Many of the GUI ideas had been around in the ARPA community before Parc, including scrolling. The bit-map display on the Alto brought a few more possibilities -- such as the overlapping windows, and "display any image". We had done both smooth scrolling and outlined text selection years before (remember that
Steve's visit was in the 6th year of the Alto working). We used the line by line scrolling in Smalltalk in '79 in part because it was easier to read during the movement, and because a list would always show the whole top line). There was plenty of compute power to do either.
What Steve was reacting against is the normal way we portray selections today, namely highlighting (not at all what you said above). We found the highlighted selection to be more discernable than the outline.
I think this is a case where you didn't take the trouble to find out the facts and are instead projecting your beliefs on a situation at which you weren't present. I'm calling you on because there is much too much of this kind of commentary in most forums.
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