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Comment by rbanffy | Hacker News Reader

It was a fascinating idea - programs were hidden behind a document template metaphor. It was not as neat as Windows “New” menu and its templates folder.

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Also kind of makes sense out of the concept of "Desk Accessories" (i.e. the things under the Apple menu in Macintosh System 1 — Lisa OS also had these.) Every Lisa OS "task" (there were no processes in the pre-emptive sense) is either running a program in the context of a document that program manipulates; or is a document-less accessory program, running under some other task.

> document template metaphor

The macOS Finder has its own version of the Lisa's stationery feature:

    File > Get Info > Stationery Pad

To make a document template folder, you mark your document templates as stationery. Then drag the template folder to the dock to get a pop-up template menu (or multiple menus if you wish).

Wow - I remember that from the System 7 days. I thought that was long gone - how did I not notice that checkbox was still there in Get Info this whole time?

That’s really neat.

This was the original desktop metaphor, from Xerox. I think it's pretty charming and enjoy playing around with it, but I can imagine getting real work™ done on it would get annoying quickly

Most of the apps I work with these days keep state on remote servers, and that state doesn’t always map nicely to a folders and files metaphor, or documents.

The Star was quite inconvenient to work with - and worked with removable media via an import/export metaphor. Also, it had very little of the direct manipulation of desktop objects the Lisa introduced. It knew no drag, only point and click. Ironically, we can say that drag-less UI was a drag.

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