The Gypsy document editor: celebrating 50 years

In 1975, five whole decades ago - before Google Docs, Microsoft Word, or even vi and emacs existed - a new document editor was born at Xerox PARC, and it was named Gypsy. 

It’s hard to properly introduce Gypsy because its ideas succeeded. Can you imagine an editor where you can’t type immediately into the document, or cut-copy-paste, or double-click to select a word? Borrowing the phrase from Scott Alexander, you need to read the history backwards and remember there was a time when these interfaces were not standard.

Even though Gypsy was never widely used outside PARC, it was a major influence on Microsoft Word and more. Here’s how.

No modes

Imagine a world where you had to explicitly switch modes for different functionality. If you’ve ever accidentally opened Vim, you probably tried typing away with no feedback except for the sad line at the bottom: “Not an editor command,” and jokes about trying to quit Vim are just about as old as the program itself. 

Vim is the most-used moded text editor today. You start at the top-level command mode, and you need to explicitly enter an insert mode to start putting words on the page. Every action is constrained by your current mode, and you need to be aware of that. In 1975 vi hadn’t even been created yet, but the predecessor to Gypsy - an editor called Bravo - was also moded. In my favorite interaction techniques textbook, Brad Myers shares a common mistake with Bravo:

A classic story about the problems of a moded system is to type “EDIT” at the top level of a command line interface, where this would enter the text editor, but if the user is already in command mode in the text editor, it would do Everything Delete, Insert T, thereby deleting everything and inserting a “T” in its place.

Brad A. Myers: Pick, Click, Flick! The Story of Interaction Techniques

When you use Gypsy (or any modern document editor), you just type your words directly into the document - no modes required, and no “Everything Delete” mishaps. As co-creator Larry Tesler explained in a 2013 interview, this actually simplified the implementation too!

A modeless user interface loop, we found by building one, was just a simple single loop around a case statement— a switch statement— saying which event did the user just do. Did they push this key? Did they click the mouse button, whatever? Go do whatever they wanted and then go back to the top of the loop because there’s no modes.

Larry Tesler, oral history interview with Al Kossow (via Computer History Museum)

Gypsy introduced click-drag to select text (instead of entering a selection mode). With that came the modern modeless version of cut, copy, and paste - including a visual representation of what we now call the clipboard.

For text, modeless editors have won (I’m typing this draft in Google Docs right now, no modes in sight), and I’m glad. Interestingly, moded editors are still the norm in image editors - pick a tool, then pick an area to apply it to - as well as computer-aided design (CAD) and digital audio software. Maybe it’s because in those domains, there aren’t native ways to directly create things by typing. 

Double-click to select a word

Bill Atkinson is often credited with the invention of the double-click at Apple in the early 80s, where it was used to open files. But the 1975 internal memo for Gypsy already documented the use of double-click to select a single word. Tesler credits Tim Mott, the other co-creator of Gypsy:

Tim came in and said, “Last night I just was tapping on the table and went tap, tap, tap, tap. How about tap, tap? That would select a word.”

Despite prior art, in 2002 Microsoft still filed a patent for double-click on “limited resource computing devices”. Besides the lack of novelty, it’s bold to suggest they have devices with infinite resources (and didn’t patent those first!).

The sentences I’ve always wanted to include in a release

Just one more thing to share: the intro on that internal memo is fun. Sometimes I miss working on internal tools, where you can write release notes like this:

[The] system is available at PARC for playing only. People are invited to try the system and get a feel for its use. Our version is slightly obsolescent, somewhat buggy (though not dangerous to your disk), and will not be maintained in any way. 

We have no interest in hearing about bugs at this time. If you end up in [the debugger] or in an endless loop, [re-]Boot. If you have useful work to do, use [the more mature editor] Bravo.

Larry Tesler and Tim Mott in Gypsy: The Ginn Typescript System

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Happy 50 years to Gypsy, a project led by Larry Tesler and Tim Mott. Tesler would go on to shape computing at Apple, while Mott co-founded Electronic Arts, Macromedia, and Audible; but even if their careers had been frozen in 1975, Gypsy already introduced ideas so fundamental that they shape how we use computers today.