The first chapter of the book “Apple Lisa: A user-friendly handbook,” pp. 1-2.

This book is primarily an exercise book. It’s designed for fireside reading, but as a hands-on guide that shows you how to use Lisa to best serve your needs. You can work your way straight through the exercises or skip around and do the exercises of interest to you.

What the exercises can do for you

The exercises present real world situations and show you, step by step, the best way to handle them. For example, in one of the LisaCalc exercises you calculate a mortgage with different rates and durations; in one of the LisaGraph exercises you plot a graph that illustrates sales by region; in one of the LisaList exercises you analyze information to select the five best insurance agencies for a pilot automation project.

The exercises suggest new approaches and show you the best way to get the job done. They illuminate Lisa’s capabilities.

You can also use the exercises for additional practice. After you have completed the Lisa tutorials you can try your hand at the exercises to test and improve your skills.

How to use the exercises

Each part offers exercises in a particular application. For example the chapters in Part 2 provide exercises with LisaWrite. The exercises in Part 2 increase in difficulty and degree of sophistication; the first exercise (in Chapter 4) is easiest; the last exercise (in Chapter 7) is the most challenging.

In each part you can work your way straight through the exercises to progressively test and improve your skills. Or you can skip around and selectively perform the exercises that either present tasks relative to your needs or that require skills you want to improve.

An overview of the book

Part 1, Getting Started, covers the Lisa basics and surveys Lisa’s user interface, the desk top manager. Part 1 also describes what Lisa is all about and surveys all the different things it can do. No matter which applications you use, from LisaCalc to LisaWrite, many of the techniques are the same – selecting and working with menus; using the mouse; creating, opening, setting aside, saving, and throwing away documents. Consequently, you should make sure that you are familiar with the information in Part 1 before you move ahead to the exercises.

The rest of the book, Parts 2 through 7, provides exercises for each of Lisa’s six applications. You skip to the parts that interest you most. For example, you may never use Lisa for word processing (LisaWrite). However you may use Lisa extensively to manage and schedule projects (LisaProject). In that case, just skip Part 2, which covers LisaWrite, and go straight to Part 6, which covers LisaProject.

Refer to the table of contents to select the exercises that interest you. To test and improve your mastery of everything, work your way straight through the book.