7 ms·

Canon Cat Resources – Jef Raskin's Forth-Powered Word Processing Appliance

77 points by straws 9y ago

straws 9y ago
If anyone can help figure out how to trigger the leap keys in the emulator, I'm all ears: https://archive.org/details/canoncat https://archive.org/details/canoncat - - - It's fascinating to compare a tool like this to the direction the Macintosh actually took — though Jef Raskin conceived the project in the early days of Apple, the graphical user interface took its design cues from the research at Xerox Parc instead. The Humane Interface is Raskin's book on the principles behind a product like this: focus on spatial context with a zooming UI, be forgiving with ubiquitous undo, provide one way of doing things, never trap the user in a mode. A lot of those ideas are embedded in the interfaces we have today, but they feel entirely orthogonal to the discoverability that a Parc-style GUI provides.
- vitovito 9y ago
  Left Alt and Right Alt are LEAP left and LEAP right. The MAME source explains the key combinations up top: https://github.com/mamedev/mame/blob/master/src/mame/drivers/cat.cpp https://github.com/mamedev/mame/blob/master/src/mame/drivers... I tested them in Chrome on a MacBook Pro and they seem to work, but your mileage based on browser/OS/keyboard may vary.
  - straws 9y ago
    It works!!! Thank you for creating this resource. I'm on the hunt for research around this topic, especially on the various manifestations of Oberon.
jnaina 9y ago
I wrote to Jef in the late 90's to ask if he had one of the Cat's available for sale, to add to my MAC and Lisa collection. He quoted 10K for one, which I thought was too steep. Later learned that he had health problems and was looking to raise funds for his medical treatments. Another visionary from Apple who later succumbed to Cancer.
- agumonkey 9y ago
  His son is in design and ergonomics too IIRC. Sad was his death, but his product being forgotten was too.
- mschaef 9y ago
  Right around the time the Cat was discontinued, there was one on clearance at a store I frequented in Houston for something like $100. There isn't much computer equipment I didn't buy that I regret not buying, but this is at the top of the list.
- vivreviva 9y ago
  Pancreatic to be exact. He didn't actually know he was sick in the 90s. However, he was trying to send his children to college. Jef never saw any money from the Mac.
SwellJoe 9y ago
I love weird old computing dead ends like this. Pretty good ideas at the wrong time and place in history to allow them to take off. I mean, no mouse in 1987? Task-focused rather than general purpose? I remember reading about them when they were new; Amiga was my obsession by then (though I couldn't afford one for another couple years), but I devoured all the computing media I could get my hands on. They seemed like a toy, to me, and a very expensive one, to boot. It's cool to imagine what the world would have looked like had we gone down different paths. If this had come a year or two earlier, been a few hundred dollars cheaper, maybe we'd be using a very different sort of computer today. But, probably not. The GUI/mouse interface has been an unbeatable monster for decades now. The windowing GUI may have just been delayed by a year or two. Nerds (myself included) kinda pine for the pre-mouse days now and then, but even so, I don't know a lot of people who use an exclusively text-based UI. I like a tiled window manager and a text editor that's most controllable via keyboard, but I also like having a mouse.
- tyingq 9y ago
  I didn't use this one, but the somewhat similar Wang dedicated word processors were pretty nice to work with, and pretty successful until PCs and (mostly) Wordstar wiped them out. Wordstar, no mouse needed, thrived for quite a while as well.
  - Joeri 9y ago
    George R.R. Martin still uses wordstar to write his books.
    - nullc 9y ago
      I'm sure at least a few people here use joe -- with its wordstar like control commands-- as their editor of choice today.
      - digi_owl 9y ago
        Dug joe back up recently after not having touched it in ages. And the first thing that caught me off guard is that unlike most exit prompts, answering Y throws changes away...
Stratoscope 9y ago
I hope I'm not out of line posting this here, but if any collectors near the SF Peninsula are looking for a Cat, I have one that could use a better home. It's in good working condition with manuals and floppy disks and the daisywheel printer. My email is in my profile if interested.
- RachelF 9y ago
  You should contact the Computer History Museum in Palo Alto, they might want it, and then everyone can see it. http://www.computerhistory.org/ http://www.computerhistory.org/
  - Top19 9y ago
    I've been there twice and never seen anything like the Cat there. Also if it works and turns on, you can also try the "Living Computer Museum" in Seattle, sponsored by Paul Allen. I don't know their policy, maybe they will even buy it if it works.
    - vivreviva 9y ago
      Have you been to digibarn? It is really fantastic. It is run by Bruce Damer
- vivreviva 9y ago
  Check in with Bruce Damer at digibarn he has a huge collection. CHM doesn't show anything related to or even mentions Jef. One of his daughters was on their teachers advisory committee. They are good people but don't really put in a lot of the controversial.
RodgerTheGreat 9y ago
For those whose interest was piqued by the mention of Forth, it appears the PDF link to the tForth documentation on this page is wrong; the correct link is here: http://www.canoncat.net/cat/Cat%20tForth%20Documentation.pdf http://www.canoncat.net/cat/Cat%20tForth%20Documentation.pdf
- vitovito 9y ago
  That link should be fixed now. Thanks.
burntrelish1273 9y ago
ZOMG, I've been looking for what was the name of this device for some time. We had these in a typing class in middle school, c. 1991. There was a way to get a Forth interpreter booted on it.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  http://www.canoncat.net/cat/Cat%20Forth%20Inside.txt http://www.canoncat.net/cat/Cat%20Forth%20Inside.txt
CuriousSkeptic 9y ago
Also checkout his book The Humane Interface ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Humane_Interface https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Humane_Interface ) he writes a little about this system there while describing the ideal interface in his mind.
digi_owl 9y ago
Reading about its embedded Forth makes me ponder how it would be to boot directly into Emacs.

77 points by straws 9y ago

If anyone can help figure out how to trigger the leap keys in the emulator, I'm all ears: https://archive.org/details/canoncat https://archive.org/details/canoncat - - - It's fascinating to compare a tool like this to the direction the Macintosh actually took — though Jef Raskin conceived the project in the early days of Apple, the graphical user interface took its design cues from the research at Xerox Parc instead. The Humane Interface is Raskin's book on the principles behind a product like this: focus on spatial context with a zooming UI, be forgiving with ubiquitous undo, provide one way of doing things, never trap the user in a mode. A lot of those ideas are embedded in the interfaces we have today, but they feel entirely orthogonal to the discoverability that a Parc-style GUI provides.

vitovito 9y ago
Left Alt and Right Alt are LEAP left and LEAP right. The MAME source explains the key combinations up top: https://github.com/mamedev/mame/blob/master/src/mame/drivers/cat.cpp https://github.com/mamedev/mame/blob/master/src/mame/drivers... I tested them in Chrome on a MacBook Pro and they seem to work, but your mileage based on browser/OS/keyboard may vary.
- straws 9y ago
  It works!!! Thank you for creating this resource. I'm on the hunt for research around this topic, especially on the various manifestations of Oberon.

jnaina 9y ago

I wrote to Jef in the late 90's to ask if he had one of the Cat's available for sale, to add to my MAC and Lisa collection. He quoted 10K for one, which I thought was too steep. Later learned that he had health problems and was looking to raise funds for his medical treatments. Another visionary from Apple who later succumbed to Cancer.

agumonkey 9y ago
His son is in design and ergonomics too IIRC. Sad was his death, but his product being forgotten was too.
mschaef 9y ago
Right around the time the Cat was discontinued, there was one on clearance at a store I frequented in Houston for something like $100. There isn't much computer equipment I didn't buy that I regret not buying, but this is at the top of the list.
vivreviva 9y ago
Pancreatic to be exact. He didn't actually know he was sick in the 90s. However, he was trying to send his children to college. Jef never saw any money from the Mac.

SwellJoe 9y ago

I love weird old computing dead ends like this. Pretty good ideas at the wrong time and place in history to allow them to take off. I mean, no mouse in 1987? Task-focused rather than general purpose? I remember reading about them when they were new; Amiga was my obsession by then (though I couldn't afford one for another couple years), but I devoured all the computing media I could get my hands on. They seemed like a toy, to me, and a very expensive one, to boot. It's cool to imagine what the world would have looked like had we gone down different paths. If this had come a year or two earlier, been a few hundred dollars cheaper, maybe we'd be using a very different sort of computer today. But, probably not. The GUI/mouse interface has been an unbeatable monster for decades now. The windowing GUI may have just been delayed by a year or two. Nerds (myself included) kinda pine for the pre-mouse days now and then, but even so, I don't know a lot of people who use an exclusively text-based UI. I like a tiled window manager and a text editor that's most controllable via keyboard, but I also like having a mouse.

tyingq 9y ago
I didn't use this one, but the somewhat similar Wang dedicated word processors were pretty nice to work with, and pretty successful until PCs and (mostly) Wordstar wiped them out. Wordstar, no mouse needed, thrived for quite a while as well.
- Joeri 9y ago
  George R.R. Martin still uses wordstar to write his books.
  - nullc 9y ago
    I'm sure at least a few people here use joe -- with its wordstar like control commands-- as their editor of choice today.
    - digi_owl 9y ago
      Dug joe back up recently after not having touched it in ages. And the first thing that caught me off guard is that unlike most exit prompts, answering Y throws changes away...

Stratoscope 9y ago

I hope I'm not out of line posting this here, but if any collectors near the SF Peninsula are looking for a Cat, I have one that could use a better home. It's in good working condition with manuals and floppy disks and the daisywheel printer. My email is in my profile if interested.

RachelF 9y ago
You should contact the Computer History Museum in Palo Alto, they might want it, and then everyone can see it. http://www.computerhistory.org/ http://www.computerhistory.org/
- Top19 9y ago
  I've been there twice and never seen anything like the Cat there. Also if it works and turns on, you can also try the "Living Computer Museum" in Seattle, sponsored by Paul Allen. I don't know their policy, maybe they will even buy it if it works.
  - vivreviva 9y ago
    Have you been to digibarn? It is really fantastic. It is run by Bruce Damer
vivreviva 9y ago
Check in with Bruce Damer at digibarn he has a huge collection. CHM doesn't show anything related to or even mentions Jef. One of his daughters was on their teachers advisory committee. They are good people but don't really put in a lot of the controversial.

RodgerTheGreat 9y ago

For those whose interest was piqued by the mention of Forth, it appears the PDF link to the tForth documentation on this page is wrong; the correct link is here: http://www.canoncat.net/cat/Cat%20tForth%20Documentation.pdf http://www.canoncat.net/cat/Cat%20tForth%20Documentation.pdf

vitovito 9y ago
That link should be fixed now. Thanks.

burntrelish1273 9y ago

ZOMG, I've been looking for what was the name of this device for some time. We had these in a typing class in middle school, c. 1991. There was a way to get a Forth interpreter booted on it.

digi_owl 9y ago
http://www.canoncat.net/cat/Cat%20Forth%20Inside.txt http://www.canoncat.net/cat/Cat%20Forth%20Inside.txt

CuriousSkeptic 9y ago

Also checkout his book The Humane Interface ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Humane_Interface https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Humane_Interface ) he writes a little about this system there while describing the ideal interface in his mind.

digi_owl 9y ago

Reading about its embedded Forth makes me ponder how it would be to boot directly into Emacs.