27-Oct-80 23:33:11-PST,3772;000000000001
Mail-from: ARPANET site SU-AI rcvd at 27-Oct-80 2332-PST
Date: 27 Oct 1980 2331-PST
From: Dick Gabriel <RPG at SU-AI>
To:   csd.lenat at SU-SCORE 

Doug:
Here are some questions for your questionaire. I think that
strategy of implying hardware needs from habits may work better than
asking the hardware questions directly, people sometimes being ill-informed.
So look these over and maybe use them or some version of them:

These questions determine features of current systems that are
useful to have in case any current system is lost. The replacement
will need to have the abilities implied by the answers to these
questions:

1. Do you use the line editor on SAIL:
 	a. always, b. frequently, c. sometimes, d. never.

[[Note: if the answer is that local or pre-program editing is needed,
then there must be a way to distinguish keyboard output that is to go
into the text from keyboard output that is intended as instructions to
the local editor. This may imply some requirements on the TTY scanning
capabilities of the computer to be purchased. Also, if the machine we
get is set up to run some operating system that will not support easily
some functions we want, then that hardware may prove of less use to us.]]

2. Would you find a line editor useful?

3. Do you use screen mapping (to collaborate):
 	a. always, b. frequently, c. sometimes, d. never.

[[Note: again, this can impact some of the hardware we hope to
put on our new machines, such as video switches. The issues of
providing for people to not have this feature used on them
can (and should) be handled later.]]

4. Do you find the extra bits on the SAIL keyboard:
	a. useful, b. ok, c. confusing

5. While editing files (text or program source) do you switch files:
 	a. very often, b. frequently, c. sometimes, d. never.

[[Note: this question may impact on the decision between timesharing
vs. personal computers, since fast file switching *may* be difficult
if an FTP-like operation is performed to get at new files not normally
in a user's working set.]]

6. What is the largest program you use?

[[Note: LISP faces the address space crunch at the moment. This tends
to impact the InterLisp community more than the MacLisp community at the
moment. If address space is a real problem, then machines that primarily
yield 18 bits of address may not be sufficient. Eg, the 2080 may require
a fair amount of work to get extended addressing in favorite programs 
(re-writing for indirect addressing).]]

7. How large is the largest program you have written on a CSD machine?

8. Do you use LISP:
 	a. always, b. frequently, c. sometimes, d. never.

[[Note: machines that run LISP well may be a critical importance to
CSD. Perhaps the LISP community here is larger than any other
and primary considerations should be given to it (or maybe not).
One possibility is some number of LISP Machines (although expensive)
may solve some problems. VAXes are not known to be effective hosts
for LISP. The man-centuries of software on 10's is being and will
continue to be re-created for these quaint machines.]]

9. Do you use floating point arithmetic:
 	a. always, b. frequently, c. sometimes, d. never.

[[Note: A VAX with a floating point accelerator may be in order,
though a VAX might be too small a machine to serve a large community.]]

10. How much local software development would you think appropriate
to CSD:
	a. a lot, b. some, c. very little, d. none

[[Note: This scale is bad, but if we want to get a machine that
is fast and big, it may have even less software than VAXes. This
might mean a software effort of some kind on our part. Is CSD willing to
support it, or will we go more towards the CMU route?]]