Document preparation by an experimental text and facsimile integrated workstation

摘要

Since '78, an experimental workstation has been built up [1 to 5] at the Siemens Central Research Laboratories at Munich which allows composing, filing, and transmission of illustrated office documents, offering to the user's disposal the following packet of facilities we expect to become standard in the future "paperless" office.

We decided to design a system model in order to verify this conception by experiment. The result of this design is an assembly of function modules, which, in the general, correspond to peripherals, linked by a local network (scope fig. 1):

• dialog screen

• document screen

• keyboard, for text input

• tablet, for window control, menu selection, graphics and handprint input

• printer, for printout of unformatted or formatted text, graphics, and images

• scanner, for facsimile input of black & white as well as 6gray-level images, optionally to by integrated with printer into an intelligent copier

• harddisk, for system software and temporary storage of user files

• floppy, for backup, transport and letter mail

• transceiver, for remote connection.

Any of these peripherals can, if required, be duplicated for time sharing users, or for increased performance. Since an essential feature of our system conception is the integration of text and facsimile facilities, we defined the name TEXTFAX which stands as well for the above conception as for the experimental system we are now going to discuss in detail.