GO Corporation – Using PenPoint

GO Corporation's Using PenPoint is end-user documentation for the PenPoint operating system, published by GO Corporation of Foster City, California.¹ GO, a privately held company, was founded in 1987 to develop pen-based computing technology, and on January 22, 1991 it announced PenPoint as the only general-purpose operating system designed for mobile computers operated by a pen instead of a keyboard or mouse.² The company first released PenPoint to independent software vendors and value-added resellers as a developer release, with a commercial version for end users to follow.²

PenPoint organized work through a Notebook User Interface, in which a notebook with a table of contents served as the central navigational structure and users interacted with documents rather than files and applications.² Its Embedded Document Architecture let users combine different live data types — such as text, drawings, and tables — within a single document by embedding one document inside another, and a hyperlinking feature allowed the entire workspace to function as one integrated hypertext document.² The system recognized printed handwriting and pen-generated gestures, such as writing an X to delete or circling text to edit, which worked consistently throughout the operating system.²

At the January 1991 announcement, GO reported that 40 software companies had committed to develop for or provide technology for PenPoint, among them Borland International, Lotus Development, WordPerfect, Slate, and PenSoft, which had been named the previous July.³ GRiD Systems and NCR announced they would support PenPoint on new pen-based computers, joining IBM, which the prior year had become the first hardware manufacturer to license the technology.²

GO announced the commercial release of PenPoint on April 16, 1992, and on the same day began shipping the PenPoint Software Development Kit, which bundled an executable copy of the operating system with tools and documentation.⁴ The commercial release introduced a new handwriting recognition engine called GOWrite, virtual memory support, and a 32-bit architecture that used the protect mode of the Intel 80386 so that a crashing application would not affect the rest of the system.⁴ GO added on-line help facilities, including context-sensitive Quick Help and a Help Notebook, along with Quick Start tutorials bundled with PenPoint and its applications to get users running in ten minutes or less.⁴ Since the developer release, GO had conducted more than 2,300 hours of formal user testing to refine the system's ease of use.⁴

Also on April 16, 1992, GO announced industry-wide support for PenPoint, with NEC Technologies, Toshiba America Information Systems, and TelePad joining 22 other hardware providers backing the system and 22 software partners announcing new applications.⁵ William V. Campbell, GO's president and chief executive officer, said the company had worked closely with its hardware and software partners so that the components needed for a complete pen solution would be available simultaneously.⁵ Later that year, on October 26, 1992, GO introduced the GO Message Center and the GO Fax application, adding integrated electronic mail and Group 3 fax capabilities to the PenPoint operating system.⁶

AI generated using primary sources referenced in the footnotes