you created it and the date and time 

you last worked on it. 

Clock and Calculator appear on the Desktop when 

you first fire up your Lisa, but a lot of people (including

43 


myself, obviously) move them over to the ProFile. It 

doesn't make a lot of difference where they're kept, since 

you rarely need to open either one of them (although 

people who are touch-typists on a numeric keypad may 

find themselves using Calculator fairly frequently). 

On the next line up there's a row of individual folders, 

each of which corresponds to one of the six standard 

tools. These hold the examples that teach you how to 

use the tools, and are referred to in their manuals. 

(There's also an Empty Folders icon on the bottom line; 

I'll explain what that's all about toward the end of the 

chapter.) 

Near the top of the screen is a line that says, "4802 

blocks free out of 9690. Backed up: never." A block is 

a measure of storage space equal to 512 charactershalf 

a K, about 85 words. (As I pointed out in Chapter 1, 

9690 X 512 bytes doesn't actually add up to the five 

megabytes the ProFile is supposed to hold.) 

You can see that I've used slightly more than half 

the space available on my ProFile. That's why I've never 

backed up the ProFile (made a duplicate of everything 

on it)-there isn't room on this one, and I don't have 

another one to do it onto. (Of course it's also possible 

to back up onto floppies, and you should do that with 

any important document.) 

On the line of icons running across the top of the 

window are stationery pads for the six standard tools. 

When you want to use one of these tools, you begin 

by "tearing off a sheet" from an appropriate pad. Each 

pad has a distinctive design on it and sheets torn off 

from it retain this design. As you can see, I've torn off 

one sheet each of LisaCalc Paper, LisaGraph Paper and 

LisaDraw Paper and placed them under their respective 

pads; under Lisa Write Paper are three such sheets (making 

it obvious where my interests lie). 

Documents 

Each of these torn-off sheets represents a document. 

Document is the Lisa's name for a data file-any single 

piece of work (writing, drawing, calculations or what-


File/Print Edit Vi ew 

Figure 2-15 

untitled 

I 

Lisa.Project Paper IMMld 

i 

1st document 

i 

Typefaces 

i 

2nd document 

 

Lisa.Graph Paper 

 

Untitled 

m 

LisaDraw Paper 

I 

1st picture 

LisaList Paper 

CJ CJ CJ CJ CJ 

Lisacalc Examples LisaProject Examples Lisa.Write Examples Lisa.Graph Examples LisaDraw Examples 

Empty Folders 

Figure 2-16 

Edit Vi ew 

Set Aside Everything 

Set Aside "Profile" 

Monitor the Printer . . .


ever) you call by one name and handle as one unit. 

The distinctive design on the icon of any document tells 

you what tool was used to create it. 

The Lisa's tools are integrated to some extent-that 

is, you can move certain material from one kind of 

document to another. For example, you can move a 

LisaGraph graph or a LisaProject chart into a LisaDraw 

document, and you can move a LisaCalc spreadsheet, 

a LisaGraph table or a Calculator tape into a Lisa Write 

document. But you can't move LisaDraw graphics or 

LisaList material into any other kind of document. (Full 

details of what you can and can't do are given in the 

manuals for each tool). 

Let's create another LisaWrite document, so you 

can see how it's done. (The procedure is the same no 

matter which tool you use; I picked LisaWrite because 

it's the simplest and least confusing.) 

First you select the Lisa Write Paper stationery pad 

(Figure 2-15). Then you go to the File/Print menu (Figure 

2-16) and select the Tear Off Stationery menu item 

which has miraculously been activated (it happened 

when you selected a stationery pad, of course). Next 

the Lisa tells you to wait while it creates the new document 

(Figure 2-17). 

Figure 2-17 

The Lisa is creating a new document from "Li saWrite 

Paper" on "Profile", 

To termi nate the operation, hold down the Rpple key · 

wh ile you t ype a period.


Figure 2-18 


II 

untitled 

LisaProject Papeaper 

i 

i 

1st document 

Typefaces 

i 

2nd document 

Lisa.Gr Paper 

 

Untitled 


I 

1st picture 

LisaL.ist Paper 

CJ CJ CJ CJ CJ CJ 

Lisacalc Examples LisaProject Examples 

LisaWrite Examples Lisa.Graph Examples Lisariraw Examples 

Empty Folders 

The pointer looks like an arrow in Figure 2-17, 

but on the screen it appears as an hourglass. Whenever 

the Lisa makes you wait more than a few seconds, it 

changes the pointer into an hourglass to let you know 

that it can't respond to any instructions for the time 

being. This is just another example of the Lisa's thoroughgoing 

concern for your needs and its attempt to 

make sure you never feel bewildered or lost. 

. . In Figure 2-18 you see how the screen looks when 

the process is finished. (Notice that the new document 

icon, labeled "Untitled", is highlighted. That's because 

you selected it when you told the Lisa to create it.)


Figure 2-19 


a 

m 

Lisa.ca.le Paper 

I 

. 

Untitled 

lH 

Lisa.Gr apn Paper Lisaoraw Paper LisaList Paper 

Untitled 

l®I 

1st picture 

2nC1 document 

CJ CJ . 

CJ 

. 

CJ 

. CJ 

Lisacaic Examples LisaProject Examples L 1sawnte Examples L1saGrap11 Examples L1saoraw Examples 

D 

U±j 

Lisa!lraw 

LisaList 

LJI 

Empty F o!Oers 

Calculator 

Now there are (at least) two things you want to 

do with this new document. One is to move it so it isn't 

blocking the Lisa Write Paper icon. Another is to give 

it a somewhat snappier title than "Untitled." You can 

do these in either order, but let's move the icon first. 

The Lisa makes this easy. You just put the pointer 

on it, then push the mouse button and hold it down 

as you move the icon to the new location (Figure 

2-19). This is officially called grasping, but I-like many 

other Lisa users-call it grabbing ("grasp" being one 

of those words that's on its way out of common speech). 

Sometimes it is also called dragging, which is another 

good word for it. The Lisa leaves a shadow in the icon's 

original location until you release the button. Then the

. 


Figure 2-20 


I 

untitlei:l 

Li:: .. .v.1rite F'-per 

; 

1s.t 1ji:ic:1.1rnerit 

; 

r;,1pef.:u: es 

B 

L2.J 

1st picture 

CJ LJ CJ CJ CJ 

usaDaJc: E:;: arnples LisaProject E':31nples L!sa.Wnte E:,ainples LlsaGrapr1 Examples L1saDraw Examples 

rz;;:i 

@'.J 

Empty Folder: 

icon appears in the new location and the shadow disappears 

(Figure 2-20). 

Now to change the title-that's also quite easy. Just 

as long as the icon is selected, all you have to do is 

start typing. The moment you hit a key, the present 

title disappears, and the letter you typed appears on 

the screen, followed by a thin flashing vertical bar. This 

is called the insertion point (despite the fact that it's 

not a point but a line). You can see it at the end of 

the new title in Figure 2-2 1 (although naturally you 

can't see it flash). 

Whenever you're entering text, in any Lisa program, 

the insertion point indicates where the next letter 

will appear.


Figure 2-21 

a 

u 

Lisacalc Per 

 

tmJl 

untitled 

 

LisaProject POjler 

Lisa.'1-lrite Paper 

- 

II Ht drnent 

Master & Bos'rl 

I !:\ I 

Typefai::es 

LisaG 

IJ 

"Master & Bos'n" refers to one of my favorite 

poems; it has the highest percentage of great linesover 

50% by my scorecard-of any poem I know (although 

its view of the world is pretty bleak). 

Once you've typed in the new title, you go to our 

old favorite, the File/Print menu (Figure 2-22), and select 

Open "Master & Bos'n." 

Figure 2-22 

Edit Vi ew 



Make Stati onery Pad 

Moni tor the Printer ...


Figure 2-23 

Fi le/Print Edit Search Type Style Format 1f Page Layout 

mommmommmmiimmammmmiimmammmcmmmommmmmammmammmamammmamm """"i 

!9 

-- --- 

I 

One of the nicest things about the Lisa is the way 

it makes you feel that it cares about you. Now obviously 

it's no great trick to have the items on the File/Print 

menu change when you select a new icon or window 

(or when you change the title of whatever's selected), 

but there's something that feels almost magical about 

popping that menu down and seeing that it's already 

anticipated your needs. I guess you could call this good 

psychological engineering. 

Anyway, when you open this new document you 

get Figure 2-23. Notice that the Master & Bos'n window 

has been placed over the ProFile window; you can see 

a little of the ProFile window at the bottom of the screen 

(and, at the very bottom, a sliver of the Desktop peeking


Figure 2-24 

Fi I e /Print Ed it Search Type Sty I e For mat 1r Page Layout 

---" ---"- 

111111 Master & Bos 'n 111111 

Song of the Master and Boatswain 

lV H Auden 

flt Dirty Dick 's a11d Skpp,r .}:e 's 

We drank our liquor straight , 

Some went upsta.ir s v,rith Margery , 

And some , ala s, vrith Kate ; 

And two by two lil:.e cat and mou e 

The homele ss played at keeping house. 

There Wealthy Meg, the Sailor 's Frien·j , 

find M.:ir·ion , o:,,N-eyed , 

Opened their a.rrns to me but I 

Refused t8· step inside ; 

I i,vas not lc·:.king for a. cage 

In which to mope in my old age . 

The nightingale s are sobbing 

ClDCI< 

Cli board 

out beneath it). As I said earlier, the Lisa lets you put 

one window on top of another, just as you would with 

papers on your desk, even to the point of totally obscuring 

what's underneath. 

Master & Bos'n is on top because it's the active 

(selected) window. (Another way to tell it's active: its 

title is highlighted.) Later on in this chapter I'll tell you 

how you can retrieve windows that have been buried. 

There's nothing in the Master & Bos'n window so 

far, except for something that looks like a stylized cross 

section of an I-beam. This is the text pointer-whenever 

it appears, all you have to do to enter text is click the 

mouse and start typing. That's what I did to produce 

Figure 2-24.

52 


The text pointer deposits the insertion point right 

below its vertical bar. Once you've got the insertion 

point on the screen, it doesn't matter where you put 

the pointer. Back in the '60s, there was an expression 

that went: "out in left field with prunes in your teeth." 

That's where the pointer is in Figure 2-24, but it doesn't 

make any difference, because the pointer doesn't affect 

anything when you're entering text. If you click the 

mouse button, however, the insertion point will move 

to wherever the pointer is. 

(By the way, a "master" is the captain of a merchant 

ship; the name is short for "master mariner." A "boatswain" 

is the guy in charge of the deck crew on a ship, 

as well as its rigging, anchors and cables; the name is 

pronounced-and often spelled-"bos'n.") 

Scrolling 

You're obviously going to want to create documents that 

are bigger than one window. When you reach the bottom 

of the window, the Lisa automatically moves your 

text up under the top of the window to create space 

at the bottom (as it's done in Figure 2-25). This is called 

scrolling. 

You can also scroll the contents of a window yourself; 

in fact, the Lisa gives you three separate ways to 

do it. You may have noticed that whatever window is 

active has a grey bar on its right edge and another one 

on its bottom. These are called scroll bars and they 

contain a number of mysterious symbols, which I'll now 

explain. 

In the right scroll bar in Figure 2-25, there's a 

square white box Gust opposite the line that reads "And 

Marion, cow-eyed,"). This is an elevator; it indicates 

how what's presently shown in the window relates to 

the whole document. 

· · In Figure 2-24, the elevator is all the way at the 

top of the grey bar. That's because in Figure 2-24, we're 

right at the beginning of the document. In Figure 

2-25, however, we're farther down, and the elevator has 

moved to indicate that fact.


Figure 2-25 

File/Print Edit Search Type Style Format 1r Page Layout 

-------------------------------. 

111111 Master & Bos'n 111111 

find two by two hl.e c.l.t and mouse 

The homeless played at keeping IK>US


Figure 2-26 


---. 

111111 Master & Bos'n 11111 

I was not looking for a cage 


The nightingales are sobbing in 

The orchards of our mothers, 

And hearts that we broke long ago 

Have long been breaking others; 

Tears are round , the sea. is deep: 

Roll them Oi.rerboard and sleep. 

You can move the elevator (and therefore scroll 

the document) yourself. You do that by grabbing the 

elevator (putting the pointer on it and holding the button 

down) and moving it where you want it. When you release 

the button, the text scrolls down (Figure 2-26). 

You can also move the elevator, and therefore scroll, 

in the opposite direction-as I did to create Figure 

2-27. 

·Lisa Write has only a vertical elevator, but the other 

tools (and the Desktop Manager) have elevators in the 

horizontal scroll bar as well. These horizontal elevators 

work the same way, scrolling a document that is wider 

than the window into view.


Figure 2-27 

File/Print Edit Search Type Style Format 1f Page Layout 

--=---=-----. 

111111 Master & Bos' n 11111 

W H Auden 

At Dirty Dick 's and Sloppy Joe 's 

We drank our liquor straight, 

Some went upstairs with Margery , 

.A.nd some , alas , with Kate ; 

And two by two like cat and mouse 

The homeless playeO. at keeping house. 

There Wealthy Meg , the Sailor 's Friend , 

.A.nd Marion , cow-eyed , 

Opened their arms to me but I 

Refused to step inside ; 



The nightingales a.re sobbing in 


At each end of each scroll bar there's a scroll arrow 

(four of them in all). When you place the pointer on 

one of them and hit the button, the document scrolls 

in the direction indicated. If you hold the button down, 

the document will scroll slowly and continuously. (The 

way scroll arrows work is so obvious and intuitive that 

I won't belabor you with illustrations of it.) 

Just below the up scroll arrow (at the top of the 

vertical scroll bar) is a little symbol that looks like a 

sheet of paper with the corner turned over; there's a 

similar symbol just above the down scroll arrow. These 

are the view buttons and they scroll text a screenful 

at a time. To activate a view button, you just put the


Figure 2-28 

Fi le/Print Edit Search Type Style Format 1f Page Layout 

111111 Master & Bos ' n 111111 

--. 

Song of the Master and Boatswain 

W H Auden 

flt Dirty Dick 's and Sloppy Joe 's 



A.nd some , alas , with Kate ; 

find two by two like cat and mou se 

The homeless played at keeping house. 

There Wealthy Meg , the Sailor 's Friend , 

find Marion , cow-eyed , 


Refused to step inside ; 



The nightingale s are sobbing in 

pointer in it and click the button. In Figure 2-28, I've 

moved to the beginning of the document and put the 

pointer in the down view button; clicking the button 

produces Figure 2-29 (notice how the elevator shifted 

to indicate the new place in the document). 

The last line in Figure 2-28 is, "The nightingales 

are sobbing in." In Figure 2-29, half of this line is at 

the top of the new window, to give you a little continuity. 

Aside from that slight overlap, you get a whole new 

screenful. 

Lisa Write only has vertical view buttons, but the 

other tools (and the Desktop Manager) have horizontal 

ones as well. They work the same basic way, leaving

57 


File/Print 

Edit 

Figure 2-29 

Page Layout 



Have kng been breaking others; 

Tear s are rcu1Kl. , the sea is .jeep: 

Roll them oYerboard and sleep. 

a little bit of the old screenful on the edge for reference, 

otherwise giving you a whole new screenful to either 

the left or the right. 

You can only scroll in the active window, and thus 

it's the only one that has scroll bars. (This is yet another 

way to tell which window is active.) 

Rearranging 

windows on 

the Desktop 

Your keen eyes have noticed that there's one more symbol 

I haven't discussed. It sits at the juncture of the 

two scroll bars and is called the size control box. It's 

used to change the size and/ or shape of a window 

(called sizing in either case). The way the size control

58 


File/Print 

Figure 2-30 

Search Type Style Format 1r 

illlll Master & Bos'n 111111 

of the Master and Boats 

H'. H Auden 

Page Layout 

At Dirty Dick 's and Sloppy .J::e ' s 

We dra11k our liquor str.:Ught, 


A.nd some , alas , with Kate ; 

And ti..vo by tv·IC· like c:.:1t and mov e 

The homele ss played at l


Figure 2-31 

File/Print Edit Search Type Style Format tr Page Layout 

---''--------'=


Figure 2-32 


 

111111 Master & Bos' n 111111 

of the Master and Boatswain 

lV H Auden 

At Dirty Dick 's a.nd Sloppy Joe 's 

We drank our liquor str aight, 

Sorne went upst.air s with Margery , 

And sorne , alas, with Kate ; 

And tv.ro by two like cat and rnou se 

The homeless played at keeping house . 

There Wealthy Meg , the Sailor 's Frien·j , 

And M.il'ion , cow-eyed , 

Opened their arms t::i roe but I 

Refused to step in side ; 

I l'ras not looking for a cage 

In which to mope in rny old age . 

The nightingale s a.re sobbing in 

The orchards cf our mothers, 


Have long been breaking others; 

Tea.rs a.re round , the sea is deep:


Figure 2-33 

File/Print Edit Search Type Style Format 1r 

1°b m 

Lis3Pr•, ject Paper 

Master & Bc•s'r1 

D . . 

Lis.;.'IJrite Paper 

Fl 

Li2J 

is t do•oument 

I ;}: 

Typefaces 

i 

2M d•)Cument 

I 

LisaGraj)h Paper Li:,.;JJr a1•,• P af•er Lis.;Li;.t Paper 

Untitle•j 

l@I 

1st picture 

CJ D D D D 

. 

. 

. . 

Lis.:iCalc E::< :>mples LisaProject Exaroples L!sawnte Examples L1saGrapr1 Examples L1sanra.w Examples LlsaL1st Example 

[28 I§ l£iJ Cl Im 

Empty Folders 

I 

Lis awrite LisaGrapr1 Lisa!lr a.i LisaList Clock 

.as tebasket 

Cli board 

You can make a window as big or small as you 

want. In Figure 2-32, it fills the screen and completely 

blocks out the Profile window (and Desktop) beneath 

it; in Figure 2-33, it retreats into a corner, revealing 

almost all of the Profile window. 

There are a couple of things to notice about Figure 

2-33: 

• The Lisa moves the title of the resized window over 

so that as much of it as possible is still visible. If the 

title had been left in its original position, none of it 

would be visible in Figure 2-33. You can see some 

of this title-shifting in Figure 2-30 as well.

: 


Figure 2-34 

Edit Search Type Style Format 1f Page Layout 

untitle1j 

I 

Et picture 

T/ref..c:e. 

F"l 

Li] 

2n1J i:wcument 

LJ LJ 

. 

LJ 

. 

i.-. I 

. 1-. ! 

LisiCaK E:•

. 


File/Print Edit Search 

Figure 2-35 

Lis.:i.Gr.:ipri P.:ipi::r 

; 

 

1::. t 1jc1i::1.1mi::nt 

; 

ltJ 

Ur:itle1J 

1:' 

Li: . . :irir21_i.i·.1 Peiper 

1:.t picture 

Coleridge 

IW 

. 

.§ 

.. 0 

: ·:: . . . 

mJ Im 

Lis.;Calc Lis.;Pro.iect Lisa.write Li"r.;p1 Li:;.;i[lr.:iY·,' Li" .. :iList 

' 

L:J 

Ernpty Fol,jers 

11 I 

r:IQCIQ 

go 

CICIQQ 

c1e:u1ator 

Clock


Figure 2-36 


11111 Master £J Bos' n 11111 

of the Master and fuatswain 

ll H Auden 

 

At Dirty Dick 's and Sloppy Joe's 


Some went upstair s with Margery , 

An·j some, alas , with Kate ; 

And two by two like cat and mouse 

The homeless played at keeping house . 

There Wealthy Meg , the Sailor ' s Friend , 

And M0l.rion , cow-eyed , 


Refused t:· step in side ; 

I was not lc-:·king for a cage 


If you want to look at a window that's buried underneath 

the active window, you can shrink the active window 

and move it around, as I've done with Master & 

Bos'n. But there's a better method-you just activate 

the window you want to bring to the top. 

The easiest way to activate a window is simply to 

put the pointer anywhere in it and click the button. 

Figure 2-36 shows the pointer in the Profile window, 

whiCh is mostly buried underneath Master & Bos'n; Figure 

2-37 shows the result of clicking the button when 

the pointer is in that position. Notice that Master & 

Bos'n is still visible (across the top and along the left 

edge of the screen).


Figure 2-37 


5063 blocks free out of 9690. 

a 

m 

Lisacaic P aiier 

i . 

untitle•l 

 

 

I 

I :)iff I 

Li$aProject Paper 

Lisa.Write Paper 

Master & Bos 'n 

1S t dc•cument 

Typefaces 

I 

2M document 

LisaGrapn Paper 

Untitled 

lH 

Lisa!Jraw Paper 

I 

ls t pict1Jre 

Lisa.Gale E:

=a== 


Figure 2-38 

Save Er Put Away 

Save Er Continue 

Revert to Previous Version 

Format for Pri nter . . . I 

.'.'lri te p.,per 

·rent 

a 

B 

Lis'8npn P3per 

Untitled 

f.mll 

 

Lis.lDrav·,' Paper 

I 

1st picture 

8 

L2J 

F1 

L__J 

Li; .. 3.C.3Jc E>::ample;. Li; 

.. :o.FTO.Ject E:,,:.;;mples Liseo.1Nnte E:,.;.•mpies Lis.•Gnp1 E>eampie;. Lis«mple;. 

Lis


Figure 2-39 

Fi le /Print Edit Vi ew Disk 

Sometimes, however, the window you want to look 

at is completely buried (this is quite possible, since the 

Lisa lets you have 20! windows on the Desktop at one 

time). You can't click the mouse button in it, because 

there's no visible part of it to put the pointer in. You 

could resize one window after another till you uncover 

the one you want, but there's a faster way to do it: you 

simply go to the File/Print menu and select Set Aside 

Everything (Figure 2-38). All the windows become 

icons again (Figure 2-39), which makes it easy to find 

the one you want, select it and open it. 

Notice that, in Figure 2-39, Master & Bos'n has 

its own icon on the Desktop. This is convenient, because

68 


otherwise you wouldn't be able to select it (if it were 

the buried window you were looking for). You'd have 

to select Profile and opeh it, then select Master & Bos'n 

and open it. 

On the other hand, if you wanted to put away Master 

& Bos'n back inside of Profile, you could have done 

that simply by selecting Save & Put Away instead of 

Set Aside from the File/Print menu. A third option is 

Save & Continue. The chart below explains the differences 

between them: 

Set Aside Save & Put Away Save & Continue 

Reduces window 

to icon 

yes yes no 

Places icon: 

on Desktop 

back where it 

came from 

Records changes 

on disk 

no yes yes 

Saving takes significantly more time thari setting 

aside, because the Profile has to be accessed. The advantage, 

of course, is that you won't lose your changes if 

there's a power failure, or if the plug accidentally gets 

pulled out of the wall. 

Figure 2-40 

Edit Search T 


Set Aside "Master & Bos'n" 

Save & Put Away 

Save & Continue 

Revert to Previous Version


Figure 2-41 

illtfiUI Edit Search Type Style Format 1r Page Layout 

Format for Printer,,, 

On which printer do yi ou intend to pr int tl·1 is document 

D Daisv V/ r1eej 

Print Method: • Dot Matrix 

Paper Length: 111" 0 14" 

Orientation: I Portra.it (tsl l) D Lsmlscspe (•1iicie) 

Resolution: D t\Jormal •High 

( Cancel ) 

1/-.l hs.t do vou '·'·..'ant done 1f the printer vou've ;;pecifieci 

1s not listed in Preferences 

D Tell lv1 e • F' ick an Avs.ils.ble F'r i nter for t·1e D Disregard it 

( OK 

There V•.realthy !'leg, t1·1e ::ailor '; Friend, 

And M.:u-·ion , covr-eyed , 

Ot:€ned their arms to me but I 

Refused to step in side; 

I was not lc-:.1.iJ1g for a c.:ige 

In which to mop; in my old age. 

Printing out 

When you're ready to print a document, you go to the 

File/Print menu and select Format for Printer . . . (Figure 

2-40). This gives you the dialog box shown in Figure 

2- 41. A dialog box is simply a display, similar to the 

ones in the Preferences window, that lets you change 

variables of one kind or another. (By the way, I think 

the dialog box in Figure 2-41 is an excellent example 

of how clear and understandable the Lisa's messages 

are.) 

One of the things it asks you (if you're using a dotmatrix 

printer) is whether you want a high-resolution 

or a normal printout; I discussed the difference between


them and gave you samples of each in Chapter 1. Another 

thing it asks you is if you want the printout to 

run down the page in a vertical format (called "portrait" 

or "tall" by Apple-why use the obvious term) or across 

the page in a horizontal format (which Apple calls 

"landscape" or "wide"). 

Vertical, of course, is what's normal; that's the way 

paper normally passes through a typewriter. But horizontal 

format gives each line more room and makes 

the text easier to read. And, of course, many graphic 

presentations look better in horizontal format. (When 

you print the screen, it always comes out in horizontal 

format, and you don't see any of these dialog boxes.) 

Anyway . . . if all these defaults are fine with you, 

you click on OK. The printing format you define for a 

document remains with it until you change it. If you 

know that a document's format is fine with you (either 

because you've previously set it up the way you want 

it or because you want the defaults), you can skip this 

Format for Printer step and go directly to the next oneselecting 

Print . . . from the File/Print menu (Figure 

2- 42). 

This produces another dialog box, shown in Figure 

2-43. (By the way, three dots after a menu item always 

indicates that it produces a dialog box.) Here's where 

you get to choose between draft mode (also discussed 

and illustrated in Chapter 1) and "finished quality" (either 

high-resolution or normal, depending on what you 

selected in the Format for Printer dialog box). 

You get this choice only if you select vertical format, 

because draft mode only works in vertical format. 

If you pick horizontal format in the Format for Printer 

dialog box, the draft mode/finished quality option is 

simply eliminated from this dialog box. 

The While You Work choice lets you do backgrond 

printing (working on one document while 

printing another). The rest of the options are selfexplanatory. 

When you click on OK, the Lisa gives you 

the display you see in Figure 2-44 and begins printing 

(unless you click on Terminate). If you want to do other


Figure 2-42 

Edit Search T 


Set Aside "Master & Bos'n" 

Save & P t1t Away 

Save & Continue 

Revert to Previous Ve rsion 

Format for Pri nter ... 

Figure 2-43 

iiitft4MI Edit Search Type Style Format ,r Page Layout 

Print... •Finished Quality D Quick Draft (Text Onl'y') 

D One Copy While You Wait •While You Work 

• All Pages D Only pages: 

Through: 

Number of Copies: B00[JITJ[DITJ0[D 

,' "'"""''"""""'""'"""'""""": 

"""""""""""'''"""""'"""""' 

( Cancel ) 

( OK ) 

Figure 2-44 

_llllM:mfill Edit Search Type Style Format ,r Page Layout 

Monitor the Pri nter . . 

Docwnent being pri nted: r··l .:i . 

ster :3: Bos'n 

Copy being printed: 1 Of 1 

P11ge being printed: 1 In the range: To 

[Jerminate) 

If you w:3.nt t.1:1 cl o other 'A' Drk 'N hile the clocument is bein•I pnnteci . 

.. 

click Pro ceed.. 

Othen.··.' iS: e_, . .i u :;t ',· a.it. 

If you d o d ec:i d e t o Prnceec!,.. ·y- ou c.:i.n •J et. br:i.ck 1·1 ere f:i·y- choosin 1 

Honitor U-1 e Printer from tr1e File/Print menu. You s1·1 oulc! c!o t.1·1a.t if 

vou 1·1 eer .:i. '1k1 idle or if 'y' OU Vi r:i.nt to terminate pr intin1. 

( Proceed )


Figure 2-45 

Disk 

Straighten up Icons 

LisacaJc Paper LisaProject Paper L1sawnte Paper 

i i i 

Untitled 

Master a. Bos · n 1st document 

i i 

Coleridge 2M document 

 

Lisa.Graph Paper 

 

Untitled 

lH 

LisaDr aw Paper 

l®I 

1st picture 

ml 

LisaLis t Paper 

LisacaJc Examples LisaProject Examples Lisawrite Examples Lisa.Graph Examples Lisaoraw Examples 

work while the printout is going on (in other words, 

if you want to put the printing in the background), you 

click on Proceed. Otherwise, you just sit back and let 

the Lisa do its stuff. 

Odds and ends 

There are other pointer shapes and scrolling controls 

than those already mentioned. They're specific to particular 

tools and I'll describe them as they come up in 

later chapters. 

So far the only menu we've used is the File/Print 

menu. But some of the other menus do interesting things 

too. For example, the View menu (Figure 2-45) controls


Figure 2-46 


5194 blocks free out of 9690. : never. 

... 

 

 

,.. 

 

Title 

1st document 

0 1st picture 

2nd doCL1ment 

1§1 Calculat or 

0 Clock 

Coleridge 

t:5l Empty Folders 

mJ 

' 

LisaCalc 

L:l LisaCalc Examples 

!ill LisaCalc Paper 

llil LisaDraw 

L:l LisaDraw Examples 

0 

LisaDre.w Paper 

LisaGre.ph 

L:l 

Modified 

Created 

5 6:19 pm 10/26/63 4:26 am 10/06/63 

10 6:46 pm 10/29/63 5:23 am 10/06/63 

7 4:16 am 10/26/63 5:50 am 10/25/63 

76 6:06 am 10/22/67 

36 6:06 am 10/22/67 

4 5:43 am 11/05/63 5:01 am 11/05/63 

0 6:06 am 10/22/67 

66 2:45 pm 4/2 5/63 

75 6:30 am 10/22/67 

9 6:31 am 10/22/67 

201 2:45 pm 4/2 5/63 

199 6:15 am 10/22/67 

3 6:16 am 10/22/67 

126 2:45 pm 4/25/63 

6:20 am 10/22/67 

how objects are represented in a window. The default 

is to display them pictorially-as icons-which is the 

way we've been seeing them up till now. But you can 

have them listed alphabetically as well (Figure 2-46). 

The alphabetical listing also gives you the size of 

each document (in 512-byte blocks), the date and time 

it was created, and the date and time it was last modified. 

The Modified and Created columns provide some interesting 

insights. One is that I tend to work all night long. 

Another is that I have managed to create several documents 

on October 22, 1987, a major accomplishment 

in time travel that you'll have to buy my forthcoming 

science-fiction novel to find out more about.


Figure 2-47 


5194 b I ocks free out of 9690, 

Title 

Size 

Lise.Graph Paper 9 

ml Lise.List 277 

tJ Lise.List Examples 254 

5]] Lise.List Paper 11 

@ Lise.Project 178 

tJ Lise.Project Examples 33 

Lise.Project Paper 4 

 

Li sal.lri t e 213 

tJ Lise.Write Examples 

Lisa!rite Paper 4 

 

Master & Bos'n 5 

Tipefaces 10 

i 

Untitled 9 

Untitled 9 

57 

4:04 am 11/08/83 

11:42 am 11/03/83 

5:11 am 10/08/83 

5:19 am 10/08/83 

Created 

8:21 am 10/22/87 [) 

2:45 pm 4/25/83 

8:26 am 10/22/87 

8:28 am 10/22/87 

2:45 pm 4/25/83 

8:22 am 10/22/87 

8:23 am 10/22/87 

2:45 pm 4/25/83 

8:12 am 10/22/87 

8:13 am 10/22/87 

8:37 pm 10/28/83 

2:43 am 10/27 /83 

5:11 am 10/08/83 

5:19 am 10/08/83


Figure 2-48 



Title Size Created 

ffi LisaCal c Paper 9 8:H am 10/22/87 

t:J LisaCalc Examples 

8:30 am 10/22/87 

75 

[Dll Lisalist Paper 11 8:28 am 10/22/87 

t:J Lisalist Examples 254 8:26 am 10/22/87 

LisaProject Paper 4 8:23 am 10/22/87 

t:J LisaProject Examples 33 8:22 am 10/22/87 

LisaGraph Paper 

t:J LisaGraph Examples 


t:J LisaDraw Examples 

LisaWrite Paper 

t:J Lisali


Figure 2-49 


5194 blocks free out of 9690. : never·. 

Title 

Master & Bos ' n 

Coleridge 

""" 

 

Tipefaces 

• 

1st picture 

1st document 

2nd document 

Untitled 

i Untitled 

. 

[ill LisaCal c 

. 

. 

Li saDraw 

LisaGraph 

ttil Lisalist 

LisaProject 

LisalAlri te 

Size !Modified Created 

5 4:04 cam 11/08/83 8:37 pm 10/28/83 

4 5:43 cam 11/05/83 5:01 am 11/05/83 

10 11:42 cam 11/03/83 2:43 am 10/27/83 

10 8:46 pm 10/29/83 5:23 am 10/08/83 

5 8:19 pm 10/28/83 4:26 am 10/08/83 

7 4:16 cim 10/28/83 5:50 am 10/25/83 

9 5:19 am 10/08/83 5:19 am 10/08/83 

9 5:11 am 10/08/83 5:11 am 10/08/83 

86 2:45 pm 4/25/83 

201 2:45 pm 4/25/83 

126 2:45 pm 4/25/83 

277 2:45 pm 4/25/83 

178 2:45 pm 4/25/83 

213 2:45 pm 4/25/83 

and folders of examples on this list, when in fact all I 

created were the eight documents (Master & Bos'n, 

Coleridge, etc.). Well, this has to do with ProFile's philosophical 

orientation. Basically, ProFile is a solipsist and 

thus believes that nothing exists except what it's aware 

of. So as far as it's concerned, all those objects were 

created out of nothing the instant I transferred them 

onto ProFile from the floppy disks Apple sent them to 

me on. (But how did I do it in 198 7!-that's the 

question.) 

Here again, the documents won't all fit on one 

screen; in Figure 2- 49, I've scrolled down to the end 

(using the elevator this time, just for a little variety).


Figure 2-50 




\iW•.'.' b P1.1t HwmJ 

Ope1i 

Oupl icate 

'ftl!ll"lll!ll!lf!llll 

Monitor the Printer 

so 

Lisawri te Paper 

i 

Sos' n 1S t d•jCUment 

i 

Coleridge 2nd doc1jment 

i 

Typef.ces 

LisaGraph P;.per Lisanrah' Pa+ier Lisaist Pa+ier 

untitled 

I 

1st picture 

Lisacalc Examples LisaProject Examples Lisawrite Examples LisaJ3raph Examples LisaDraw Exa:riples 

Ii §


Figure 2-51 



Lisaca1c Paper 

i 1 

. 

LisaProject Paper 

Untitled Master , Bos'n ist document untitled 

i 

Coleridge 

i 

2nd d•)C•Jment 

i 

Typefaces 

I 

1st picture 

LisaGalc Examples LisaProject Examples Lisa.Write Examples LisaGrapn Examples LisaDra.w Examples Lisa.List Examples 

b 

mill [12] Ii Im LJ 

c 

Lisacaic Lisa.Project Lisa.Write 

. . 

LisaGrapn Lisallraw Lisa.List 

Cal cul a.tor 

Actually, there's not much to explain. The Lisa's 

folders are used just as folders in the real world areto 

hold several related objects. You can take a bunch 

of icons that are littering up the window and get them 

out of the way by stuffing them into a folder you've 

created for that purpose. What you call the folder and 

what you put in it are both entirely up to you. Here's 

how it works: 

·First you select the Empty Folders icon, then you 

go to the File/Print menu and Tear Off Stationery (Figure 

2-50). This gives you an untitled new folder (Figure 

2-5 1 )-just as following the same procedure with a stationery 

pad gives you an untitled new document.


Figure 2-52 

Fi le/Print Edit Vi ew Disk 

5194 blocks Free out of 9690. 

Lisaca1c Paper 

i 

. 

untitled 

Lisa.oroject Paper 

Lisawrite Paper LisaBraph Paper LisaDrai-1' Paper 

 

untitled 

I 

1st picture 

Coleridge 

2M document 

Fl 

LZJ 

Typefaces 

Ii 

Lisawrite ooc1 1ents 

Lisacalc Examples Lisa.oroject Examples Lisawrite Examples LisaGraph Examples Lisaoraw Examples 

(Notice that the Lisa has automatically scrolled the 

icons up to make room for the new folder. You can 

scroll them back down whenever you want, as I did 

between Figures 2-5 1 and 2-52.) 

Next you grab the new folder, move it somewhere 

convenient, and retitle it. Then you grab each object 

you want to go into the folder, move it over and place 

it on top of the folder. In Figure 2-52, I've done that 

with Master & Bos'n. When you release the mouse button, 

the document disappears from its old lo·cation and 

moves into the folder.


Figure 2-53 



ii 

' 

 

Lisacaic Paper LisaProject Paper LisaWrite Paper 

i 

' 

untitled 

1..&Mm 

 

LisaGr apn Paper 

[£.J 

untitled 

lH 

Lisi!Dra\'\1 Paper 

1@1 

1st picture 

illJ 

Lisal.ist Paper 

Lisacaic Ex;,mples LisaProject Ex;,rr1ples Lisawrite Exw1ples LisaGrapn Examples Lisi!Draw Examples 

iill 

' 

§ U2J 

' 

mJ a fill 

L:J 

Lisatist Examples


Figure 2-54 


Typefaces Master & Bos'n Coleridge 

 

lli:J 

2nd doc1.Jment 

1st doc1Jment 

caiculator 

Clock 

In Figure 2-53, I've moved all five LisaWrite documents 

into the Lisa Write Documents folder and moved 

the folder underneath the Lisa Write Paper icon. See 

how much neater the window looks 

To get to any of those LisaWrite documents, all I 

have to do is open the folder (as I've done in Figure 

2-54). If I decide I want to move a document back out 

of the folder, I just grab it, move it over to the Profile 

window, and release the mouse button. 

Folders are great for keeping windows well organized 

and they make it easier to find what you're looking 

for, especially when you're dealing with a lot of icons.

82 


The Edit menu also does some nice things, most 

of which I'll cover in the Lisa Write chapter. But there's 

one very useful feature I really should discuss here. I'm 

talking, of course, about the original forgive-and-forget 

guy, that friend indeed in times of need, star of graphics, 

spreadsheets and word processing, and a close personal 

friend-the Undo command! 

The Undo command is really simple. When you 

screw up, you just go to the Edit menu and select Undo 

Last Change (Figure 2-55). The Lisa then proceeds to 

put everything back the way it was before you did the 

last thing you did-unless for some reason it can't do 

that, in which case it displays Figure 2-56. 

Figure 2-55 

Cut 

li(X 

Copy j[ 

Pu:;i e 

.t.v 

Select All Icons WA 

Figure 2-56 

The Lisa cannot undo the last operation. 

( Cance l ) 

Untitled 

Master & Bos' n 1st document Untitled

83 


And so we bid 

fond adieu . . . 

It must be obvious to you by now that I could go on 

describing the Lisa's software for another hundred 

pages (it's painfully obvious to me). But I'm going to 

force myself to stop. With what you have here for a 

beginning, the Lisa's manual and training program 

should be adequate to explain the rest. 

So I'll now proceed to tell you how you finish a 

work session with the Lisa. That won't take long, since 

all you have to do is . . . turn the machine off. It doesn't 

matter whether you're in a window or on the Desktopthe 

Lisa saves onto the disk all the changes you've made 

to any document. As I said earlier, this is a safety feature 

that can't be praised too highly. 

The Lisa also remembers what windows were open, 

their size, shape and location on the screen, etc., etc. 

When you turn the Lisa on again, it puts you back in 

exactly the same place, so you can begin working right 

where you left off. 

Now that you have some sense of how the Lisa's 

software works, you may wonder why it takes the unusual 

and complicated approach it does. 

I've already answered this question, but it bears 

restating: although this approach is more complex in 

some ways, Apple feels that it's much more intuitive 

and easier to learn, because instead of dealing with abstract 

concepts like "files" and "commands," you're manipulating 

(pictures of) actual physical objects just the 

way you do in the real, noncomputer world. 

There is certainly some truth to this; the question 

is only whether the advantages of the Lisa's approach 

outweigh its disadvantages (expensive hardware, relatively 

slow operation, constantly having to move your 

hand from the keyboard to the mouse, and so on). 

Apple talks about how easy the mouse/icon approach 

is to learn, but I think that this chapter-which 

is quite a bit more lucid than any of Apple's own training 

materials-clearly demonstrates that this is not the case. 

(I hope you found it easier to learn than I did, or else 

what would be the point of writing this book)


But however confusing the first stages of learning 

the Lisa may be, things really begin to fall into place 

as you proceed. The mouse/icon approach does make 

sense on a more basic level than the user interface on 

most computers, and for many applications, it's spectacularly 

easy to use. In other words, it isn't much faster 

from 0 to 30, but from 30 to 60 it really eats up the 

road, and it can cruise all day at 75. 

There's another advantage to Lisa's user interface: 

once you've learned it, you're set-it stays the same no 

matter what tool you're using. The usefulness of this 

will become obvious in Chapters 4 through 10. 

But first I'll talk a little about how to get started 

using a Lisa and what you can expect your first session 

with it to be like.

3 Using a Lisa 

for the First Time 

The basic Lisa manual-called the Owner's Guide-is 

designed to shepherd you through your first few anxietyladen 

days (or weeks) with a Lisa, and it does a reasonably 

good job of that-although far from a perfect one. 

The Owner's Guide is copiously illustrated and almost 

always paced slowly enough for even the most 

terror-stricken novice to follow. (Another nice thing 

about it: unlike many other computer manuals, it 

doesn't come in one of those vinyl binders that stink 

so much they make your eyes cross.) But for all its virtues, 

the Owner's Guide could be more complete, more 

thorough and somewhat better organized. 

There's no sense in my going over all the things 

the Owner's Guide explains well, or repeating what I've 

already covered in Chapters 1 and 2. Instead, I'll just 

give you a few pointers that should make getting started 

on the Lisa a little less traumatic. 

Before you can use the Lisa, you need to set it up. 

The procedures for doing that are in a four-page pamphlet 

that comes in the accessory box, and are also 

included in the Owner's Guide as an appendix. 

Fortunately, they're easy to follow and they steer you 

clear of several dangerous pitfalls. 

The dealer who sells you a Lisa should 'initialize 

the ProFile for you, but if that hasn't been done, you'll 

have to do it yourself. (To initialize a disk means to 

85


structure it to accept information.) Normally, in addition 

to initializing the ProFile, you want to make it the 

startup device. This means that when you turn the Lisa 

on, it will look to the ProFile for instruction_s on what 

to do. To do that, it must contain the Lisa's basic program-the 

Desktop Manager. 

You load the Desktop Manager onto the ProFile 

from two floppies; they're labeled Office System I and 

II and you'll find them in slots in the cover of the Owner's 

Guide. In Section D of the Owner's Guide are several 

pages that tell you how to proceed. They walk you 

through the steps in a rather straightforward manner, 

but they omit one important fact-that it will take about 

fifteen minutes to accomplish the transfer. 

If you're new to computers, you could easily panic 

during that time and think that something has gone 

drastically wrong with this new, sophisticated and very 

expensive toy of yours. 

Naturally this sort of thing doesn't even begin to 

phase an old computer hand like myself. I realize that 

all I have to do is: 

1. quickly make myself a big drink; 

2. throw half of it down my throat; 

3. slosh the rest of it all over the manual as I frantically 

flip through the pages, trying to figure out 

how I screwed up. 

At the same time you put the Desktop Manager onto 

the ProFile, you should also load all the other tools (Lisa 

Draw, LisaWrite, etc.). The Lisa is slow enough as it 

is, without having to load programs from floppy disks 

at a tenth the speed of the ProFile. (Here again, the 

dealer may have done this for you.) 

If you're also hooking up a dot-matrix printer, you 

should install the parallel board in expansion slot #2 

and hook up the printer to the top connector in the 

board. The printer will work if it's connected at any 

of the other six possible locations (top or bottom in 

slot #1, bottom in slot #2, top or bottom in slot #3, or 

the standard parallel port on the back of the console

87 Using a Lisa for the First Time 

itself), but the top connector in slot #2 is the only one 

that lets you automatically print what's on the screen 

at any given time (you do it by simultaneously pressing 

the right-hand Option key, the right-hand Shift key and 

the number 4 on the numeric keypad). This can be a 

handy feature, so why not take advantage of it 

Although the setup instructions for the printer are 

fairly clear, they are a bit confusing at certain points 

and would benefit from more photographs (as in the 

other manuals). 

Before the printer will work, you have to open Preferences 

and tell the Lisa it's there. Then you're told to 

turn the Lisa off, connect the printer and turn the Lisa 

on again. (You'll have to do this even if your printer 

is already physically hooked up.) 

Once you've got the whole Lisa system set up, you 

turn to Section A of the manual. Section A is only three 

pages long-which isn't surprising since it merely tells 

you how to turn the Lisa on and how to insert the disk 

that contains an on-screen training program called Lisa 

Guide. 

All the basic teaching about the Lisa is done by 

LisaGuide. It's an interactive program with a lot of 

branching. This means that it reacts to what you do; 

what it puts on the screen depends on what your last 

response was. If you get an answer right, it congratulates 

you. If you get it wrong, it says something euphemistic 

like "you don't seem to have the idea yet" and asks if 

you want to see a demonstration of the correct way 

to do it. LisaGuide gives you frequent opportunities to 

practice what you've already learned, to review earlier 

screens, or to skip ahead to a new topic. 

The program is arranged into ten sections, or "topics." 

The manual recommends you complete the first 

six topics in one fell swoop and then look at the last 

four at your leisure. All ten are listed below, along with 

the concepts that are covered under each one. 

1. Of Mice & Menus-the mouse, the desktop, automatic 

screen dimming, menus, the menu bar, 

menu items, highlighting


2. Starting a Document-disks, folders, documents, 

icons, windows, stationery pads, renaming 

documents 

3. Editing a Document-opening documents, activating 

windows, inserting text, replacing text, 

cutting text, the clipboard, undoing changes 

4. Filing a Document-creating a new folder, filing 

homes (where objects go when they're 

Saved & Put Away), closing a window with Save 

& Put Away, closing a window with Set Aside, 

filing a document 

5. Viewing a Document-scroll bars, view arrows, 

elevators, view buttons, moving windows, the 

size control box, listing alphabetically, listing 

chronologically, listing pictorially, resizing 

windows 

6. Stopping LisaGuide-thi is just one screen that 

lets you decide whether you want to keep working 

with LisaGuide or take a break and come 

back later (actually, the manual has already 

told you how to do this at any point you want) 

7. More Editing-selecting a word, selecting a 

group of words, moving text (also known as 

"cut & paste"), copying text, shadows 

8. More Filing-copying documents, copying folders, 

creating stationery pads, discarding icons, 

the wastebasket, retrieving icons 

9. Shortcuts-double-clicking, grouping icons 

with shift-clicking, grouping icons in a box, 

moving grouped icons, selecting all icons 

10. Summaries_:this is simply a collection of all 

of the on-screen summaries that have ended 

each of the preceding topics, useful as a quick 

reference 

Of Mice & Menus, the cleverly named first section, 

is a delight-clear and easy to follow. But as LisaGuide 

goes on, it picks up the pace quite a bit and it begins 

to lob information at you somewhat relentlessly. Before


I used LisaGuide, I'd been around computers for several 

years and had written a number of books about them. 

I'd even played with some early prototypes of the Lisa. 

In other words, I was not a computer novice-and I 

am not now, nor have I ever been, a dope. So if I felt 

like I had to bob and duck my head as new terms and 

concepts crashed into the wall behind me, chances are 

a lot of other people will have the same experience. 

This will be less of a problem for you, of course, 

since you've had the extreme good fortune to read my 

ravishingly cogent explanation of the Lisa's basic concepts 

in Chapter 2. But if you still feel lost-in spite 

of all I could do there-turn to Section B of the Owner's 

Guide. 

Unlike LisaGuide, which is a tutorial, Section B 

is arranged as a reference. This doesn't necessarily mean 

you should wait to read it until you've finished Lisa 

Guide. People learn in different ways and some like 

to have an organized overview of a subject before being 

taken by the hand and led through it. So you can do 

LisaGuide and then read Section B, or you can read 

Section B before beginning LisaGuide-whichever feels 

more comfortable. 

Section C gives you a brief overview of the Lisa 

hardware; you might want to read it to supplement 

Chapter 1 of this book. 

Let's assume you've read what you want to read 

in the Owner's Guide and are now ready to begin Lisa 

Guide. You put the LisaGuide disk into the top slot of 

the console and turn the Lisa on. The first thing you 

see is a screen that tells you that the Lisa is checking 

its CPU, memory, 1/0 functions, and so on, before letting 

you use it-an excellent safety feature. (I would 

have showed you this screen, except I couldn't get the 

Lisa to print it-which makes sense, since if it's still 

checking itself out, how can it proceed to some other 

activity, like printing the screen) 

Next you see Figure 3-1. The Lisa has automatically 

loaded LisaGuide and put you at the beginning of Of


Figure 3-1 

Topics 

1111!1 LisaGu1de 111111 

We lcome to LisaGuide! 

LisaGuide introduces features used throughout Lisa, including a 

c1 evi ce called a "mouse . " The mouse takes some getting used to/ 

but it lets you communicate with Lisa quickl·11 and easily . 

• Now you get to use the mouse. Don't press the mouse button 

until told to do so . Do each numbered task : 

1. Place t h e mouse to tl1e left or right of Lisa. Clear e. 

6-.i nch square area in which to roll the mouse . 

 

2. Hold the mouse as shown . Roll the mouse on 'y our 

desk and watch the poin ter move on Lisa' s screen . 

Trouble Pick up the mouse and reposition it. 

3. Roll the mouse on your desk until the pointer is over the 

" " but ton named Continue at Lisa.Gui de' s 1 m·1 er ri g1·1t . Wl"1en 

positioned correctl ', t h e pointer becomes arrow-shaped. 

4. Wl"1en the arrow-shaped pointer ' s tip is in the Continue button, 

CLICK the mouse but ton: Press the but ton/ then rel ease it. 

Mice & Menus. When you click on Continue, you see 

Figure 3-2. Doesn't that make you feel warm all over 

LisaGuide continues to give you encouraging slaps on 

the back all the way through to the end. 

By the time you've finished LisaGuide, Section B 

of the Owner's Guide and Chapter 2 of this book, you 

should feel quite comfortable with the Lisa and be ready 

to. rpove on to the tools that actually allow you to "do 

useful work." But it has taken a bit more than half 

an hour, hasn't it


Topics 

Figure 3-2 

LisaGuide 

Ri 1 ht I

4 

Word Processing 

with LisaWrite 

LisaWrite, the word processing program that comes as 

a standard feature with the Lisa, is very powerful in 

its graphic and formatting capabilities but fairly clumsy 

for the entering and editing of text. In spite of that, 

I'll spend more time on Lisa Write than on any other 

tool, because word processing is far and away the most 

common use of a computer in an office setting. 

Eighty percent of all office jobs involve writing, and 

according to a recent study conducted at the University 

of California, word processing is what people most often 

use their personal computers for-in spite of the fact 

that they rank it fourth out of five major tasks when 

asked, before they buy a computer, what they intend 

to use it for. 

The first two menus in LisaWrite (aside from our 

old friend, File/Print) relate to editing, so I'll cover that 

area first. 

Editing 

The Edit menu (shown in Figure 4-1) works more or 

less the same way in all seven tools as well as in the 

Desktop Manager, so I really should have covered it 

in Chapter 2. But that chapter got to be longer than a 

post office line, so I only discussed the Undo command 

there. Since editing commands normally fall under the 

aegis of word processing, I'll discuss the rest of them 

here. 

93


Figure 4-1 

Type Style 

Cut 

Copy 

Paste 

Select RI I of Document SA 

When editing text, as always on the Lisa, you have 

to select something before you can do anything to it. 

The Lisa lets you select any amount of text from a single 

character to a whole document. Let's start small: 

To select text character by character, you place the 

text pointer at the beginning of it and hold down the 

mouse button. (Don't release the button, because that 

will just deposit the insertion point; if you release it 

by mistake, simply push it down again and hold it.) 

In Figure 4-2, I put the text pointer at the beginning 

of the word "experiment" (in the first line). Then I held 

the button down and moved the text pointer to the right. 

This produced Figure 4-3. As you see, the selected text 

is highlighted. 

Figure 4-2 

File/Print Edit Search Type Style Format 1f 

u 

This is an experiment t o see wha.t the response ti 

t,ipeface ( 12- · tch Modern) instead of one of Hie fa 

that 's for sur but it 's still not qu ite inst antan 

t hs.t little one- or tvw-character clelav (or ma be it' 

It's also possible to move backward from the initial 

position, as I did to produce Figure 4-4. 

Although a selected piece of text can be any size, 

you can only select one piece at a time. The selected 

text always begins from the place where the text pointer 

was when you first pushed the mouse button.

95 Word Processing with LisaWrite 

Figure 4-3 


LJ 

This is an 

nt to see whet the response ti 

typeface ( 12-pi tch Mo em) instead of one of t he fat 

that 's for sure, but it 's still not quite instantan 

that lit t 1 e one- or two-ci·1 aract er delay (or maybe it ' 

Figure 4-4 


LJ 

Th · experiment to see what the response ti 

t w ef ac e ( 12-pitch Modern) instead of one of tl"1 e fat 

t hat ' s fo:ir sure, but it 's still not quite insta.nt a.n 

tl1a.t little one or t11w- character del av ( or rr1 av t1 e it ' 

If you want to change the initial position, you put 

the text pointer at the new location and push the button 

again; the previously selected section of text de-highlights 

(goes back to normal). Relocating the insertion 

point works in the same way-when you deposit it in 

a new place (by moving the text pointer there and clicking 

the button), it disappears from its previous location. 

Now you can see how selecting a lot of text by 

the method I just described would get pretty tedious. 

So the Lisa gives you a way to select words. You put 

the pointer anywhere on the word and click the mouse 

button twice in rapid succession (Preferences lets you 

choose just how rapid that succession has to be). 

If you click twice and hold the mouse button down, 

text will be selected word by word when you move the 

pointer, rather than character by character. 

There's also a way to select whole paragraphs-you 

just put the pointer anywhere in the paragraph and click 

three times. (That's what I did to produce Figure 4-5). 

If you triple-click and hold the button down, you can 

move the pointer straight down through the text and 

select it paragraph by paragraph. 

But even that can get tedious if you're selecting a 

very large amount of text. So the Lisa gives you the


Edit 

Search 

Figure 4-5 

I knm v,1t·1at would l:i e fun 1 I' 11 1·1olcl cl o1•,1 n tt·1 e option ke\1 8.n cl see v11·1 8.t 8.11 tr"1o:se special 

cl1an.cters look like : · · i'Hoo§11-Q±•')Z.®:1t{ 0n1•


Figure 4-6 

Edit Search Type Style Format 1r Page Layout 

llm""==--- ------- 

the block of text to go, deposit the insertion point there, 

move the pointer up to the Edit menu and select Paste. 

The block of text jumps out of Clipboard and back into 

the document right at that point. 

Copy works similarly, except that when you Copy 

a block of text, it doesn't disappear from its original 

location in the document when it goes to Clipboard. 

So when you Paste it into its new location, you have 

it in both places. 

And that's all there is to using the Edit menu. It 

really couldn't be much simpler.


The next menu is the Search menu (Figure 4-7). 

You use it to look through an entire document for a 

word or phrase. You can simply find each place where 

it occurs, or you can change it to something else. 

Figure 4-7 

Type Style 

Form 

• 

Find Next Occurrence •F 

Change Th is Occurrence 

Change Er Find Next •N 

Find Er Change All 

Cases Must Agree 

v'Coses Need Not Agree 

Insert Wi ld Card ( ... ) 

Hide Dialog Box 

Figure 4-8 

X o 

Fi le/Print Edit 

{:l 

Search Type Style Format 1r Page Layout 

Find 

Change to {} 

Q 

In either case, you begin with the Find What menu 

item. Selecting it produces the dialog box you see in 

Figure 4-8. You move the pointer between the curly 

brackets after Find and type in the word or phrasein 

computer jargon, the string-you're looking for. Let's 

look for the phrase "this typeface". (I put the period 

outside the quotes in that last sentence to make it clear 

that a period is not part of the string we're going to 

search for.) 

The Lisa will not only find "this typeface" but also 

"This typeface". If you only want it to find "this type-


face"-with the first letter not capitalized-you select 

the Cases Must Agree menu item. But since you usually 

want to find all occurrences of a string, regardless of 

whether or not it begins a sentence, Cases Need Not 

Agree is the default. 

Now-if you simply want to find all the occurrences 

of "this typeface", you just keep selecting Find Next 

Occurrence from the Search menu over and over again. 

Each occurrence of the string will be highlighted. But 

the first occurrence of "this typeface" is under the dialog 

box. So first you have to select Hide Dialog Box (the 

last item on the Search menu). Then you can see the 

first occurrence highlighted (Figure 4-9), as well as the 

second (Figure 4-10). 

Figure 4-9 

[j 

File/Print Edit Search Type Style Format ....;;. 

X 

1f 

_ 

P 

_ 

a ..; 

g -. 

e 

_ 

L 

_ 

ay ;;;. 

o 

_ 

u 

_ 

t _______ 

_ 

What shall I type on this screen is interesting but, ju st for the fun of it , 0 

iet'schange it. Well, this is interestingHI I can see that ll 

I could have sotne fun with Lisa Write, except that ,,,,,.,, 

[j 

Figure 4-10 


------------------------- 

lllll I lst document 111111 

Wha.t shall I tv .1:-e on this screen'c' This typeUt.ce is interestiJ1g but, ,just for the fun of it , 

let' ; ·:IHnge it . wen, this is interesting''' I can see that 

I could ha ve some fun with Lisa Write, except tha t 

the response tkne is awfully slow. 

His is the tl/pef:5ce thev gi"le vou as 8. d e fault . 

rea.l l"/ a pain. l 1"1/i finite/>.' 11.ve t' " _t n'ii M t. t fl.95111(1.· IJ .91". 

The.t flashin1J \' ertical t• 8r is 

What will


Often, however, you'll not only want to find the 

string but change it. In that case, you type in a replacement 

string after the words Change to in the dialog 

box. Let's change "this typeface" to "this too too solid 

flesh" (Figure 4-11). 

Figure 4-1 1 

F i l e/Print Edit Search Type Style Format 1f Page Layout 

Find {this typeface) 

Change to X{ this too too solid flesh) 

One way you can do this is by first finding the occurrence 

you want to change, and then selecting Change 

This Occurrence from the menu. If you're planning to 

make a number of changes, Change & Find Next is 

more convenient; as its name suggests, it changes the 

occurrence that is presently highlighted and then moves 

on to the next occurrence and highlights it. Figure 

4-12 shows the result of selecting Change & Find Next 

when the first occurrence of "this typeface" (in the first 

line) was highlighted. 

El 

Figure 4-12 


---------------· 

What shall I type on this screen this too too solid flesh is interesting but, ,j ust for the fun 

of it , let's ch.mge it .1Well, this is interestingm I can see 

tha t I could have some fw with Lisa Write, except 

tha t the response time is awfully slow. 

This is tl1e t1peface tl"1 ev gi\J8 'y'ou as s. default. Tl"1 e.t flashin•J 1,1 ertic;jl l:iar is


' LJ 

Figure 4-13 


1111 Ist document 11111 

----- --------- 

: \11.lfi.jt h:iU I type eon this :cr een ·i· thi tcio too solicl flesh is interestir1g but, ,just for the fun 

; 0:1 it . iet 's change it. Well, this is interestingm I can see 

tha t I couldpa ve some fun with Lisa Write,. except 

tha t the response time is awfully slow. 

This is the t1,1pef8ce the·y· 1i'•/ 8 '•/OU as 8. cl ef8.ult . That fl8.hin11 \.1ertic::il :i etr is 

: 

-pr< 1 1 .. 

WltA 1.'l 

• · .- . . 

1·-· .l:c ct p.J.lll . 

l 1iil i L"'= finitel i 11.c.< tc' '"e t nc" c't' ff1. t fl.c; 1! I.'J•' M1 -. t Wl 

· 

. 

- 

10'"''" ]' i'"e - .. -. -. ,. , ... - -. .. 

J, i VI\ .1.1\ i , This 1._ 

• . ; .... 

,,,. - f·-. . -- . -. • . -. - --,• .... 

- ·.-. 

''"ti -· .... . -, ,;,, .. , .. .. r .-i 

11_. i.:)·J-· .. -:i1_.-c .. tJ 1_. t'J., ·· J.·'.· ._. ,_(. .1. ·'.· ·.-.. e i.i_.-_. .LJ.::; lt ._.1_ . 

· r.:a d, ,;1;·d iti'.:1reks up bec usf ofits Si.ii.ill!. sizt·. 

I guess tfils js the 011e IJJ stjck with !01> nzy 

11or11zal Wiitjrl{f--a 1-Uce, mzostentatjous, 

wo11


dialog box, rather than the type fonts "this typeface" 

was in. 

There are a number of fancier tricks you can play 

with the Search menu, but that's enough for a general 

introduction. 

Lisa Write has a special feature that no other tool 

has, and it's quite a powerful one. If you look at any 

illustration that shows the whole LisaWrite window 

(Figure 4-13, for example), you'll notice there's a thick 

black bar above the up scroll arrow and another one 

to the left of the left scroll arrow. These are the split 

controls and you can use them to divide the window 

into as many different horizontal and/ or vertical views 

of the document as you want. 

Each of these views acts as an active window; you 

can scroll text through it to any point you want. Splitting 

the window into many different views is particularly 

useful in a long document (where, for example, you 

may want to compare what you said about your psychopathic 

sales manager on page 20 with what you said 

on pages 6, 14 and 32). 

By this point you may be wondering what's wrong 

with Lisa Write for editing and entering text It certainly 

seems powerful enough, easy to use, elegantly designed. 

Well, it has the following problems: 

• You have to keep moving your hand from the keyboard 

to the mouse. (This is more of a problem for 

word processing than for any other application.) The 

"Apple characters" (which you get by holding down 

the Apple key plus a letter) help some, but you still 

need to use the mouse a lot. Apple characters merely 

cut down on excessive movement of the mouse; they 

don't eliminate the need for it altogether. 

• Most word processors have single commands to do 

things like delete a word or delete a line, but not the 

Lisa. Having to: 

a. select the text you want, 

b. move up to the menu, and 

c. select a menu item

103 

Word Processing with LisaWrite 

is much more time-consuming and clumsy-even 

aside from the fact that you have to move your hand 

off the keyboard to do it. This is true even if you can 

substitute an Apple command for b and c. 

• Many operations, particularly those that involve 

scrolling and/ or rewriting the screen, take a painfully 

long time. 

No, editing is not LisaWrite's forte. What it's good 

at is formatting and similar graphic applications. So 

let's get on to that. 

Formatting 

Lisa Write not only gives you an enormous amount of 

graphic flexibility, it makes it easy for you to see what 

you're doing, since margins, line justification, line 

breaks, page breaks, page numbers, headers, footers, 

bold, italic and underlined text all display on the screen 

exactly as they appear on paper. 

Figure 4-14 

Underline 

Bold 

Italic 

Superscript 

Subscr ipt 

Format 

.SP 

.SU 

.SB 

.SI 

15 Pitch Gothic 

./12 P i tch Modern 

12 Pitch Elite 

10 P i tch Modern 

10 Pitch Courier 

PS Modern 

PS Executive 

1/ 4 inch Modern 

1/4 inch Classic 

1/3 inch Modern 

1/3 inch Classic


Figure 4-15 

LisaWrite s 88 Type Fonts 

§ Beven type faces and sizes 

Five for normal text 

15-pitch Gothic 

12-pitch Modern 

12-pitch Elite 

10-pitch Modern 

10-pi tch Courier 

Two proportionaJJ.v-spaced 

PS Modern 

PS Executive 

Fo ur displa.v ff or headlines) 

1/ 4-inch Modem 

1/4-inch Classic 

1/3-inch Modern 

1/3-inch Classic 

§ Eight type styles in each face and size 

regular 

bold 

italic 

/JoJd ltaJlc 

underline 

bold l.llderline 

italic antle1'line 

/JoJd i taJlc UJt1er Jlne 

Sulscripting and superscripting 

a.re also available.


LisaWrite Type Style menu (Figure 4-14) offers 

eleven different type faces and sizes, each of which can 

be printed regular, bold or italic, with or without underlining. 

This makes a total of 88 possible type fonts (face, 

size and style combinations)-all of which are shown, 

as such, on the screen. 

(Most word processors are capable of producing 

three type fonts-regular, boldface and underline, all 

in the same face and size-none of which is shown as 

such on the screen. And yet LisaWrite's capabilities are 

nothing compared to LisaGraph's and LisaDraw's-they 

can produce 264! different type fonts.) 

Figure 4-15 shows the eleven type faces and sizes 

and eight type styles that combine to produce Lisa 

Write's 88 fonts. All of them can be subscripted-placed 

slightly below the line, as in H 2 0-or superscriptedplaced 

slightly above the line, as in E = mc2. 

Figure 4-16 

Center 

Right Flush 

Justify 

Page Layout 

Show Margin/Tab Ruler 

Hide Margin/Tab Ruler 

.SL 

../Single Space U 

1-1/2 Space U 

Double Space U 

Triple Space U 

../Single Space Lines 

1-1/2 Space Lines 

Doub I e Space Lines 

Triple Space Lines 

Some as on Clipboard .ts


Figure 4-17 

Fi le/Print Edit Search Type Style Format 1r Page Layout 

.. _. ...; .. ... ... ... 

 

- 

The Fjre 

Robinson 

Jeffers 

g 

The A.ti.antic is a stormy moat , and the Mediterranean , 

The blue pool in the old garden , 

More than five thousand years has drunk sacrifice 

Of ships and blood and shines in the sun ; but here the Pacific : 

The ships , planes, wars are perfectly irrelevant. 

Neither our present blood-feud with the brave dwarfs 

Nor any future world-quarrel of westering 

And eastering man , the bloody :migrations, greed of power , battle-falcons, 

A.re a mote of dust in the great scale-pan . 

Here from this mountain shore , headland beyond stormy headland plunging like dolphins 

through the gray sea-smoke 

Into pale sea, look west at the hill of water : it is half the planet: this dome , this 

half-globe, this bulging 

Eyeball of water , arched over to A.sia, 

A.ustralia and 1'.rhite Antarctica: those are the eyelids that never close ; this is the staring 

unsleeping 

Eye of the earth , and what it watches is not our wars. 

(For those of you familiar with typesetting, 15-pitch 

Gothic is a 7-point face and >3-inch Modern and Classic 

are 24-point faces. For those of you not familiar with 

typesetting, there are 72 points to an inch, making 

7-point (15-pitch) Gothic a little less than Yio inch tall.) 

LisaWrite's Format menu, shown in Figure 

4-16, gives you a choice of four kinds of justification: 

• Flush left (straight left margin, "ragged" right margin), 

shown in Figure 4-17 (the title looked funny flush 

left, so I moved it over). This is the normal format 

for typewritten copy.


Figure 4-18 


111111 The Eye 111111 

=-----=:..--- 

Theljre 

Robinson Jeffers 

The Atlantic is a stormy moat, and the Mediterranean , 

The blue p::ol in the old garden , 

More t.han fiYe thousand years has drunk sacrifice 

Of ships and blood and shines in the sun ; but here the Pacific : 

The ships , planes, wars are perfectly irrelevant. 

Neither our present blood-feud with the braYe dwarfs 

Nor any future world-quarrel of we stering 

And eastering man , the bloody migrations , greed of power, battle-falcons, 

flre a mote of dust in the great scale-pan . 

Here from this mountain shore , headland be·ond stormy headland plunging like dolphin s 

through the gray sea-smoke 

Into pale sea, look west at the hill of water : it is half the planet: this dome , this 

half-globe , t.his bulging 

Eyeball of water , arched oYer to Asia, 

A.ustr.ill.a and white Antarctica: t.h ose are the eyelids that neYer close ; tl"Lis is the staring 

unsleeping 

Eye of tl·Le earth , and what it watches is not our wars. 

 

I {) 

• Flush right (straight right margin, ragged left margin). 

This is not used much in normal text, but actually 

looks quite nice in a poem, as Figure 4-18 illustrates 

(here again, I moved the title over).


Figure 4-19 


----''--"'---, 

1Jze Fjre 

Robinson 

Jeffers 

I 

Thu s.1nc1 yea.r s 1-1.1s drun}:. sa.crifice 

Of ships a.n d bk·xl .rnd shines in the sun ; but here the F»:t.cific : 

The ; hips. pl.:t.nes. '.•l·'trs .:tre r-:erfectly irrelevant. 

Neither our pre:sent blu:d-feud '.·litJ-1 the brave dwa,r-fs 

Nor a.nr future 11,rorl:t.n . 

Here from thi mount.ab shore , he.:tdland beyond stormy headland plungin.g li}:e dolphir1 s 

through the gr.1y sea-srnole 

Into p:11e se.:1 , kok v, e st a.t the hill of vi.:i.ter : it is h.:11£ the planet: 

f\ustr.1li.1 .1.nd white Anta.rctic.1 : 

half-globe , this bulging 

Eyeball of w.:tter , ar ched over t


Figure 4-20 


0..- ... 

 

 

lllll I 2nd document 111111 

Ruler 

----------- 

This is an experiment to see what the response time is like when I use the default 

typeface (12-pitch Modern) instead of one of' the fancy ones . Well, it 's a lot better, 

that 's for sur but it 's still not quite instantaneous enough for my taste. There 's 

that lit t 1 e one- or t·m- charact er delay (or maybe it ' s even short er than that ) like the 

one you 1et when you 're using a timeshBring computer tha.t 's 13000 miles away 8.nd the 

keystroke 1·1 as to travel there and back before it's echoed on your screen . And when the 

screen he.s to be reformat ted 1 --t he.t ' s v,1hen Li sal1Jri t e is reall v slow. But the worst 

thing of all is that flashing "insertion point "! ! ! ! ! It 's really unbearable. (Of 

course I have the lowest tol era.nce for fleshing cursors of' e.nyone I know.) 

I knm·1 wr 1 

at would ti e fun 1 I ' ll h o l d ctivm t r 1 e option key and see w /·1 e.t al l those speci 8.1 

cl1aracters look l i ke: ·· i"'£, ¢00§,l - Q±0z ··®r¥· ··0n 1 «8.13af©'l.,.&lQ ::i;1fi.. i "'£ ¢,.§,l ·Q± ··oz 

'®r{ 0nw ABaf©Al., .. JE QzCHN i.U. 

Ud.Wlw can't I get that last group of' s,im bols to move up to the line above where they 

belong ii Ah, h0vl i wish J c©Cild dQ rht 1 1 

Omi 1 ocl, I cl id it 1 i i it1)1 extr8.or1]in8ry computer cunning 1" 1 

as triurnp/·1 ed, 8.s 8.lv18ys, 

over otist ;:i,cl es t 1·1e.t would he.v e 1 eft 1 esser riK•rt 8.1 s fl 8.l:i berg8.st eel 1 1 1 1 

, ii , 1 , 1 , 1 , 21 , 1 , 1 , 1 , 3I , 1 , 1 , 1 , 4I , 1 , 1 , 1 , sl , 1 , 1 , , 6I , 1 , 1 , 1 , 7I , 1 , 1 

/\ 

&:. 

£ 

• Justified to both margins (both margins straight) is 

the norm for typeset copy, and is being used more 

and more for business letters. Jeffers' poem has been 

great for demonstrating the previous three formats, 

because its lines vary so greatly in length. But no poem 

is any good at showing justified text, because each 

line ends in a "forced line break." Since no text runs 

on from one line to the next, there's no difference 

between justified text and flush left text. So I've used 

something a lot less moving (Figure 4-20) as an example 

of justified text. 

As you can see, the Format 1T menu gives you a 

choice of various line spacings, and lets you vary the


spacing between paragraphs independently of the spacing 

between lines. The choices are quite limited, particularly 

for a graphically sophisticated system like the Lisa. 

Even the relatively inexpensive word processing program 

I'm using to write this book lets me vary line 

spacings from Ys of an inch to 32 inches in Ys-inch 

increments. 

Lisa's visual approach is carried over to the setting 

of margins and tab stops. First, you select Show Margin/ 

Tab Ruler from the Format iT menu. Figure 4-20 shows 

the screen with the ruler displayed. The small black 

triangle indicates the present position of the insertion 

point (see it up there on line 5, just before "3000"). 

The triangles marked L and R show the left and right 

margins; the triangle marked F sets the left margin for 

the first line of each paragraph. 

By moving the F triangle to the right of the L triangle, 

you can indent each paragraph-which, of course, 

is what you normally want to do. Notice how the indentations 

at the start of each paragraph all line up with 

the F triangle. 

You can also place the F triangle to the right of 

the L triangle; this will give you an outdented line (also 

Figure 4-2 1 

Inch Scale 

Metric Scale 

Clear Tab Stop 

Set Normal Tab 

Set Centered Tab 

Set Right Flush Tab 

S·et. Decimal Tab 

No Tab Fill Pattern 

.. Tab Fill Pattern 

-- Tab Fi II Pattern 

Tab Fill Pattern


File/Print Edit Search 

Preview Pages 

../Don't Preview Pages 

Dover Beach 

Ma ttlzew A111oil.i 

The sea is calm tonight 

Show Page Ruler 

Hide Page Ruler 

Insert Page Number 

Insert Page Mark 

............................................. ............. .. 

Keep On Same Page 

The tide is full. the n1oon lies fe:7Jr ../Allow to Cross Pages 

lfpcm the straits; --on the French c:o.-:ts . A '"") 

Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of Engle:md stand 

Glin1me1irtg· and vc1st out in the tranquil baJl 

Con1e to the vvindovv; siveet is the nf.._Rht-air! 

Onl..,v, from the long· Jine of spra .. v 

Q 

, , , lmlll' , ' , 

wastebasket 

called a hanging indent) at the beginning of every paragraph. 

Outdents are commonly used in outlines. 

When you display the Margin/Tab Ruler, a new 

menu title appears on the menu bar: Ruler. It's shown 

in Figure 4-21. 

As you can see, the Ruler menu lets you decide 

whether you want the ruler marked in inches or centimeters; 

more importantly, it gives you a wide variety 

of tab stops and fill patterns to choose from. (A fill pattern 

is what shows up between the columns of information 

you have at each tab stop. The dots, dashes or 

underlines make it easier for your eye to follow a row 

across the page than when the space between each column 

is blank.)


Figure 4-23 

File/Print Edit Search Type Style Format 1f Page Layout Page Ruler 

llffiiOover Beach 111111 

:. I 

Dover Beach 

Ma ttlzei.v L4111olli 

1.,7_ 

.., 

·:- 

, -, 

.-. . :- 7.. t·- 'oj- t. 

11e .)ed J.) cct.1.lll un.-) l . 

' 

- 

r: ·T'7- - t ' -l - >:,• '' ll. t'J - 

J 

- - ·-, h' (,' j·: ' ., . 

.i 1 lt:! Jut:! J._ ll , . lt:! rn uu n e._ r.Ul 

lfJ)Ofl the stiait.s; --on the French ccJast the light 

Gle.m1s and is gone; the cliffs of England stand 

. - , 

The last of the formatting menus is Page Layout, 

shown in Figure 4-22. With it you can display the Page 

Ruler, which is the vertical equivalent of the Margin/ 

Tab Ruler. It also lets you Preview Pages-that is, you 

see on the screen how each page will look, complete 

with headers and footers (text that appears at the top 

or bottom of every page) and top and bottom margins. 

In Figure 4-23, I've selected Preview Pages and 

Show Page Ruler. The Page Ruler is marked in inches 

but, as with the Margin/Tab Ruler, you can have it in 

centimeters if you want (by using the Page Ruler menu 

which has just appeared on the menu bar). Notice that 

the text has moved farther down on the screen than it


Figure 4-24 

File/Print Edit Search Type Style Format ,r Page Layout Page Ruler 

LJ 

Lav like the foltt5 of a briRht Rirclle furlti 

 

But nolv I onlrl" hear 

" Its melanc:holj1 long: i-Fithdra1T/·fng roc11 

&: 

M 

i 

I . , 

m Ret1 't.::t t111 .. ti_, the b1eath 

. _ .. 7· •• . . ) _ __ . 

0\ Of the night-n-1n(t. do1-T1i the 1,,.ast e((ge..;;_· d .. rear 

ill And naked 

) 

. 11 


low the 11-inch mark on the Page Ruler indicates the 

page break. The B and F triangles at the bottom of the 

first page indicate, of course, the bottom line of text 

and the footer line (which works just like the header 

line). 

You can insert a page number in either the header 

or the footer; just as the headers and footers are inserted 

automatically on every page, so the page number will 

change automatically. 

And that more or less covers the main features of 

LisaWrite. Weak as it is in editing speed and convenience, 

LisaWrite can produce really beautiful printouts-light 

years beyond anything that can be done on 

the average word processor, or even on dedicated word 

processors that cost $10,000 and more (with the exception, 

of course, of the Xerox Star 8010, after which the 

Lisa is modeled). 

Figure 4-25 gives an example of such a printout. 

(You didn't think I was going to tease you with that 

poem and not show you all of it, did you 0 ye of little 

faith.) 

Now that you have a feeling for how Lisa Write 

works, it's time to go on to the other tools. Don't expect 

an equally extensive treatment for each of them. If I 

did that, I'd never finish the book. 

Figure 4-25 

Dover Beach 

Ma ttl1ew AITllJilf 

Th e ,..c,-vea J:c,"' calin to11.igh l 

Ti1e tide .i..c,"' full ti1e IllOOil lies f aiI· 

[/jJOil tile StI-ait...c,:·--oil tile FreilCil COB,$'{ tile ligil t 

Glean1s mui .i..c; gf.111e: ti1e cliffs of En .. JJa.Jui staiui 

Glimme.1tng· and vas out in the fJ-m1quil bacy.


Q71ne to ti1e wiiuio w; ,5·weet i'>"' tJ1e I1.{lf]Jt-ai.r! 

(J11J.y, fltJn1 ti1e lo1tJ' li1 1e of ,5·111.v 

U'l1eIC ti1e ,5·ea 111eet • ..'>"' ti1e 1nooI1 -blaJ1ci1 '"' 1ni1ui ti1e tu1·biti ebb a1ui flo w; 

(Jf h u111a11 1111:'>C1:v: we 

Fli1d also 111 th e so1111d a thou,g:h t. 

Hea1-t11f it b.Y ti11".., tiista.J1t 11orthe111 s·ea. 

Ti1e A.'iea of Faiti1 

TtVa,..c,"' 0I1ce. tot at ti1e full, aJui I'Ol/IJ


A.Sb vaiiOU5', ... 

"c.J bea utiful, s·o J1e w: 

Ha th reaJJ.y Izeitlzer .. ft.y, IloI· Jo v IloI· 11.._'.!1z t; 

MJI· ceI·tftzui. J101·1Jeace. I101· J1elJJ foI·1m1i1: 

A.Jui we a1--e lzeI't a.$' 011 a liar.k:liizg· JJlain 

Swep t with confused alarnzs of s·t.rug_"'.!{le and fli,_l{h t, 

UllzeI't J,_S{l 10I-an t aITnies clash b.Y Jzig1z t

5 Managing a Data 

Base with Lisalist 

After word processing, the most common task a computer 

is used for is probably data base managementthe 

handling of large amounts of information. Thjs information 

can be the names and addresses of all your 

creditors, weekly sales figures for each of your seven 

marketing regions, the horoscopes of the wives of all 

the vice presidents of the United States, or just about 

anything else you want to keep track of. Whatever the 

data is, the usual (and easiest) way to handle it is in 

the form of a list. 

When you "tear off a sheet" of LisaList Paper and 

open the document thus created, you get a window that 

looks like Figure 5-1. The first thing to do is name each 

of the columns you're going to use; I've done this in 

Figure 5-2, as if this were a list of overdue accounts 

you plan to send a collection letter to. 

Notice that we have a new kind of pointer down 

in the grey part of the screen. It's called-descriptively 

enough-the hollow cross-hair pointer and it's used to 

select things within the list itself-as opposed to our 

old friend, the arrow pointer, which is used to select 

icons, scroll controls and menu items that aren't within 

the list itself. 

After you've named the columns, you tell LisaList 

what kind of data you want to put in each one. Notice 

117


Figure 5-1 

File/Print Edit Type Style L i st 

LJ 

Enter column titles and t ypes; then choose Show New List. 

0 

Text Text Text Text Text 

LJ 

Figure 5-2 

File/Print Edit Type Style List Data Type of Column 

lliiim 111 111 111 111 111B111 llEllll 111i 

Enter column . ti.ties and type s : then choose Show New List. 

Nane Address City State Zip Phone CUITent Balance Last Payment 

Text 

....... 

i Text i T...L .. ).Tx.ti 

.... 

T....t .................... ..I..X. .. t .................... .................... ..!.... .... . 

0 

ll

119 Managing a Data Base with Lisalist 

that a new menu title has appeared-Data Type of Column. 

This menu, displayed in Figure 5-3, lets you 

change the data type of each column from the default 

(Text) to one of the other alternatives. 

Figure 5-3 

Number 

Money 

Date 

Time 

Telephone 

Zip Code 

Social Security 

Text is the catch-all category and covers either letters 

and numbers mixed (as in a street address) or just 

letters (as in a name). The other seven data types don't 

allow letters. Number is the general category; and the 

others are specialized number formats. 

When you pick a data type, the Lisa supplies a default 

format in the Data Format row (as in Figure 

5-4). You can edit the format if you want-to allow for 

nine-digit zip codes, for example. (Notice that the table 

has scrolled left to accommodate the new, wider 

columns.) 

Figure 5-4 

File/Print Edit Type Style List 

Lj 

Enter column titles and types: then choose Show New List. 

ess City State Zip Phone Current Balance Last Payment 

0 

ll


What's the point of specifying data types Well, sorting 

is one of the main things you'll want to do with 

LisaList, and it needs to know what kind of data it's 

sorting in order to do an accurate job. LisaList can do 

sophisticated kinds of sorts if it knows the data type; 

for example, it understands that 10 A.M. comes before 

5 P.M. 

LisaList also reviews the information you enter in 

a column to make sure it fits the data type you've selected-so 

if you try to enter a seven-digit number when 

the data type is Social Security, you'll get an error message 

(since social security numbers always have nine 

digits). 

LisaList will even try to correct an entry for you. 

For example, if you enter a number when the data type 

is Money, but leave the dollar sign off, LisaList will 

supply it. And you can type in phone numbers and social 

security numbers without having to bother with the hyphens 

and parentheses; here again, LisaList will supply 

them. 

Before you can begin entering information on a 

list, you have to select Show New List from the List 

menu (Figure 5-5). This locks in the data type for each 

column (although you can rename the columns if you 

want), makes the Data Type and Data Format rows dis- 

Figure 5-5

121 Managing a Data Base with Lisalist 

LJ 

Figure 5-6 

File/Print Edit Type Style list 

appear, and gives you a blank row to begin typing on 

(Figure 5-6). 

To start putting in the data, you place the hollow 

cross-hair pointer in a field-the little box at the intersection 

of a column and a row-and click the button. 

The field highlights and a text pointer appears in it. 

When you've finished in one field, you use the tab key 

to move to the next. 

Once you've finished a list, LisaList lets you sort 

the information on it in a number of different ways. 

You can sort: 

• alphabetically or numerically 

• in ascending or descending order 

• on any column 

• on several different columns at the same time. 

You can also search through a list for a particular 

item, or for all the items of a particular kind. And you 

can combine search specifications. So you could search 

for all the accounts in Alaska and Hawaii who owe you 

more than $5000 and who haven't paid anything for 

the last three months or more. 

LisaList also lets you: 

• scroll through a list, 

• correct mistakes in it, 

• delete rows, 

• add and delete columns, 

• change column widths, 

• move columns around,


Figure 5-7 

./12 Pitch Modern 


10 Pitch Modern 


./Show Actual S ize 

Show Smal I Type 

Show Medium Type 

Show Large Type 

• hide columns you don't want to appear on a particular 

report, 

• choose between three different type faces and three 

different sizes, 

• make any of them appear in the other two sizes (Figure 

5-7), and 

• print out the results of all of this. 

You can specify as many as a hundred columns 

in a list, and a row can have as many as 990 characters. 

Whole lists can contain up to about 600,000 characterssix 

thousand rows of a hundred characters each, for 

example. 

In other words, LisaList does most things you can 

think of that relate to the keeping, altering, finding and 

reorganizing of records. 

But for all its power, LisaList can only deal with 

the past and the present. To deal with the future, you 

use LisaCalc.

6 Predicting the Future 

with LisaCalc 

The best-selling personal computer program ever is Visi 

Cale; it was also the first to sell in really significant 

numbers. Despite its early popularity, VisiCale was only 

available on Apple Ils for quite a while-so you had 

to buy an Apple II if you wanted to use it. Some people 

attribute the entire success of the Apple Computer Company 

to that fact. 

In more recent years, VisiCale has been adapted 

to run on several different machines and other companies 

have brought out many, many imitations of it. 

Sometimes known as VisiClones, almost all of them 

have "Cale" in their names somewhere. 

The proper name for "Cale" programs is electronic 

spreadsheets. They're used for financial (and other sorts 

of) modeling-predicting the effect of one or more present 

changes on one or more future conditions. In other 

words, they let you examine "what if" possibilities to 

see the impact of complex alternate scenarios. Huh 

Well, it's easier to explain with an example, so let me 

go right into that. 

When you tear off a sheet of LisaCale Paper and 


looks like Figure 6-1. The bottom part of this screen 

shows part of the spreadsheet you're going to be filling 

in; you can see ten columns (labeled A through J) and 

seventeen numbered rows. The little boxes at the inter- 

123


Figure 6-1 

Fi le/Print Edit Type Style Page Layout Format Protect Calculate 

[j 

s G Cells: 

, , 

1111) I l st Spreadsheet 

111111 

Va lue: 

f 

G 

sections of the columns and the rows-called "fields" 

in LisaList-are called cells in LisaCalc. 

The top part of the window is called the status 

panel. The area marked "Cells:" indicates the number 

of the cell that's selected (you select it by moving the 

pointer to it and clicking the mouse button). In Figure 

6-1, the hollow cross-hair pointer (which you doubtless 

remember from LisaList) is in cell Al. If you click the 

button while the pointer's there, that cell will highlight 

and "Al" will appear after "Cells:" in the status panel. 

It also works the other way. If you move the pointer 

to the Cells area, type "Al" and hit the Enter key, cell 

Al will highlight. Both procedures produce the same 

effect, which is shown in Figure 6-2.

125 Predicting the Future with LisaCalc 

Figure 6-2 

File/Print Edit Type Style Page Layout Format Pro tect Calculate 

LJ 

et G Cells: A1 

et M Formula: 

Va lue ( Blank) : 

c D E F G H I J 

Notice that right before the word "Cells:" there's 

an Apple symbol followed by the letter G. This tells you 

that you can get to the Cells area without moving the 

mouse, by holding down the Apple key and the G key 

simultaneously. 

The next area in the status panel is labeled "Value". 

A value is what you put in a cell. It can be either a 

number or a label. In Figure 6-2, the word "(Blank)" 

has appeared after "Value". That's because the selected 

cell (Al) is blank; it contains neither a label or a number. 

Let's fix that by putting a label in it. 

The fact that this is cell Al suggests what the label 

should be (Figure 6-3). Notice that it appears both in 

the cell and after the word "Value:" in the status panel. 

Figure 6-3 

File/Print Edit Type Style Page Layout Format Protect. Calculate 

LJ 

et G Cells: A1 

et M Formula: 

1 ::,.uce 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

c 

Va lue: 

D 

S::i.uce 

E F G H I J


Now let's go down to cell A3, select it, and type 

in "Number of Bottles Sold" (Figure 6-4). Cell A3 isn't 

wide enough to accommodate that label, so it just shows 

as much as it can. But you can see the whole label in 

the Value area. 

Figure 6-4 

file/Print Edit Type Style Page Layout format Protect Calculate 

u 

w G Cells: A3 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

w M formula: 

Va lue: 

Number of Bottles Sold 

c E f G H I J 

Let's widen column A so it can accommodate this 

label. You do that by putting the pointer on the line 

between columns A and B, holding down the mouse 

button and moving it as far right as you want (Figure 

6-5). Notice the double arrow that appears between columns 

A and B to remind you that you're widening (or 

narrowing) a column-although if you forget so quickly, 

you need a neurologist, not a double arrow. 

Figure 6-5 

file/Print Edit Type Style Page Layout format Protect Calculate 

u 11111 I Spread , lst sheet 11111 

et G Cells: AIB 

Va lue: 

et M Formula: 

A D E f 

1 S8.uce 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

G I J 

"'"'"""'"""'"'"""" i""""'"""""""'""""' """" '"""'"""""""'"""""'"""'""'"'"""'''"""""'"""""'""""'""""""'"""""""""'' "'"""""'"""""""""""""""'""""""""""' """""""""""""'"""""'"'"'""""'""""


Figure 6-6 shows how the window looks when you 

release the mouse button. All the other columns have 

shifted right to accommodate the new, wider column 

A. Figure 6-6 also shows that you may have to experiment 

to get the column the right width for the labels 

you want. The easiest way to do that is to make the 

column wider than you could possibly need it to be, 

then narrow it so it just contains the longest label. 

Figure 6-7 shows a typical spreadsheet, partly filled 

in. Notice that the retail price of our hypothetical sauce 

Figure 6-6 

File/Print Edit Type Style Page Layout Format Protect Calculate 

Lj 

et G Cells: AIB 

1 

2 

3 

4 

et M Formula: 

Va lue: 

A " B c D E F G H 

S ei. u c e 

...................... ......................................... 

ti.1.:1.P.X. .... i=.iL.§qtt...L ..:. 1 ...................................................................,.............. ..................,................................ ,. ... ......... ... ............. ...... .. ............................ ,,.. ............................ ...,................ mm 

Figure 6-7 


Lj 

et G Cells: 87 Va lue (Blank) : 

10 

et M Formula: 

A B C D E F ·'' 

1 :;;Y'············································....................... . ....... '.Xt . . qi,1.!..! Jt]1 •••.• q1J:;:;g . .9Y..t..:r'.1.t.. 91:!.tJ:: . ,1..!... Jq.t.. 

2 

) ... ......................................... 1. .. 

3 

· 

4 ·..... P.:r . ... P. ..... 9.t .. .t 

5 

. 

.. 

.·. . e . ·.· · . 

. ··· 

. · ··· ········.·.··.·1$ . 

.•. . .. · ·· 

· . 

' 

. . . · 

. . ·.··•·•····•· 

•···.·. 

•·•·•·•··· 

.. ·• . • . :: 

. .·ị·.·· 

··.··.·.b·'.····. :_• . ..· 

. · . ... .. . .. 

1 . 9 7 $ ............ .... J ..:.. .. L. 

. .· 

..·.• .·· .. 

·'$·!· .. 

. 

1;gL.P.;: J,g!t ... .. 

'i : 

. . _ .... . 9: .. .. 7:3' 1i ; .... . 9:...J. .. . o.71 · ....... .... ..... ....... . . 

6 

Gross s e i 

.l es re1..1 en u es 

· 

7 

· · ' ········································ ··········· · ··············· +··· ··········································· 

''''"''"''"""''"''"'"'"'"''"' .·.·.·.·.·.·.·.·.·.·.·.·.·.: -.·.·. ......... ........ .. ............... "" ''''' '''"'"'' ''"'''"""''"''' . ................................... ............................... 

B 1;9.·•t. 9f. 9.0.9§ ... 9J ................. , . ...... 

9 1)..1 erheei.d .. ...... .. ... ,... 

•....... ................................. .... .... ..... ..............


rose in the third quarter and the cost of producing each 

bottle rose in the second and again in the fourth quarter. 

So far, you've seen that you can enter either labels 

or numbers in a cell. But if that were all electronic 

spreadsheets could do, they would be very dumb programs 

indeed. The key to the power of this software 

lies in the fact that you can also enter a formula in a 

cell. 

For example, the amount in cell B7 (gross sales 

revenues) is always going to equal the amount in cell 

B3 (number of bottles sold) times the amount in cell 

B4 (sales price per bottle). So, with cell B7 selected, 

you go up to the "Formula:" area of the status panel, 

click the button, type "b3*b4", and hit the Enter key. 

(It doesn't matter if you capitalize the letter part of the 

cell name; LisaCalc understands it either way and translates 

lowercase letters into caps for you. * is widely 

used in computer programs to indicate multiplication.) 

The instant you hit the Enter key, LisaCalc does 

the calculation (in this case, 14,000 x $1.73) and puts 

the result into the cell, as it did in Figure 6-8. (LisaCalc 

displays the raw number, just the way you typed it in, 

Figure 6-8 


LJ 

et G Cells: 87 Va lue (Number): 24220 

et M Formula: 83*84 

·.·.! 

.·.·.·.·.·.·.·.·.·.·.·.·.·· 

3 

A B C D E F ,, 

········ .·.·.·.·.·.·.·.·.·.·.·.·.·.·.·.·.······· 

· · 

· 

········· ····· 

······ 

········· 

· 

·..• . ·.·l:j• . . ··g····q1.!;.t.!i...d. .... q.Ll.J: . . · ,. . , :t .h.... q1. . !..: ...,!.1.... tQ. .. .. 

j urntier of l'.! ottles so le! . .... . HQQQ L .. 5I .. ;(9 . L . . . J.,X9 .. L .......... .. .f.f;Q ..... L ..... · . 

4 seie price ·p·e;:r· ·6Ciffie . $ 1.73 $ i.13 $ i.91 $ 1.97 , 

s .¢.§I.•... P..:. 9ft.J.· .. ···.·.·· .·.··.·.··.·.·.·....·.·.·.·.·.·.·.·. ····················1..:..§I $ .•.• ....·.·.·.• 9 ..-. @ ·.ffe·...·...... ¢.:·.$$ ..· ············ .· .9.-.ff·...·;······· 

... . 

QE.9§§ §J§ !Y1les ···--- .. .. ..... _ .. + ; .... ........ .. . 

B gt qf_gqg,d. 9 d. ,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,... L ...,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,' ' .L ' ;. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ' 

9 Overhee.d . . 

, ... . ... . . .. . . ... . . . . • . 

. .. .. .. . ... . .. .... ..........;........ 

10 

............................................ f..... ... . ............................ ....... ... ... .......... + ...... 

11 Pro fit 

............. +. . ................................. 

'''"''""'"''""'''"''"+


in the selected cell; when you select another cell, it inserts 

dollar signs, commas and whatever else you've 

specified.) 

Most of the other cells in this spreadsheet require 

formulas-the exceptions ' are cells B9, C9, D9 and E9, 

which require numbers, and cells F4 and F5, which require 

labels (either a dash or "NA" for "not applicable"). 

For example, the formula for cell F3 is b3 + c3 + d3 

+ e3; the formula for B11 is b7 - b8 - b9. 

Figure 6-9 shows the spreadsheet completely filled 

in. There are a number of conclusions you can draw 

from the information in it. But the really sophisticated 

applications of LisaCalc come when you ask "what if" 

questions. Let's say you're considering the advisability 

of raising the price per bottle to $2.35, and that you 

figure this would reduce the number of bottles sold by 

25%. 

To see the effect of this change on your profits, 

you'd change the numbers in cells B3, C3, D3, E3, B4, 

C4, D4 and E4-figuring that next year will be pretty 

much the ame as this year in terms of seasonal variations 

in sales, overhead and costs. (I know I'm making 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

 

Figure 6-9 


s G Cells: I Va lue (Blank) : 

s M Formula: 

A B c D E F 

Sauce ''' ........................... ''''''''''' ''' ..... iJt. qi,1t!. .n.9 

j un1b·e.1:· 

···c;r····bottte.s····soid: ... ... . . t.4; .. 999 .... t .. ....... Jt . f.99 .... : ... . 

... 9.1:!.i.!. ..... 9...t!:.4. .... 9... .if.. ... J.9..t:.l.. 

'. . . '. .... .9, . ..9.'.'.t· . 

::tr::·:·::I:t·t-:t-t::: ·:::·:: .. ... .¢.:..··" ..· · ....... 

.... ¢..: ·.·... .. ¢·:· . k·.l· ·""""····"·" ···¢.: ·i· 

· 

.'.· . . '.'.'... ...;.. f.9 .... T ...... .. ....... 94., . . .99. 

i!m[[t:i!] ;:1:]H]&JlHH!_ BH!i H !'.4i'.g 

9 Dve..:9 ...... ................... .................. J . .. 9, .. Q99.: )9 .... $ . .. :9Q ,99 .. §J.L..Q9.:.99.J.g .. .9..9..:.9.9..J .... 4.},,QQ.,.QQ. 

10 . . . L L . .. L ... .. . 

11 Profit ··············· .. 

· . .. ·· 

. .. : .. J ... .. ., .. 4.99 .. ,.99 ..... $ 

..... .,, .. '.7.'.:.99 .. ... ,..4..9. .. : . 9 ... ... J •. J§.f. ,.99 .. . ... }, .99. .. : .. .9.


a number of unwarranted assumptions, but this is just 

an example. Give me a break, OK) 

LisaCalc automatically recalculates all the other 

cells affected by these changes (namely F3, B7, C7, D7, 

E7, F7, BB, CB, DB, EB, FB, Bll, Cll, Dll, Ell and Fll). 

Figure 6-10 shows the results. Gross sales revenues are 

down, but profits are up. 

Figure 6-10 


u 

et G Cells: I 

et M Formula: 

A 

Va lue (Blank) : 

B c D E F 

This scenario drives your president berserk with 

greed and he suggests raising the price to $8 a bottleconceding 

that this will reduce sales to 10% of their 

current levels. Figure 6-1 1 shows why this is not a good 

idea (parentheses indicate negative values, of coursenot 

these, the ones in the spreadsheet).


Figure 6-1 1 


Ll 

It G Cells: 

It M Formula: 

.········· .. ..... . ... .. 

Va lue: 

lllll 

' ' ' ' 

I l5t Spreod 5heet 11111 

A B C D E F .{) 

·.·:or.·:·:·.:·:::····r. 

 

. 

 

. 

:·.· 

. 

. 

.. ·: .. .··.··:; . 

.· 

. 

9.t. 

. 

. . 

Y. .Jqt.L. 

3 Number of bottles sold 140 : 11:, : 163 : 228 : 646 

 

!l:ii19\:i::::::::z:i:::]:i:::::Hi:::: ::11r r: :=:: : 

o 9.Y..:r....9... ............................ .................. .. J91. .. QQQ :.9.9 .. .. ,J99.:..9.9. .... 

........................................................................................:................................................ .. ...... .. 

11 .P.:r..9.fH ... .............. ...... ............. ..... .......... .......... .... .L1. . .. 

.§ .. : .. .9)J 

... . g .. .9.9..,..9.9 ... . . 4.}., ... 91 ..:.9.9.. 

.. ........ ...... ...... ........ ....:................................................!. ......... ..... ....... ..... ....... .... ....... ... L. ........................................... 

.. C§, ..§..§ :.. .9.J..L!9.1.J9.t.. 4..l..$ .. U.9,...§.....: ..§.§.J..L.1.....J.. J... 

.. n,JQ9..:.9.9. .... 

From this somewhat simple-minded example, you 

can get an idea of the kind of things LisaCalc is good 

for. 

A LisaCalc spreadsheet can be enormous-up to 

255 rows by 255 columns, for a total of more than 65,000 

cells. Its calculations are figured to fifteen digits-which 

is more precision than you're likely to need. 

LisaCalc also lets you alter how a spreadsheet looks. 

Like LisaList, it gives you a choice of five common typefaces, 

and lets you enlarge and reduce them as well 

(its Type Style menu is identical to LisaList's, shown 

in Figure 5-7). 

The Format menu (Figure 6-12) provides other options. 

You can have the contents of a cell flush right, 

flush left or centered, or you can have the words flush 

left and the numbers flush right. You can have the contents 

repeat until they fill the cell (useful for making 

lines-of stars, say-across the spreadsheet). 

Finally, you can format numbers in many different 

styles-with and without dollar signs, decimal points, 

commas, etc. As with LisaList, LisaCalc will automatically 

convert the raw numbers you type into the format 

you've selected.


Figure 6-12 

Protect Calcul 

Wo rds Left/Nos. Right 

Left Flush 

•L 

Center 

.tK • 

Right Fltish •R . 

Fill Pattern 

Floating Decimal 

No D ec ima l 

Fixed Decimal 

Scien tific . . . 

$1,2 34. 56 

1,234.56 

$ 1234. 56 

1234. 56 

$1,235 

1.235 

$ 1235 

1235 

The Protect menu (Figure 6-13) lets you prevent 

certain cells, or all cells, from being accidentally 

changed-unless and until you unprotect them. 

Figure 6-13 

Calculate 

Unprotect 

Protect Formulas & Va lues 

Protect Formulas Only 

The Calculate menu (Figure 6-14) gives you a slew 

of other options. For example, when you change a value 

in a cell, LisaCalc's default is to automatically change 

all the other values affected by that change. But if you 

select Calculate Manually, LisaCalc holds off on recalculating 

the other cells until you tell it to (which you 

do by selecting Calculate Now).


Figure 6-14 

tect 

v'Calculate Automatically 

Calculate Manually 

Calculate Now 

Show Formulus Er Va lues 

../Show Va lues O nly 

v'Don ' t Circle Va lues 

Circle Missing Va lues 

Function Hints . . . 

Show Formulas & Values makes the cells bigger 

so each can display the formula it uses to compute the 

value in it, as well as the value itself. Figure 6-15 shows 

what that looks like. Quite a mess, isn't it Well, it's 

useful when you want to be reminded what LisaCalc 

is up to and how it's coming to its conclusions. 

If you want LisaCalc to tell you when a cell's value 

is missing or incorrectly entered, select Circle Missing 

Values from the Calculate menu. 

Function Hints . . . displays an extensive onscreen 

help menu that lists all the various functions 

you can use in a LisaCalc formula. They include: 

• basics like averages and squares, 

• more sophisticated ones like trigonometric and logarithmic 

functions, and financial functions like NPV 

(net present value), annuity and compound interest, 

• relatively abstruse ones like "logical and," "logical or" 

and "logical not." 

LisaCalc tables can be pasted into Lisa Write or 

LisaGraph, where they can be jazzed up (it's sort of like 

taking your car to the paint shop after all the dents 

are out). You already know about Lisa Write, so I'll use 

the next chapter to tell you about LisaGraph.


1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

Figure 6-15 


LJ 

et G Cells: DIE Va l ue : 

et M Formula: 

A B c D E 

Sa . uc e ............................. ......... . .... Js t 91.:r;t:r; i 2nd .91J!.t.Q.g .. 9:r;t. . 

.......................................................... .................................... ........................................ ... . ..... . . . . ... ...... ............... .... ..... ........ ..... ..... ........ ..... ........... ''"' .... .... ... ..... 

iB3+C3+D3+E3 

Number of bottles . sold 140! 11:. 163 .. 22s: 64 

·$·r···ii.I··ii...' foiftI·.:·.·· 

s . oo $ s . 06 $ s . oo . . .: .. 66'"·!· ... ........................ 

1;q§J.P.! qgttJ. . 

.. 

. . J.. (I . 63 J$ ' . " .... .. 1:; :I w 

. 

. . 

' ............... 

. 

. . ...... $ 

0 . 68 . O.J 

....)................................................ 1 .........................................) ..... ....................... .. . 

.. L ................. 

. ...... .......................... ....... 

83*64= C 3*C4= D3*D4= E3*E4= :B7+C7+D7+E7 

............................................................ Gross sa.l es revenues ····················:s·3*ss;;··· $ 1, 120. .............. 00 ... Tc3·*cs·;;· \t 920 · .··············;c;3·*c;s;; 00 $ 1, 304 ..... ............ . 00 · t3*. 1 s;; 824 . .................... . 00 1s·s+c8+c;s+ts 

:$ 5 168. 00 

··· E 

gt . . 9f. 9999 sol d . ... J ..:.'. . :9 @. 110.84 .. :.. 

. . .. .. .. . ... $. 

. . . . 

}.:J... 

1)1erhe8.1J 

. .................. ............ ....... . J 

..... 9."99.Q :99..$ 

.... 

: . 99.: .99 . .. ...@ ... 

L (;)9 .. :99 

...... 

)., .. .9.9. : . 9.9 ..... 

;i;t 

....... 

...1(1.t,;,.. 10 

. .. . +. . .............. ... 

' 

........ . .... . .. .. .. ... . 

87-68-69= 'C7-C8-C9= D7-D8-D9= E7-E8-E9= 811+C ll+D11 

11 

Pxq.f.t ....... ........ ... .... ........ ............................ .. .. . . J .. , ... §§ 

: .. 9.l $.C§,,.§.... : .. ..9.J..(.mJ9.9 .. J4.J ... (J.9,J.2.., . . 

.L.g 

c;J DJ

7 Making Business 

Charts with LisaGraph 

This is one of my favorite Lisa programs. It takes raw 

data and turns it into any of five kinds of graphs-bar, 

line, mixed bar /line, pie and scatter. Because you can 

switch from one kind of chart to another simply by 

selecting an item from a menu, you can see which of 

several different charts makes your point in the clearest 

and most effective way. LisaGraph makes information 

easier to understand-not only for the people you show 

the charts to, but also for yourself. 

When you tear off a sheet of LisaGraph Paper and 


looks like Figure 7-1. The spreadsheet-like data table 

on the left is where you enter your information-either 

directly or by pasting a LisaCalc table in there. As in 

LisaCalc, the little boxes in this data table are called 

cells. 

Let's say you want to chart your sales for the last 

three years. First you put the years in column A. Since 

the hollow cross-hair pointer is in cell Al, all you have 

to do is click the mouse button and start typing. When 

you enter items in column A, LisaGraph automatically 

enters them on the x (horizontal) axis (Figure 7-2). 

135


i. LJ 

\ 

t 

:. 

Figure 7-1 

File /Print Edit Type Style Pc1ge Layout Format Gra ph Customize 

et G Cells: 

A 

111111 Easy as Pie 111111 

\' A::

137 Making Business Charts with LisaGraph 

Figure 7-2 

File/Pr int Edit Type Style Page Layout Format Graph Customize 

Ll 

1981 ................................ 

1982! ; 

................ i'9'8'3T ..... .... ............. ...... r-······ 

................................ r .. ····· 

SJbti tie 

Y Axis Ti tie 

1-5 .-----..-, 

1.2 I- 

0.8 f- 

The Cells: and Values: areas above the data table 

work just the way they do in LisaCalc-they display 

the currently selected cell and what you're entering into 

it. (By the time I'd printed out Figure 7-2, I'd moved 

on to cell Bl, which is blank, but when cells Al, A2 

and A3 were selected, those numbers appeared in the 

Cells area and 1981, 1982 and 1983 appeared in the 

Value area.) 

In Figure 7-3, I've widened column B and entered 

the first sales figure-$720,000 for 1981 (you can assume 

three zeros have been dropped from the end of it if 

you like to think big). LisaGraph not only immediately 

creates a bar that symbolizes that amount, it also


Figure 7-3 

Fil e/Print Edit Type Style Page Layout Format Graph Customize 

Lj 111111 Easy as Pie 1 11111 

Y Axis Ti tle 

800000 ...----. 

Legend 

D 

1961 1962 1983 

x Axis Title 

changes the values on the y (vertical) axis to adjust to 

it. 

In Figure 7- 4, I've entered the sales figures for the 

other two years and LisaGraph has created bars for 

them too. Since the sales figure for 1983-$930,000- 

would be off the chart using the y-axis values from Figure 

7-3, LisaGraph also changes them to accommodate 

this new, larger number. (You can also alter the y-axis 

values yourself.) 

Now, with almost no effort, I've created a bar graph 

that presents the relevant information. But maybe some 

other kind of graph would tell the story more dramatically. 

So I go to the Graph menu (Figure 7-5) and ask


Figure 7-4 

File/Print Edit Type Style Page Layout 

LJ,.._------- 

ti G Cells: 64 

A 

111111 Easy OS Pie 11111 

Format Graph Customize 

Figure 7-5


m!""!!O 

Figure 7-6 

File/Print Edit Type Styl e Page Layout Format Graph Customize 

LI---------- 

w u Cells: 84 

A 

B 

111111 Easy as Pie 11111 

--------. 

SJbtitle 

\I AXi5 Ti tie 

1000000 ...----, 

800000 

Legend 

D 

600000 

00000 

zooooo 

O '------' i _____. i ___._i ___i..._ _ __. 

1980 1981 1982 1983 198 1985


Figure 7-7 

File/Print Edit Type Style Page Layout Format Graph Customize 

u 

11/111 Easy as P i e !11111 

et G Cells: 64 

A 

1 1981$ 

2 i982$ 

3 ··.··.·.·.·.··i§$.$ 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

B 

I' Axis Title 

1000000 

800000 I- 

500000 t- 

00000 I- 

200000 I- 

D 

0 J. 

1980 1961 

D 

9.Jti tle 

D 

_J_ _J_ J. 

1982 1983 1984 1985 

x Axis Title 

Legend 

D 

for a line graph (shown in Figure 7-6). Notice that Lisa 

Graph adds the years 1980, 1984 and 1985 to the x axis 

so the line will float, rather than being flush against 

each edge of the chart area. 

It's just as simple to get a ' scattergram (Figure 

7-7) or a pie chart (Figure 7-8). LisaGraph drops the 

extra years when there's no need for them anymore, 

as in the pie chart.


Figure 7-8 

Fi le/Print Edit Type Style Page Layout Format Graph Customize 

L1 

ei G Cells: 84 

111111 Easy as Pie 111111 

1 

Graph Ti tie 

2 

S\Jbti tie 

3 

. 4 

5 

. 

6 

7 

· B 

9 

10 

11 

.. 12 

13 

. 14 

. 15 

16 

17 

. 18


Figure 7-9 


u 

.tG Cells: EIF 

D E 

110 000 $ 150. 000 

................... 1 ................ ... 9 ...................(............... .. .. 

. 

................... 120 

(.................... 000 

: $ 

................... 90 

1 .................. 000 . 

330. 000 $ 140 . 000 

................... .c ....... ............'''"'''''"''''"'''"''''''.."'''"' 

······················· r.··.:(F ..... . 

.................................. f·····"""' 

....................... t···"···· 

....................... +····"·' 

.. .. .. ............ .......... .................... ......... 

. 

111111 Easy as Pie 111111 

Greph Ti tie 

9.Jb ti tie 

v Axi; Ti tie 

00000 .-----, 

Legend 

0 

LegeM 

!2!!ll 

Legend 

D 

Legend 

III] 

. ; 

.. ........ + .................... .. 

Producing a mixed line/bar chart is only slightly 

more complicated. But to do it, you need more than 

one set of figures on the y axis (since you obviously 

can't mix just one thing). So let's assume you have four 

sales reps. First, you list their individual sales figures 

in columns B, C, D and E, respectively. (The data table 

scrolls over to accommodate these new values; you can 

scroll it back if you want.) 

Figure 7-9 shows the result. Not only has LisaGraph 

made bars for each sales rep, it's assigned a different 

pattern to each bar. It's also put a little box of each 

pattern off to the right, labeled "Legend". In the unlikely 

event that all four of your sales reps are named Legend,

.. 


Figure 7-10 


....---------- 

.S G Cells: 

D E 0 

llllllEasy as P i e 1 11111 


.... ........................ +..... 

""::::::::::: 

..................................... =.:::.:.=.: 

.. .. : .:. :::::: 

............. ........ t .....................................:.·:::-:·:· 

........ ...... ........ + 

Yearly sates Totals 

1100000 .----....., 

300000 

LUnds troM 

D 

Perrotta 

 

snine 

D 

Stubbs 

[!I] 

.................................. + ........... . 

..... . ............... ....... + 

......................................... 

..................... ..... .. . . 

........................................... 

... . .......... ............ + .... . 

there's nothing more you need to do. If not, you'll want 

to change these labels. 

To do that, you just move the pointer to a label, 

which turns it into a text pointer. Then you click the 

button to deposit an insertion point and type in the new 

name, as I've done in Figure 7-10. (While I was at it, 

I changed the other titles and eliminated the footnote. 

You can also insert your own titles anywhere in the 

graph part of the window.) 

Now we're ready for mixed bar and line graphs. 

To display one or more of the sales reps' records as a 

line instead of a bar, you first select that rep's column 

in the data table (by putting the pointer in the letter

---f"'I 


Figure 7-1 1 

File/Print Edit Type Style Page Layout Format 

Ll llllllEasy as Pie 11111 

'9.1 es by :;:,,.1 es Rep 

1931-83 

"ies.rly S:..les Totals 

00000 .----t 

Hide Legends 

Y-Rxis Range 

/ ··HY\': 

cell at the head of that column, as I've done for column 

E in Figure 7-11). Then you select Show as Line from 

the Customize menu. 

This produces Figure 7-12, with Stubbs' sales 

shown as a line superimposed on the bars representing 

Lundstrom's, Perrotta's and Shine's. You can change 

as many bars as you want to lines, even to the point 

of converting the bar chart to a line chart piece by piece 

(although this is certainly the hard way to do it). 

Figure 7-13 shows everybody's sales but Lundstrom's 

converted to lines. Note how LisaGraph, always 

thinking ahead, has assigned a different symbol to each


Figure 7-12 

File/Print Edit Type Style Page Layout Format Graph Custom ize 

u llllllEasy as Pie 1 11111 

1981 1·•82 1983 

CoMpar i s•:•n of ale' Reps 

line-an up-pointing triangle for Perrotta, a diamond 

for Shine and a down-pointing triangle for Stubbs. 

This is just a fraction of the complexity LisaGraph 

can handle. You can have up to eight sets of data, instead 

of just the four shown here. Negative as well as positive 

values are permitted. The columns run all the way up 

to IU (i.e., A to Z, then AA to AZ, BA to BZ, etc.), allowing 

you to compare up to 255 different values. Put this all 

together and it means that LisaGraph can display more 

than two thousand separate data points. 

LisaGraph lets you change the size and shape of 

a graph when you print it out, by using the Page Layout 

menu (Figure 7-14). The half-page (horizontal) format


Figure 7-13 


""------- 

" U 

11111 Easy as Pie 111111 

! 


8".l es b\' ::!'9.1 es Pep 

'to8.rl )1 S'S.Ii; Tot>


Figure 7-15 


' LJ 111111 Easy as Pie 111111 

400000 

vean \" 28.l es Totals Lund:. tror1 

Cl 

Perrot t8. 

fll'l 

S-1 1ne 

CJ 

::;t1Jt't,;. 

[!I] 

is standard and that's what you've been seeing so far. 

The third-page format is also horizontal (Figure 7-15), 

but the quarter-page and the full-page formats are vertical. 

(By the way, you can also print out the data table 

itself, as well as the graph.) 

LisaGraph's default is to reduce the chart so all 

of it will fit in the graph area in the window, but you 

can ask to see it the actual size it will appear on a sheet 

of paper. In Figure 7-16, I've asked for a full-page chart 

actual size. Since you now need to scroll to see all of 

the graph, scroll bars appear on the graph section of 

the window (as you may have noticed, only the data 

table section had scroll bars up till now).


Figure 7-16 


"'"'=u ....------ --- 

Va lue: 

111111 Easy as Pie llJIJ 

Format 

Graph 

Customize 

19:31 

1982 

192:3 

Compsri son of Sal es Peps


Figure 7-17 

Under I ine 

Bold 

Italic 

Hollow 

Shadow 

Page Lay 

.SP 

.su 

.SB 

•1 

15 Pitch Gothic 

v'l2 Pitch Modern 


10 Pitc h Modern 


PS Modern 

PS Executive 

PS 1/ 4 inch Modern 

PS 1/ 4 inc h Classic 

PS 1/3 inch Modern 

PS 1/3 inch Classic 

When a chart is reduced to fit, you don't get to 

choose various type styles or see them on the screen. 

To take advantage of the extensive Type Styles menu 

(Figure 7-17), which produces 264 possible combinations 

of type face, size and style, you have to go to actual 

size. (Figure 4-1 5-in the Lisa Write chapter-shows the 

type faces and sizes; Figure 9-1 7-in the LisaDraw chapter-shows 

the type style possibilities.) 

The Format menu works as it does in LisaCalc, 

letting you decide how you want decimal points, dollar 

signs and commas to be handled in the data table, and 

whether you want the information in a cell to be centered, 

flush left or flush right.


Figure 7-18 

Fi le/Print Edit Type Style Page Layout Format Graph Customize 

u 

111111 Easy as Pie 111111 

.· 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

vean11 SS.les Totals 

i!OOOOO .----, 

UJnds troM 

D 

Perrotta 

g;jl 

St1irre 

. 

D 

One other feature of the Customize menu (Figure 

7-1 1) is worth mentioning-the ability to add grid lines. 

Figure 7-18 shows how this looks. 

For further customization, you can move Lisa 

Graph charts into LisaDraw, the queen of the Lisa tools. 

But before I cover that, I want to describe another kind 

of charting program that can also be customized in Lisa 

Draw-LisaProject.

8 Scheduling and 

Job Tracking with 

LisaProject 

LisaProject helps you plan and/ or keep track of any 

kind of project by creating wall charts up to 32 square 

feet in size (using as many as sixty different sheets of 

paper). 

When you tear off a sheet of LisaProject Paper and 


looks like Figure 8-1. You'll notice that we have a new 

kind of pointer-a small, solid cross. This is called the 

drawing pointer and it's used to draw boxes and lines. 

If your project is very simple, you just draw a line 

from the circle labeled "start" to the one labeled "end". 

But most projects are somewhat more complicated 

than that. 

The first thing you need to know is how to move 

circles and other visual elements around. You select 

one the same way you select anything on the Lisa-by 

moving the pointer to it and clicking the button. But 

it's a little more tricky than that. If you put the drawing 

pointer inside a circle, it turns into a text pointer (that's 

so you can change the text inside the circle if you want). 

If you move it just to the edge of the circle, however, 

it turns into an arrow-that's when you have to click 

to select the circle. 

153


LJ 

Figure 8-1 

Fi le/Print Edit Type Style Page Layout Customize Chart 

lllD'll\\ll!l.\!lllZVJllmmlllml:llllmmalllll:llll--ml'IBEIBllllD\il 

Title 

SubTitle 

/_,,,- .. ,,\ 

/ \ 

l s t8.rt ,i 

\ I 

\ . ... ___ .J>,,,,·

155 Scheduling and Job Tracking with LisaProject 

Figure 8-2 

File/Print Edit Type Style Page Layout Customize Chart 

mm.l'lmllmlllmlllliDlZmmllmlllml!/£llmllllm:llll:mmlllllil'llll'l!=m:m=imi 

LJ 

Titl e 

SubTitle 

,.-,,-- ... ... 

() 

Lisa.caic 

In LisaProject, things don't show they're selected 

by becoming highlighted. Instead, they turn grey and 

grow two to eight little bumps-which are called handles. 

Figure 8-2 shows you what a selected object looks 

like.

lB'lllZl\lll=m:lll7/l"1llmlllElllllEll:mlmll&:amlllimBlllDlllli 


 

Figure 8-3 


Title 

SubTitle 

.\ 

( end) 

\...__ 

Lisaca1c


u 

Figure 8-4 

F i le/Print Edit Type Style Page Layout Customize Chart 

,,, ; ' , 

Ill.II 111111 

Untitled 

llillllrllmmllllEmmEl'lllllmlmml!IEmmlllll'llll'lllll--mllllji 

Title 

SubTitle 

Lisacalc LlsaPro ect LisaJ·Jrite L!saflr · Lisanraw Lisa.List Calculator 

When you move a selected circle (by holding the 

button down and moving the pointer), it leaves a shadow 

in its original location (Figure 8-3). When you release 

the mouse button, the circle disappears from the old 

location and the pointer turns back into a cross (Figure 

8-4). 

Circles like the one I've been moving around are 

called milestone circles, because they represent important 

events in your project. LisaProject uses two other 

basic visual elements-"task boxes" and "arrows". 

Task boxes are rectangles that represent one particular 

job. They also indicate the resources needed to do 

that job and the time it takes each resource to make


u 

Figure 8-5 


l'lllWIDDlmlillmlilWillllmllSll\lll'lll'IAl!llllJl'llmE'llll'lll'IAl!ll'llEIEllmlllllmEllji 

Title 

SubTitle 

Lisacaic 

its contribution. (Milestone circles don't indicate either 

of these things). 

To draw a task box, you place the drawing pointer 

where you want one corner of the box to be, then hold 

the button down and move the pointer to where you 

want the opposite (diagonal) corner of the box to be. 

You can make the box any size you want, as Figures 

8-5 and 8-6 demonstrate.


u 

Figure 8-6 

Fi I e /Print Edit Type Sty I e Page Layout Customize Chart 

lll'lmll\l:ml&'l.=Dl11mEm=zw11m11/m/m=mllZl51l'ZIDllDl>llllmlm1 

/,----... 

/ 

,.. 

I, :. ort 

'"\,, 

Title 

\,_ _ _..,../ 

/,,.,-- ..._, 

( \ 

(: end ) 

''-._.,,,/ 

Lisaclc


LJ 

Figure 8-7 


=wm=wmllll'iZlllll'lll:mlmSll/ml\l!a=llll!l/llllmllllmmlmmlllll'llll'lllllillll- 

0 

[] 

/-- ... , 

. ( \ 

\ star t ) 

Title 

Sut1Ti tle 

\',...._ ____ _,./ 

Lisacaic 

creation of tr1e world 

............................................... 

When you release the button, LisaProject draws a 

dotted line across the box and puts an insertion point 

in it (Figure 8-7). The top half of the box is for the 

name of the task, the bottom half for the resources and 

the time required. 

Once you have a box, you can stretch or shrink it 

by grabbing one of the handles and pulling or pushing. 

The four handles in the middle of the sides leave the 

other dimension unchanged; the four at the corners 

change both height and width at the same time. 

You can also move a box, keeping it the same shape, 

by grabbing it anywhere but on one of the handles. If 

you want a bunch of identical boxes, you can use Copy


Figure 8-8 

Fi le/Print Edit Type Style Page Layout Customize Chart 

BllllEllllEllllElllllElll 

u 

11111 i Untitl e d 111111 

0 

[] 

Title 

SubTitle 

B 

I ------------ j I 

- ------ ----- - -----------j 1-------------------------j 

- ----------- 

!---- -----------------------------------. 

- 

- - - - - ---1 I 

on the Edit menu (as described in the LisaWrite 

chapter). 

I used all these techniques to produce Figure 8-8. 

In Figure 8-9, I changed the title of the chart, the subtitle, 

and the text in the milestone circles, and filled in 

appropriate information in the task boxes (with the help 

of King James and friends). 

The resources section of a task box usually indicates 

the person or people responsible for the task, or 

the equipment needed to complete it. But the responsible 

"person" for every task in Figure 8-9 is God, and 

it wouldn't be very interesting simply to repeat that in 

each box. So I've used the resources sections to indicate


u 

Figure 8-9 


+ 

-=m===z::::l&\lmEl'll'lmli:mlll\llll-.i!Di 

//"----,\ 

( beginning ,) 

\,...___..,,/ 

Creation of the World 

First Week 

'aters 1 

Li grit 

D8r


u 

Figure 8-10 


ll\lllll'lllmll23/QlllD///lill\lllll'lllll\lllll'lll'1.l:mll\lllll'lllll2illllirlllll&'l\Dll'!lllli 

0 

[] 

/,,.---,·,,, 

I 

'. 

( t,egirf1ir11 .:1 

\... '1 ,/' 

1 

Darl

13131llZ1lmllllZllilm=mlmlmlll\WlDl'lllm1lll 


u 

Figure 8-1 1 


0 

tJ 

/,..,..- ....__ 

( \ 

( oeg inr11ng ) 

( 

Li gri t 

OarKness 1 

Heaven 

1,1aters 1 

7 

• . "I 

L 

\ 

sun/Moon/Stars 

\ 

wa.ters 1 

Crea. lion of the World 

First Week 

l...eJ'1d an i Mal S/r1uMan Bei ngs 

.-"· 

/ 

si:a an i Ma.ls!Birds 

flaters 1 

!Mages 1 

,7 

Figure 8-12 

../Schedule 

Resource 

Task


LJ 

Figure 8-13 


l/ll/lml:D=zllll=zllllZmlllll/a'1l&ll!mrmEmmmmlmllllmllm 

1/3;'53 1/10/3 1/17/83 1./31/83 

Title 

SubTi tle 

S!Jrvl10•)fl/St8l·$ 

8. 8rt ine.ls/Ci i ri::ls 

rkness 

ters 

[Wa'tm 

'--' 

I f.1e.ters I 

@lages 

8-1 1 shows all the boxes and circles connected with 

such lines. 

Well, that should give you a good basic idea of how 

you create a LisaProject chart. (I should add that you 

don't have to be as doggedly linear as I-and Godwere 

here; you can draw lines from more than one box 

to more than one box-as I have, for example, in Figure 

8-15.) 

But LisaProject is just getting started. So far we've 

just created one of the three kinds of LisaProject 

charts-as the Chart menu in Figure 8-12 indicates. 

The Schedule chart is the only one you create yourself; 

LisaProject creates the other two for you.


Figure 8-13 shows the Task chart LisaProject made 

from the "Creation of the World" Schedule chart. It 

places your project in a time frame and shows when 

each task will be completed (as well as when each resource 

will be used). 

Since we haven't told it any different, LisaProject 

assumes the creation of the world began on Monday, 

January 3, 1983. It also assumes that God works a fiveday 

week, which is why it shows the creation of sea 

animals and birds (day five) as lasting from Fridaywhen 

it begins-through Saturday and Sunday. 

Both these misapprehensions can be corrected, of 

course. We can inform LisaProject that the project began 

in 4004 B.c., not 1983 A.D., and that God works Monday 

through Saturday but takes Sunday off (or begins 

on Sunday and takes Saturday off, if you prefer). Lisa 

Project lets you specify a work week of from one to 

seven days (an easy choice) and you can also insert 

up to twenty vacation days into a project schedule. 

(As you can see from Figure 8-13, LisaProject needs 

to be given a new title and subtitle for each type of 

chart; the changes made on the Schedule chart don't 

transfer.) 

Figure 8-14 shows the Resource chart LisaProject 

made from the "Creation of the World" Schedule chart. 

Here the tasks are grouped by resource, giving you a 

clear picture of how much each resource will be used. 

For example, this particular chart makes it clear that 

"the waters" (both those above and below the firmament) 

get quite a workout, while other resources are 

used more sparingly. In more down-to-earth applications, 

the Resource chart helps you see which people, 

pieces of equipment and so on, are being over- or underutilized. 

Both the Resource and Task charts indicate when 

a task has slack time-that is, when it can be late without 

making the whole project late. If a task has no slack 

time, it's critical. 

LisaProject gives you the same selection of type 

fonts as LisaWrite (Figures 4- 14 and 4-15)-without,

=-=--=--==mil 


LJ 

Figure 8-14 


1/31133 

1/10./83 1/17/33 

1/31/83 

!Mages 

n.111oon/S'.tars 

i ! 

Bnd an i Ma.I s/HuMan; beings 

of course, subscripting and superscripting. The Page 

Layout menu lets you see charts actual size or reduced 

to fit the window. The latter is useful when you have 

large charts that extend onto many pages and you simply 

want to get an idea of their overall shape. Figure 

8-15 shows such a chart reduced to fit; the text has been 

dropped because there isn't room for it. 

You can reduce charts to 70% of their current size, 

and you can do that over and over again (until Lisa 

Project reaches the limit of what it can display intelligibly 

on the screen). 

The Customize menu is where you change time 

frames and ask to have dates displayed on a Schedule


Figure 8-15 

File/Print Edit Type Style Customize Chart 

r-·1 1--------------1 

'-\ 1··;···:···1 

/ 

1 . ... . .... ..... 1 l··---·----·---l :::·I ----------: ... 1 

\1. . .--·----- 

/

9 Drawing Diagrams 

and Pictures with 

LisaDraw 

LisaDraw is probably Lisa's most impressive program. 

Unlike Lisa Graph and LisaProject, which prepare specific 

kinds of graphic presentations, LisaDraw is a relatively 

unstructured and unrestricted tool that you can 

use to create just about any kind of diagram, chart, illustration, 

map or symbol you're capable of imagining. 

Few graphics programs-at any price, on any computer-have 

more capabilities. 

When you tear off a sheet of LisaDraw Paper and 


looks like Figure 9-1. The symbols arranged down the 

left side of the window-called the palette-represent 

a library of predrawn graphic elements. You select the 

one closest to what you want and then modify its shape 

and size with the pointer. 

In Figure 9-1, the top box (the one with the arrow 

pointer in it) is grey-which means that it's currently 

selected. As a result, the pointer is in the shape of an 

arrow. In LisaDraw, you use the arrow pointer to alter 

an object you've already drawn, or to select a new type 

of object from the palette. 

Let's move the pointer to the circle box and click 

the button (Figure 9-2). The circle box turns grey (and 

the arrow-pointer box turns white). When you move 

the pointer back out of the box onto the drawing space, 

it becomes a small, solid cross; as you know from Lisa 

Project, this is the drawing pointer. 

169

170 


Figure 9-1 

Edit Type Style Page Layout Arrangement Lines Shades 

111111 Untitled 

!!Ill 

Ti;_xt 

+ 

""" 

D 

0 

0 

 

Jl, 

t:-··-1 

-..J 

··.'.' .............. . 

'!!ii!llili 


Figure 9-2 

n 

iilli 

-....\

171 Drawing Diagrams and Pictures with LisaDraw 

.u 

Figure 9-3 

Fi le/Print Edit Type Style Page Layout Arrangement Lines Shades 

ifffl Untit led 111111 

0 

[] 

+ 

·· .... _ 

·· . ., 

D 

() 

!II 

.... ---: .. 

( ) 

. . ":---.-"':' + . 

--,\ 

(\ 

' - -' 

t' .. 

L.,..·· / 

--J 

Once the circle box is selected, you're ready to create 

a circle or oval of any size or shape. You simply: 

1. move the drawing pointer to where you want 

to "stick" one edge of the object; 

2. press the mouse button; and 

3. move the pointer. 

In Figure 9-3, I've done that and created a horizontal 

oval. Now let's alter that shape: 

As soon as you let up on the button, the shape you've 

drawn is selected. (You can also select any object at 

any later time by moving the arrow pointer to it and 

clicking the button.) Note that the pointer becomes an


Figure 9-4 

Fi le/Print Edit Type Style Page Layout Arrangement Lines Shcides 

p0 ... -- ... ... ...m; ..., ....,_ 

_ ... ...,; ... ... ... ... ..., ... ... ... ... ... ... 

1·,.,i:1i1i 

lrll 11 lint it I ed 111111 

+ 

"' 

D 

0 ..... ..... ... .. ... .. .. . 

0 

.... 3::: .................................. . 

. . 

Lisacalc L1saPro ect LisaWrite L1saGr n Lisallraw LisaList 

arrow again and the arrow pointer box is automatically 

reselected. 

As with LisaProject, two to eight small square boxes 

called handles appear all around a shape to show it's 

selected (see Figure 9-4-1 moved the pointer away so 

you'd have a clear view of them). 

Now let's say you want to turn this drawing into 

a vertical oval. You just grab the handle that's at the 

bottom and pull (i.e. you put the tip of the pointer right 

on the handle and hold down the mouse button while 

you move the pointer). Figure 9-5 shows one of the 

many possible results. (The handles disappear while 

you're changing the shape of the object, but reappear 

as soon as you release the mouse button.)


Figure 9-5 


11111 1 Untitled 1 11111 

+ . . 

"" 

D 

0 ... .. ...... .. ... .. 

0 

r\: 

I . 

. :,. ................ 

I 

I 

. . . . . • .. 

I • I 

· 

· · · · · · · · t 

J 

\( 

Lisa.Gale L1sa.orci ect Lisa.Write Lisa.Gr n Lisanra.w Lisa.List 

.... ..... . 


 

· o 

[j "5l


Figure 9-6 

File/Print Edit Type Style Page Layout Arrangement Lines Shades 

u ... ... ... ... ... ... ... .._ 

11111 Untitled lllill 

+ 

 

D 

0 

. /, 

· 

/ \ 

,' :\ 

I 

· 

I 1 

I • 1 

· I 

1' ;I 

I J . . 

I 

. 

: I 

1 I 

r .. : 1 · 

\ I 

I 

I 

:. I 

I 

· · · · · · · · · · · · · 

. . . . . . . . . . . . 

. . . . . . . . . • 1. . . . . . . . 1 · · · · · · · · · · · · · · • · · · · · · · · · · · · · · • · · • · · · · · · · · . . . . . . . . . • . . • . . . . 

I · I 

I 

I ·I 

\ / 

You can also stretch the oval up by grabbing the 

top handle (Figure 9-6) or pull it sideways into a circle 

(Figure 9-7). And, of course, you can move any object 

you draw wherever you want, just by grabbing it anywhere 

but on a handle. 

The box right above the circle box in the palette 

contains a rectangle with rounded corners; this shape 

is useful for drawing flowcharts, labels and the like. 

The procedure is the same as with the circle; you just 

place the drawing pointer where you want one corner 

of the shape to be and pull. Figure 9-8 shows an example 

of the result.

. / 


Figure 9-7 


P.u !!!'"""' ... ... ... ... ... .. ..., .. _ 

1··:1::11: 

_ .. 

11111 Lint it I ed. 1 11111 

... ... ... .. ... ... ... ... ... .. """"i 

+ 

D 

n 

LisaJ:c 

L1sa.oro ect 

Figure 9-8 

.. 

. . . . l ...


Figure 9-9 


111111Untitled 111111 

·r: 

. . . . . . 

LisaDraw LisaList Calculator 

The next box up contains a regular, square-cornered 

rectangle. Both these kinds of rectangles can be 

stretched, shrunk and expanded once they've been created, 

in just the way that circles can. LisaDraw also 

lets you superimpose any shape on any other, as I have 

in Figure 9-9. 

(In Figure 9-8, I printed the screen before I had 

released the button, which is why the pointer is still a 

cross; in Figure 9-9, I released the button but then deselected 

the square-by clicking elsewhere in the drawing 

area-so you wouldn't be distracted by the handles.) 

The next box up in the palette is for diagonal lines. 

When you select this box, move the pointer out into


Figure 9-10 

File/Print Edit Type Style Page Layout Arrangement 

Lines 

Shades 

u ... ... ... ... ... ... ... .. ... ... ... .. ... ... ... ... .. ... .. 111 

1.::1:11: 

111111 lint it I ed 111111 

+ 

"""··· 

D 

n 

t. ""/i/ 

--.1 

Lisaceic 

LlsaPro ect 


the drawing area and hold down the mouse button, you 

stick one end of a line to a particular spot. As you move 

the pointer, a line grows from that original spot until 

you release the button (Figure 9-10). I left the handles 

on this time, so you can see how lines look when they're 

selected. 

The diagonal line box doesn't restrict you to lines 

that run at angles; you can also use it to make horizontal 

and vertical lines if you want. But to make lines that 

you know for sure are perfectly horizontal or vertical, 

use the next box up. If you move the pointer at an angle 

with this box selected, LisaDraw will figure out whether 

you're moving it closer to horizontal or vertical and 

draw the line that way. Huh


Figure 9-1 1 

File/Print Edit Type Style Page Layout Arrangement Lines 

Shades 

P.u!!!!'!"""' .. ... .. ...m.;-- ....,_ ---==m.... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 1111"'1! 

 

D 

n 

() 

For example, in Figure 9-1 1, I stuck the beginning 

of the line near the left edge of the drawing area, right 

between the horizontal/vertical line box and the diagonal 

line box. Then I moved the pointer just a little bit 

to the south of southeast-and LisaDraw drew a straight 

north-south line. 

If I were to move the pointer all the way east to 

the other side of the big circle-but not move it another 

millimeter south-the line wouldn't change. It will only 

respond to north-south movement. If I moved the 

pointer all the way to the top of the screen (regardless 

of how far to the left or right it was), the line would 

shrink right up to the beginning point and would then 

begin to extend north.


Figure 9-1 2 

File/Print Edit Type Style Page Layout Arrangement Lines 

P.LJ !!!!"""' ... ... .. ....- ... .. _ 

.11· 

11:11· 

+ 

"-.._, 

D 

n 

....... ......... _.. 

• 

. 

--.:.....:._:_ 

--...,,: 

 

L ' . 

' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' '\' '' 

\ \' 

· 

y 

. : · 

11111 1 Untitled 111111 

Shades 

_ ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ..._ 

· 

........ · . '\.•... · 

. / 

/ 

. . / \ ....... ... . 

I \ 

l 

/ 

..... -.... 

. 

·- - 

, 

""-.... ____ ,_ 

/ 

__/( 

Lisacalc L1saPro ect Lisawrite L1saGr h Lisaoraw LisaList Calculator 

If I had originally moved the pointer more toward 

the east than the south-toward the top of the rectangle 

with the rounded corners, for example-LisaDraw 

would have locked into horizontal, rather than vertical, 

mode. From then on it would only have responded to 

the east-west component in the pointer's movement and 

would have ignored the north-south component. 

If you happen to accidentally begin in the wrong 

direction-and thus find yourself stuck with a horizontal 

line, say, rather than a vertical one-just release the 

button (which automatically completes the line and selects 

it), go up to the Edit menu, Cut the line, and begin 

again. (It's quite handy that LisaDraw automatically se-


IF.!!!! 

F 

!"" 

l e 

i '"" 

... l 

P .. r i nt 

... ... .. 

E 

..... ... d ... • t · 

T ... 

... Y=P .. 

Figure 9-13 

e s t ... .a .. y I e ... 

Ll 11111 ! Untitled 11111 

Page Layout A ... 

r .. ra 

... .. n ... g e m ... .. e ... n t L ... ... ... i n e s s ... 

... 

... 

h a ... .. d ... es ... ... ... .,. ... 

· 

T!i.,Xt ' " ' ' i; 

g 

"" ' --· / 

· · ··· · · ··········· ·· 

+ . .. .. .. I 

... 

i . . . 

.. 

_ 

"""'\ .-r.- 

.. "":t:."".=.".. ===+----·----- ---- ------ --- -------l- • ···•.....•... 

. 

. 

"--- _ __/ 

• 

• · - ' 

. • . - --- --'\ 

 

· · ····o 


ODJ 

lects what you've just finished drawing, so you can edit 

it or delete if you decide it isn't what you want.) 

Now let's jump down to the box below the circle 

box on the palette, the one that contains a curved line. 

It works the same way as the diagonal line-except 

when you draw it, LisaDraw automatically curves the 

line (Figure 9-12). 

How much a line curves can vary, of course, and 

that's why you get eight handles to work with instead 

of the two you get with a straight line. In Figure 9-13, 

I've grabbed the curve by the middle handle on the right 

side and stretched it all the way out to the right edge 

of the window (thus making it much less curved).


The next box down in the palette contains the freehand 

symbol; it's used to draw lines that are neither 

straight or regularly curved. You just draw on the screen 

with the pointer. It takes a pretty steady hand to take 

advantage of this freehand capability; as you can see 

from Figure 9-14, I don't have one. 

Figure 9-14 

The next box down is used to draw polygons other 

than rectangles; they can be as complex and/ or bizarre 

as you want them to be (Figure 9-15). The polygon symbol 

works somewhat differently than the other palette 

items. You click at each corner and LisaDraw keeps 

generating lines until you return to the starting point. 

Figure 9-15 

\ 

I 

J ": ..----\ 

1 . .. .. .':-::(······\\ ... 

I ,. / . ) 

1·' 

''· 

/ 

. /. 

J > /· / 

; f · ·' · 

/ . \ : ____ _,..,,.. 

-----/-..:;.__ ·· 

/' 

.. . ... 

\ '


You can also complete a polygon by double-clicking 

at any point. This allows you to draw open, straightline 

shapes much more easily than if you used diagonal 

lines. A modest example is shown in Figure 9-16. 

Figure 9-16 

The empty space below the polygon symbol in the 

palette is . . . empty space, awaiting new and exciting 

predrawn shapes that will doubtless be included in later 

versions of LisaDraw. 

Unlike Lisa Write, which gives you a measly 88 type 

fonts (face, size and style combinations) to choose from, 

LisaDraw (and LisaGraph) give you 264! You get the 

same eleven type faces and sizes, but instead of a mere 

eight type styles in each face and size, you get 24 (thanks 

to the addition of the hollow and shadow type styles). 

Figure 9-17 displays the possibilities (and Figure 4-15 

shows the eleven type faces and sizes you can combine 

them with). 

You may notice that I haven't combined hollow 

and shadow; that's because shadow is simply an enhancement 

of hollow. Hollow shadow is just like 

shadow-there's no difference between them. 

The shadow underline styles look much better on 

the screen than they do on paper. In fact, they look 

so bad on paper that I'm not sure we should really count 

them. If they're eliminated, LisaDraw and LisaGraph 

are only capable of producing a paltry 220 distinct type 

fonts. 

There are two ways to enter text in LisaDraw. If 

you want it centered within an object, you just select 

the object and start typing. If you don't, you click in


Figure 9-17 

w 241 llm 

(each available in eleven type faces and sizes) 

regular 

bold 

italic 

bold italic 

hollow 

1bxc>lkdl 100llllaFw 

italic lloUow 

/IJJoiJr/l idl8J/lJit: ll!Joll/bv 

l1tnMlaw 

1bxm1kdl 

regular underline 

bold underline 

italic underline 

bold italic underline 

mnow 'UllXll«fterllme 

MJkdl JDlJt!ltdherrlb1Jme 

JtN!clloOow WlderUne 

/IJJoiJr/l idl8J/lJit: ll!Joll/bv 

-llibrne 

lmmlkdl-- 

Ja/IJJt: .dwdtJr JmllJc llll!JldtJJV Wl/l/l!/JedJne 

/IJJoiJr/l J/tZrJ//Jlt: _/i/tJiJil_//Zrlll!lt:_li.lmlJIJJJT 

the box marked "Text." This gives you a text pointer, 

with which you can deposit an insertion point. 

The small black up-pointing triangle (or caret) between 

the "e" and "x" in the Text box tells you that 

what you type will be centered around the insertion 

point, which is the default. (This doesn't mean it will 

be centered within an object-that depends on where 

you put the insertion point.) You can also choose to 

have the text pour out to the left or right side of the 

insertion point (if you do, the caret will shift to indicate 

it). 

Whether you use the Text box or the automatic 

text entry function, you can grab the text you've entered 

at any later point and reposition it wherever you want.


u 

Figure 9-18 

Fi le/Print Edit Type Style Page Layout Arrangement Lines Shades 

illlll Unt1tled 111111 

Txt 

+ 

'-..-.. 

D 

0 

() 

--..:..._"""- • . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

, . 

'"'-\ ................. . 

-- \ : : 

--- \ 

( Great !de8S 

I j 

rr+----- = &! 

 

--t--cin:_p-=[g ::: 

Lessoo One: 

· 

--- ..... ....... .. ... 

"- · 

\2 

·· ..


Figure 9-19 


Round Corners: 

D 11 16" • 1/8" D 3/16" D 114" D 3/B" 

( Cancel J 

( OK J 

---.... 

•"'\ 

. / 

In Figure 9-18, I've added some text to this rapidly 

devolving drawing of mine, and altered the type fonts 

for a truly classy look (hey! chacun a son gout, buddy). 

It feels almost strange to use the keyboard again after 

so long away from it. LisaDraw really is one tool where 

you hardly need anything but the mouse. 

Are you impressed with what this tool can do Well, 

you ain't seen nothing yet. Covering all of LisaDraw's 

capabilities would take a whole book, so I'll just mention 

some of the more interesting ones-like the Round Corners 

. . . item on the Edit menu. This lets you choose 

how rounded you want the corners on a rounded-corner 

rectangle to be! (You check your preference on the dialog 

box it produces, shown in Figure 9-19. The default 

is Ys-inch; I'll pick %-inch just to see what it looks like.) 

Another item on the Edit menu is Smooth-it takes 

the kinks out of a freehand drawing. In Figure 9-20, 

I've smoothed my freehand drawing-the one in the 

lower left corner that looks sort of like a buxom anteater 

with wings-to make it more exquisitely wraith-like. 

(Figure 9-20 also shows how the %-inch rounded corners 

look.)


Figure 9-20 


LJ fllil Uttit led 111111 

As with LisaWrite, you can have horizontal and 

vertical rulers displayed on the screen (through the Page 

Layout menu). But, as always, LisaDraw does Lisa Write 

one better-in this case by letting you customize the 

rulers so that they measure in picas, say, or cubits, or 

anything you want. (I've turned the rulers on for you 

to look at in Figure 9-2 1.) 

The Page Layout menu will also let you: 

• turn the grid lines on and off (they don't print out 

in any case); 

• give you the exact dimensions of any object in the 

window;


Figure 9-21 

file/Print Edit Type Style Page Layout Arrangement Lines 

F.u !!!"""' ... ... ... ... .. _ 

Shades 

_ ...., ....,; ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... .. 

1:1111:1:11!-::::t-'-'-.._._.__._ _..._.__,....---,-.__.__..,._ 

Greet !de s 

in fimericen 

Lessoo One: 

······· · · ·········· · · · · · · 


• show you where the page breaks will fall if your drawing 

is larger than one page; and 

• change the size of the drawing so that it occupies more 

pages or fewer. 

(Like LisaProject, LisaDraw can create drawings 

up to 32 square feet in size-about 60 pages. The default 

size is 8 X 10 inches. When you change it, it only affects 

the printout-the drawing continues to appear on the 

screen at the same size you created it.) 

The Arrangement menu lets you do the following 

things to objects: 

• shuffle which ones are on top of which others;


• group them so you can move them around together, 

change them all at once, copy them in one piece, etc.; 

• "lock" them so you can't accidentally move, delete or 

change them; 

• align them by their tops, bottoms, left edges or right 

edges (this is useful for bulleted lists, or for lining 

up boxes in a flow chart); 

• center them (left to right or top to bottom); and 

• align them to the grid lines. 

What would you pay for all these amazing features 

But wait, there's more! For a limited time only, included 

absolutely free with each copy of LisaDraw are the fabulous 

Lines and Shades menus. 

The Lines menu gives you a choice of: 

• four line thicknesses 

• in black, grey or white 

• with or without arrowheads, at the right end or at 

both ends. 

This makes 36 possibilities in all. The default is 

the thinnest black line, without arrowheads. 

Figure 9-22


Figure 9-23 

File/Print Edit Type Style Page Layout Arrangement 

Lines Shades 

_.. .. .. .. .. .. """'""I 

LJ IJil 1 1 Lint it I ed 111111 

# ............. ... .. 

In Figure 9-2 1, I changed the vertical line to the 

widest thickness (I know that's a clumsy phrase, but 

try to find synonyms for "thick" in your thesaurus), put 

arrowheads at both ends, and made it grey (white lines 

won't show up on a white background, of course). I 

changed the curved line to the next heaviest thickness, 

and the diagonal line to the third heaviest; I also gave 

it arrowheads at both ends (you can't see the one on 

the right because it's buried). The wraith I left alone, 

on the theory that the less there is of an ugly thing, 

the better. 

Impressive as it is, the Lines menu doesn't hold a 

candle to the Shades menu (Figure 9-22). The number


of choices is the same (36) but the effect of the different 

patterns is much more dramatic. 

To fill in an object, you just select it, then go to 

the Shades menu and select a shade. As you can see 

from Figure 9-23, an object doesn't have to be closed 

to be filled in. The wraith and the lower of the two 

polygons are both open, but LisaDraw has no trouble 

putting patterns into them. Also note that text is placed 

on a white background, so that you don't go crazy trying 

to read it against a bunch of stripes or checks. 

Sometimes you want to make the same change on 

a number of different objects. There are two ways to 

have them all selected at the same time. One is to shiftclick 

(hold the shift key down as you click on each 

object). The other is to use the little hand. Little hand 

What little hand 

If you press down the mouse button when the arrow 

pointer isn't on an object, hold the button down 

and move the mouse, the arrow turns into a little hand; 

it draws a box just the way the drawing pointer does 

when the rectangle box is selected. 

This is called the selection box, because you put 

it around the objects you want to select, as I have in 

Figure 9-24. Unlike a normal rectangle, the selection 

Figure 9-24 Figure 9-25 

box doesn't hang around; once you've got the objects 

you want surrounded, you release the button and it disappears, 

leaving handles around each object (Figure 

9-25). Then you can do something to all of them at the 

same time (in Figure 9-26, I put a thicker line around 

them).


Figure 9-26 


II"'!!!! ... .. .. ... ... ... ... ... .. mm; 

u 

· . 

. . . f/J7 . . 

/7\ . 

. · w · 

Whether it makes more sense to shift-dick or use 

the little hand depends on the number of objects you 

want to select and where they are in the window. Both 

methods group objects temporarily; once you've done 

something to them, they come unglued. If you want 

to permanently bond a number of objects together (until 

you specifically tell LisaDraw to separate them), you 

use the Group Objects item from the Arrangements 

menu. 

Figure 9-26 shows at a glance why I'm a writer 

and not a visual artist. But hopefully it's served to demonstrate 

a few of LisaDraw's many capabilities, which 

talented artists like yourself can put to higher ends.


LisaDiaw does lots of other things but you've seen 

enough to appreciate how useful a tool it is for creating 

flow charts, floor plans, organizational charts, and just 

about anything else that's clearer as a picture than as 

a bunch of words. LisaDraw is also great for customizing 

LisaGraph and LisaProject charts-changing the 

shades in the slices of a pie chart, for example, or altering 

the arrows in a job schedule to indicate different 

relationships. 

For the first year after the Lisa was announced, 

there were six basic programs-the ones I've just discussed. 

Then in late 1983, a seventh was announced 

LisaTerminal. The next chapter describes it.

10 Communicating with 

Lisa Terminal 

When the Lisa was originally introduced, it was clear 

to everybody that something was missing-the ability 

to communicate with other computers. About a year 

later, this gap was filled . . . sort of. The new telecommunications 

program-LisaTerminal-is fairly primitive 

and limited in its capabilities (at least in the initial 

release). 

Basically, LisaTerminal allows the Lisa to pretend 

it's a terminal (a keyboard and a screen, rather than 

a stand-alone computer) so it can connect to another 

computer. One use for this is to access public data bases 

like CompuServe, Dow Jones and The Source-either 

directly, or through telecommunications networks like 

Telenet or Tymnet (all of which are, of course, actually 

computers). 

LisaTerminal was officially released in late 1983, 

but it continued to change for months afterwards; the 

program wasn't really available until early 1984. As a 

result (and as I expected), Apple was unable to get a 

copy of it to me before this book went to press (although 

I was able to locate a draft copy of the manual). So 

this chapter will tell you how LisaTerminal works in 

general, but I'm afraid you'll have to do without illustrations 

of the screen (and details of the functions). 

LisaTerminal is capable of simulating three common 

types of terminals: a DEC VT52 or VTlOO, or a 

193


TTY (not all the ones you'd hope for, but better than 

none). To communicate with a distant computer, you 

have to choose which of these terminals you want the 

Lisa to mimic, and you also have to adapt to the idiosyncracies 

(called protocols) of the other computer. Lisa 

Terminal uses a standard Lisa approach to doing this: 

First you tear off a piece of LisaTerminal Paper 

and open the window. Then you set up the document 

thus created to meet the protocols of the distant computer-let's 

say it's CompuServe. Finally you make a 

stationery pad out of the document, so the next time 

you want to communicate with CompuServe, all you 

have to do is tear off a sheet of customized CompuServe 

Paper. 

You can arrange things one of two ways: so that 

all your interactions with the remote computer are recorded, 

or so that the Lisa acts just like a regular terminal, 

with the information scrolling off the top of the 

screen and into the ether when you're done reading 

it. You can also arrange to have the remote computer 

automatically dialed. 

In addition to the File/Print and Edit menus, Lisa 

Terminal has two others. The Setup menu accesses the 

dialog box you use to select "computer compatibility" 

characteristics (so you can communicate with a particular 

computer). LisaTerminal offers defaults for all these 

compatibility characteristics and, if you're lucky, the 

defaults just might work (in any case, it's worth a try). 

If not, you use the dialog box to change them. 

The Setup menu also lets you select "comfort characteristics" 

(like whether the interactions get recorded 

or not), custom functions and tab stops. 

You use the Phone menu to give the Lisa the number 

of the computer you want to connect with, and to 

disconnect from it when you're finished. 

In addition to the LisaTerminal software, you need 

a modem-a device that lets computers talk to one another 

over phone lines. Apple recommends the Hayes 

Smartmodem; in fact, if you have another brand of modem, 

you can't use the Phone menu.

195 Communicating with LisaTerminal 

Either the 300- or the 1200-baud model will work 

(baud is equivalent to bits per second), but get the 1200- 

baud model if you can afford it; as I've said elsewhere, 

"if you can stand to watch text come onto a screen at 

300 baud, either you have no central nervous system 

or you're the Buddha." 

You connect the modem to one of the serial ports 

on the back panel of the console. As with any external 

device, you have to open Preferences and go to the Device 

Connections display to tell the Lisa that you're 

hooking it up (and what kind of modem it is). 

Well, that covers the seven basic Lisa tools. But 

they're only the beginning of what you can do with a 

Lisa, as the next chapter makes obvious.

11 Doing More with a Lisa 

Before I talk about ways you can make a Lisa more 

powerful, I'll describe the improvements Apple itself 

made in January, 1984, when it announced the Lisa 2. 

The major hardware change was the replacement of 

the two 5Y4-inch floppy disk drives with a 3Yz-inch floppy 

drive like the one in the Macintosh and optional, builtin 

hard disk drives that (they say) hold five or ten megabytes. 

One advantage of the smaller floppy is that it makes 

the Lisa compatible with the Mac (which is bound to 

be a much bigger seller, with much more software written 

for it). You get a "Mac Mode" icon on the screen 

that opens into a window where you can run any Mac 

program. 

There are other advantages to the 3Yz-inch diskit 

fits in a shirt pocket and, thanks to its rigid package, 

it's tough enough not to get damaged there. There's also 

a metal plate that covers the read/write slot, making 

it almost impossible to lose data as a result of physical 

abuse of the disk. 

When introduced, the 3Yz-inch disk only held 

400K-as opposed to 860K for a 5Y4-inch disk-but SOOK 

versions are coming and will probably be standard by 

the time you read this. 

If you have a Lisa 1, you can upgrade it for free 

to a Lisa 2/5 (with a built-in 5-meg hard disk drive) 

197


until June 1, 1984. (It costs $600 after that.) Or you 

can upgrade it to a Lisa 2/10 (with a built-in 10-meg 

hard disk drive) for $2500. In either case you can get 

some money by selling your used ProFile, or you can 

use it for supplemental, backup storage. 

There are other hardware differences between the 

two models: the Lisa 2 has a different front panel, a 

slightly different mouse and half as much memory. But 

the most significant difference is in the software-at 

announcement, the new Lisa software ran twice as fast 

as the old version, and plans were to have it running 

four times as fast by April. 

There are also hardware enhancements you can 

make that have nothing to do with the differences between 

the Lisa 1 and Lisa 2. For example, there'll be 

an expansion board for the Lisa that allows it to run 

MS DOS programs written for the IBM PC. An external 

5\14-inch floppy disk drive that reads IBM PC disks will 

also be available. (PC compatibility is becoming a sine 

qua non for computers nowadays-although the Mac 

won't have it.) 

The new Imagewriter dot-matrix printer comes 

standard with the Lisa 2, replacing Apple's old dotmatrix 

printer. Hopefully soon there'll be a plotter that 

LisaDraw can drive. But you're more likely to want to 

add software than hardware to your Lisa. 

Fortunately, Apple isn't the only company that 

writes software for the Lisa. UNIX-one of the most 

popular and flexible operating systems on minicomputers-is 

available, as are a number of applications programs. 

There's software for accounting, tax processing 

and, most significantly, word processing-vitally 

needed given how clumsy LisaWrite is at entering and 

editing text. 

My favorite of these third-party programs is something 

called Art Department-a library of more than 

300 professionally rendered graphic images you can 

Paste into LisaDraw. As their flyer puts it, "most Lisa 

users have neither the time nor the skill [they pause 

and look meaningfully at me] to produce high-quality

199 Doing More with a Lisa 

graphics for presentation." If you know what a clip book 

is, this is sort of an electronic version of one; but unlike 

clip art, you can customize the images, using LisaDraw 

to change their shape, size, shading, etc. 

Apple has two new pieces of development software 

that are going to greatly increase the number of programs 

that run on the Lisa. One is called QuickPort 

and it allows any program written in Pascal or C to 

be very quickly transferred to the Lisa. The program 

runs virtually unchanged, and you can Cut and Paste 

the results of its computations into any other Lisa 

document. 

The only problem with QuickPort is that it limits 

what you can do with Lisa's menus and editing functions; 

in fact, it's sometimes called the "vanilla window" 

(since it restricts you to standard Lisa functions). 

For more flexibility, there's a collection of tools 

called Toolkit/32 (which were used to build the Lisa 

Desktop, among other things). It takes much longer to 

adapt a program to the Lisa when you use Toolkit/32 

instead of QuickPort, but you can customize it much 

more extensively and do flashier things with it. 

A lot of companies who want to get their programs 

up and running on the Lisa are probably going to do 

an original version with QuickPort and then use the 

money they get from selling that to finance work on 

an enhanced, fancier version built with Toolkit/32. 

As I said earlier, the Mac will be another source 

of Lisa programs, since many more programmers are 

going to be writing for the Mac and since Mac programs 

will run on the Lisa under Mac Mode. 

But there's no reason to limit yourself to programs 

other people write; you can write your own, with any 

of the many programming languages available on the 

Lisa. (Readers who know nothing about programming 

are excused from the next two paragraphs. If your eyes 

began to swim when I talked about the "vanilla window," 

this means you.) 

Three languages were introduced with the Lisa 1: 

a BASIC patterned after DEC's BASIC Plus, a COBOL


that meets the ANSI Standard X3.23 and GSA High 

Level, and a very powerful and complete Pascal that 

includes-in addition to a compiler and code generator-an 

editor, linker, assembler, debugger and a number 

of other utilities (this Pascal is what Apple used to 

write the basic Lisa tools). 

Other companies now offer FORTRAN, C, APL, 

INTERLISP, an MBASIC compiler, and the language 

whose name is my favorite, Franz LISP. Modula 2 will 

also be available. This is a truly machine-independent 

language and operating environment developed by Niklaus 

Wirth, the father of Pascal, who got tired of hearing 

complaints about his first baby and decided to do it 

really right this time (although even with Pascal, he 

did it righter than anyone else). 

Well, that just about wraps things up for this introductory 

book on the Lisa. You've been a great reader 

and it's been a real pleasure working with you. Let's 

do it again sometime.

Index 

accent marks, 21 

active windows, 33, 62 

alphabetical display of documents, 

72-75 

Altairian police ships, 75 

analysis and planning (with 

LisaCalc), 123-33 

annuity (calculated by Lisa 

Calc), 133 

APL (programming language), 

200 

Apple key, 21 

Apple key commands, 40 

applications programs, 42 

Arnold, Matthew, poem by, 

115-16 

Arrangement menu (Lisa 

Draw), 187-88 

arrowheads (LisaDraw), 

188-89 

arrow keys, 21 

arrow pointer, 26 

in LisaDraw, 169 

arrows (LisaProj ect), 163-65 

Art Department (program), 

198 

Auden, W H., poem by, 49-57 

automatic dimming of 

screen, 8 

background printing, 19, 70 

backup copies, 43 

BASIC (programming language), 

199, 200 

baud rate (LisaTerminal), 195 

binary number system, 16 

bit-mapped screen, 18 

bits, 16 

block (measure of storage 

space), 17, 43 

burning in of hardware, 14 

bytes, 16 

C (programming language), 

199, 200 

Calculate Manually, Calculate 

Now (LisaCalc menu 

items), 132 

Calculate menu (LisaCalc), 132 

Calculator (tool), 42-43 

Caps Lock key, 21 

caret (indicating text placement 

in LisaDraw), 183 

Cases Must Agree, Cases 

Need Not Agree (Lisa 

Write menu items), 99 

cells 

LisaCalc, 124-26 

LisaGraph, 135-37 

centered text (Lisa Write), 108 

Change & Find Next, Change 

This Occurrence, 

Change To (Lisa Write 

menu items), 100 

201


character, 16 

Chart menu (LisaProj ect), 

165-66 

charts (prepared by Lisa 

Graph), 135-5 1 

check pointer, 33 

chronological display of documents, 

75-77 

Circle Missing Values (Lisa- 

Calc menu item), 133 

circles (LisaDraw), 169-74 

Clear key; 21 

Clipboard, 26 

Clock (tool), 42-43 

clock, real-time, 22 

closing windows, 37-39 

COBOL (programming language), 

199-200 

Coleridge, Samuel, epigram 

by, 20 

communicating with other 

computers, 19-2 1 

using LisaTerminal, 193-95 

compound interest (calculated 

by LisaCalc), 133 

CompuServe, 193 

console, 5 

contrast, on screen, 8 

Convenience Settings display 

(Preferences), 33-35 

Copy (Edit menu item), 97 

created, when documents 

were, 73-77 

creation of the world, 161-63 

cursor, 8 

curved lines (LisaDraw), 180 

Customize menu 

LisaGraph, 145 

LisaProject, 167-68 

Cut (Edit menu item), 96-97 

data base management (with 

LisaList), 117-122 

data files, 24, 43 

Data Format (LisaList), 119 

Data Type of Column (Lisa- 

List), 119 

DEC VT52 terminal, 193 

defaults, 33 

Desktop, 24 

Desktop Manager, 25 

Development System, 23 

Device Connections display 

(Preferences), 35 

diagonal lines (LisaDraw), 

176-77 

dialog boxes, 69 

dimming of screen, automatic, 

8 

disk drives, 5 

documents, 43-52 

size of, 73-75 

dot-matrix printer, 7, 14, 

19, 198 

installation of, 86-87 

double-clicking, 41 

when drawing polygons in 

LisaDraw, 182 

"Dover Beach" (poem), 115-16 

Dow Jones Information Service, 

193 

draft mode (for printouts), 

19, 70 

dragging objects, 47 

drawing diagrams and pictures 

(with LisaDraw), 

169-192 

drawing pointer 

LisaDraw, 169-7 1 

LisaProject, 153 

duplicating, 39-40 

ease of service (Lisa hardware), 

14-15 

ease of use (Lisa hardware), 

7-12 

editing (Lisa Write), 93-103 

Edit menu, 82, 93 

eight-bit chips, 15 

8088 (chip), 15 

8/1 6-bit chips, 15 

electronic spreadsheets, 123 

elevators (for scrolling), 

52-54

203 Index 

Empty Folders icon, 77-8 1 

Enter key, 21 

ergonomics, 7 

error messages, 12 

expandability, 21-22 

eyestrain, lack of, 7 -8 

"Eye, The" (poem), 106-108 

field (LisaList), 121 

File/Print menu, 29 

fill patterns (in Lisa Write 

tables), 111 

financial functions (calculated 


Find & Change All (Lisa Write 

menu item), 101 

find & replace (Lisa Write), 

98-102 

Find Next Occurrence (Lisa 

Write menu item), 99 

Find What (Lisa Write menu 

item), 98 

"finished quality" printouts, 

70 

5114-inch minifloppies, 5, 197 

flicker, 7 -8 

floppies (floppy disks), 5, 13 

floppy disk drives, 16, 197-98 

flush left (text format in 

LisaWrite), 106 

flush right (text format in 

LisaWrite), 107 

folders, 43, 78-81 

fonts 

LisaDraw, 182 

LisaWrite, 105 

footers (LisaWrite), 112-14 

Format for Printer (File/ 

Print menu item), 69 

Format menu 

LisaCalc, 131 


Format menu (Lisa Write), 

106 

formatting (Lisa Write), 

103-16 

formed-character printers, 7 

formulas (LisaCalc), 128-30 

FORTRAN (programming 

language), 200 

Franz LISP (programming 


freehand symbol (LisaDraw), 

181 

Function Hints . .. (LisaCalc), 

133 

function keys, 21 

ghost images (on the screen), 8 

gloves, magic, 10-1 1 

grabbing objects, 47 

Graph menu (LisaGraph), 

138-44 

grasping obj ects, 47 

grid lines (LisaGraph), 151 

handles 

LisaDraw, 172 


hard disk drive, 5, 197-98 

hardware (the Lisa's), 5-22 

headers (LisaWrite), 112-14 

Hide Dialog Box (Lisa Write 

Search menu item), 99 

highlighting, 27, 94 

high-resolution mode (for 

printouts), 18-19, 69 

high-resolution screen, 18 

hollow cross-hair pointer 

(LisaList), 117 

hollow (LisaDraw type style), 

182 

horizontal (format for printouts), 

70 

horizontal lines (LisaDraw), 

177-80 

hourglass pointer, 46 

human engineering, 7 

IBM PC, 198 

icons, 24-27, 73 

idiot-proofing, 12-13 

Imagewriter (dot-matrix 

printer), 7, 19, 198


indents (LisaWrite), 110 

initializing a disk, 85-86 

insertion point, 48, 94 

integration of software, 45 

INTERLISP (programming 


Jeffers, Robinson, poem by, 

106-108 

job tracking (with Lisa 

Project), 153-68 

justification (of text in Lisa 

Write), 106-109 

justified text, to both margins 

(in Lisa Write), 109 

K (abbreviation for kilobyte), 

16, 43 

Kafka, Franz, ix 

keyboard, 8-9 

kilobytes, 16 

King James (and friends), 161 

landscape (format for printouts), 

70 

lines (LisaProject), 163-65 

Lines menu (LisaDraw), 

188-89 

line spacing (Lisa Write), 

109-10 

Lisa 1, 1, 5-6, 197 

picture of, 6 

Lisa 2, 5-7, 198 

Lisa 2/5, 5, 197 

Lisa 2/10, 5, 197, 198 

software on, 1-2, 15, 198 

picture of, 6 


LisaDraw, 169-92 


LisaGuide, 23-24, 87-91 

LisaList, 117 -22 

LisaProject, 153-68 

LisaTerminal, 42, 193-95 

LisaWrite, 93-1 16 

evaluation of for editing, 

102-103 

evaluation of for formatting, 

103 

list management (with Lisa- 

List), 117-22 

Lisa menu (LisaList), 120 

little hand (LisaDraw), 190-9 1 

logarithmic functions (calculated 


logical and, logical or, logical 

not (LisaCalc), 133 

Mac (Apple Macintosh computer), 

5-7, 197-199 

Mac Mode (on Lisa 2), 

197, 199 

margins (Lisa Write), 110 

"Master & Bos'n," poem, 

49-57 

MBASIC (programming 


meg, megabyte, 16 

memory, 16, 198 

menus, 28-32 

menu bar, 28 

menu items, 29-30 

menu titles, 28 

Mice & Menus, Of, 87 

milestone circles (Lisa 


modems, 194 

modified, last time documents 

were, 73-77 

Modula 2 (programming language), 

200 

Motorola 68000 (chip), 15 

mouse, 9-1 1, 198 

picture of, 6 

mouse/icon user interface, 

24-25 

MS DOS (operating system), 

198 

New Yo rk City Board of Education, 

ix 

noise 

acoustic, 12 

electromagnetic, 14

205 Index 

normal mode (for printouts), 

18-20, 69 

NPV. net present value (calculated 


numeric keypad, 9 

Office System, 23 

installation of, 86 

offset connectors, 13 

Of Mice & Menus, 87 

opening icons, 26 

using double-clicking, 41 

using the File/Print menu, 31 

operating system, 25 

Option keys, 21 

outdents (Lisa Write), 110-1 1 

ovals (LisaDraw), 172-7 4 

Owner's Guide, 23-24, 85-87, 

89-90 

Page Layout menu 

LisaDraw, 186-87 



LisaWrite, 112 

Page Ruler, Page Ruler menu 

(LisaWrite), 112 

palette (LisaDraw), 169 

parallel interface boards, 21 

Pascal (programming language), 

199, 200 

passive aggression, worldclass, 

ix 

Paste (Edit menu item), 96-97 

PC compatibility, 198 

persistence of vision, 8 

Phone menu (LisaTerminal), 

194 

phosphor, 7-8 

pictorial display of documents, 

72-73 

pixels, 18 

planning (with LisaCalc), 

123-33 

pointer, 8, 26 

polygons other than rectangles 

(LisaDraw), 181-82 

portrait (format for printouts), 

70 

power of the Lisa, 15-2 1 

predicting the future (with 

LisaCalc), 123-33 

Preferences, 26, 33-36 

Preview Pages (Lisa Write 


Print . .. (File/Print menu 

item), 70 

printers, 7 

printing out documents, 

69-72 

printing the screen, 18 

printouts, levels of quality, 

18-19 

ProFile (hard disk drive), 

6, 17-18, 198 

capacity of, 16-18 

MTBF (mean time between 

failures), 14 

size and weight, 12 

window, 41-42 

programs, 24 

Protect menu (LisaCalc), 132 

protocols (LisaTerminal), 194 

QuickPort, 199 

RAM disk, 18 

Rangoon, Burma, 1 

rearranging windows on the 

Desktop, 57-68 

rectangles (LisaDraw) 

with rounded corners, 

174, 185-86 

with square corners, 176 

reference cards, 9 

refresh rate, 7-8 

reliability, 14-15 

Resource charts (Lisa- 

Project), 166 

resources section of a task 

box (LisaProject), 161-163 

rewriting the screen, 7-8 

Round Corners . .. (LisaDraw 

menu item), 185-86 

Ruler (Lisa Write), 111


safety, 12-13, 83 

Save & Continue (menu 

item), chart, 68 

Save & Put Away (menu 

item), chart, 68 

Schedule charts (Lisa 


scheduling (with Lisa- 


screen, the Lisa's, 8, 18 

scroll arrows, 55 

scroll bars, 52 

scrolling, 52-57 

search and replace (Lisa- 

Write), 98-102 

Search menu (Lisa Write), 98 

selecting objects, 26-27, 39 

selecting text (Lisa Write), 

94-96 

selection boxes (LisaDraw), 

190-9 1 

self-testing, 13 

Set Aside (menu item), 39 

chart, 68 

Set Aside Everything, 67 

Setup menu (LisaTerminal), 

194 

Shades menu (LisaDraw), 

189-90 

shadow (LisaDraw type 

style), 182 

shadows, 47-48 

shielding, 14 

shift-clicking (LisaDraw), 

190-9 1 

Show as Line (LisaGraph 


Show Formulas & Values 

(LisaCalc menu item), 133 

Show Margin/Tab Ruler 

(Lisa Write menu item), 

110 

Show New List (LisaList 


16/32-bit chips, 15 

68000 (chip), 15 

size and weight 

of Lisa, 11 

of Profile, 12 

size control box, sizing, 57-58 

slack time (LisaProject), 166 

Smooth (LisaDraw menu 

item), 185 

software 

the Lisa's basic approach 

to, 23-84 

the Lisa's basic approach 

to, evaluated, 83-84 

solid flesh, this too too, 101 

Source, The, 193 

speaker, 22 

special characters, 21 

split controls (Lisa Write), 102 

startup device, 86 

Startup display (Preferences), 

36 

stationery pads, 43 

status panel (LisaCalc), 

124-26 

Sun Also Rises, The, 17 

symbols, 21 

tall (format for printouts), 70 

task boxes (LisaProj ect), 

157-161 

Ta sk charts (LisaProject), 166 

Tear Off Stationery (menu 

item), 45, 78 

telecommunications, 193-195 

Telenet, 193 

terminals, 193 

text placement (LisaDraw), 

183 

text pointer, 51, 94-95 

3 Yi microfloppies, 5, 197 

title bar, 62 

toll-free number (to ask 

Apple questions), 15 

Toolkit/32, 199 

tools, 2, 42-43 

trigonometric functions (calculated 

by LisaCalc), 133

207 Index 

TTY (type of terminal), 193-94 

Tymnet, 193 

type faces (LisaList), 122 

Type Style menu 

LisaCalc, 131 


Lisa Write, 105-106 

undo command, 82 

UNIX (operating system), 198 

updating the screen, 7-8 

user interface, 24-25 

vacation days (LisaProject), 

166 

values 



vertical (format for printouts), 

70 

vertical lines (LisaDraw), 

177-80 

view buttons, 55-56 

View menu, 72-73 

VT lOO terminal, 193 

Wastebasket, 26 

"what if" questions (Lisa 

Calc), 129-30 

wide (format for printouts), 

70 

windows, 31-42 

rearranging windows on 

the Desktop, 57-68 

Wirth, Nicklaus, 200 

word processing (with Lisa 

Write), 93-116 

work week (LisaProject), 166 

x (horizontal) axis (Lisa 

Graph), 135 

y (vertical) axis (LisaGraph), 

138 

zero insertion force connectors, 

22

Other books in the Microcomputer Books Series, available 

from your local computer store or bookstore. For more 

information write: 

Microcomputer Books and Consumer Software Division 

Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc. 

Reading, Massachusetts 0186 7 

(6 17) 944-3700 

10242 Executive VisiCalc for 11358 Database: A Primer 

the Apple Computer 

Roger E. Clark 

C. J. Date 

01245 1-2-3 Go! 

05663 BASIC Business Julie Bingham 

Subroutines for the 

Apple II and Ile 

Alan Porter and 

10924 Starting with UNIX 

P. J. Brown 

Martin Rezmer 08848 The Business Guide to 

05092 Microcomputer 

Graphics for the Apple 

Computer 

the UNIX System 

Jean L. Yates and 

Sandra L. Emerson 

Roy E. Meyers 10355 CP/M and the Personal 

06599 Basic Money: Managing 

Personal Finances on 

Your Microcomputer 

Computer 

Thomas A. Dwyer and 

Margot Critchfield 

Charles Seiter 05248 Executive Computing 

John M. Nevison 

16482 Astounding Games for 

Your Apple Computer 11208 The Beginner's Guide 

Hal Renko and 

Sam Edwards 

to Computers 

Robin Bradbeer, 

Peter DeBono, 

14775 Applesoft BASIC Toolbox and Peter Laurie 

Larry G. Wintermeyer 

06577 Pascal for BASIC 

14652 Introducing Logo Programmers 

Peter Ross 

07769 Discovering Apple Logo 

Charles Seiter 

and Robert Weiss 

David D. Thornburg 05247 The Little Book of 

16453 The Addison-Wesley 

Book of Apple Software 

BASIC Style 

John M. Nevison 

1984 01589 BASIC and the Personal 

J. Stanton, R. We lls, Computer 

S. Rochowansky, and Thomas A. Dwyer and 

M. Mellin Margot Critchfield

. I

naiman-1984-introduction-to-the-lisa

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?