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Preliminary Mesa System Documentation
by Charles M. Geschke, Charles Irby, Richard K. Johnsson, Edwin H. Satterthwaite and
John D. Wick
December t 1976
This collection of documentation describes the initial release of the Mesa programming
system, Mesa library packages, and operational procedures for the Alto. It is intended as a
preJiminary effort, for use by experienced systems programmers operating in the Parc and
SOD/Palo Alto environment. Substantial evolution of both the system and this
documentation should be anticipated.
The Mesa, language, compiler and programming system are the product of a long-standing
research project at Parc, in which Chuck Geschke, Butler Lampson, Jim Mitchell, and Ed
Satterthwaite have been the main participants. The current compiler was written by
Geschke and Satterthwaite. They also wrote the debugger and support software needed to
run Mesa programs on the Alto, in collaboration with Jim Mitchell and with Charles Irby,
Richard Johnsson and John Wick of SOD/Palo Alto. Compiler testing has been done by
Jim Frandeen of SOD/Palo Alto.