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Incremental search was a great idea, but it's like Jef bet the farm on that one idea. I find it incredible that it used to take getting a machine manufactured e

Incremental search was a great idea, but it's like Jef bet the farm on that one idea. I find it incredible that it used to take getting a machine manufactured en masse to push out a UI idea like this. Now we can emulate any idea you want to try in a web browser, emulator, etc. It's surprising we don't have a flood of new OS ideas, but at least now we can run things like this in emulation.

jll29 5y ago
One hope is that thanks to retro computing at least a lot of the older ideas don't get lost. It's indeed surprising that there are not more new ideas around. Recent noise is only about bigger, faster and cheaper.
- TuringTest 5y ago
  > It's indeed surprising that there are not more new ideas around. There are lots of new ideas... if you know where to look ;-) The problem is that, being new, they are neither widely distributed nor as well refined as the old ones. Keep an eye on 'modern note taking' productivity tools in the orbit of 'second brain' or 'networked thought'; they are upgrading many of the principles of the Canon Cat to the current networked environment, and follow through on the spirit of the classic "augmenting the human intelect" dream. I believe they have the potential to replace the outdated desktop metaphor, and offer a digitally native metaphor for information processing and productiviy.
  - ByThyGrace 5y ago
    No links, sources, places to start looking?
    - TuringTest 5y ago
      It's better to do an internet search for those terms, and look at what catches your eye according to your interests. There are many players pushing for their own understanding on how to reach that goal, and I would not promote any one over the others (especially as they all seem to be a bit unripe right now). Look for modern notetaking apps (Notion, Obsidian, logseq, Airtable, Roam Research... and "alternatives to" any of those) to see what style of knowledge management I'm talking about (there are two main varieties - the "outliner" and the "user-friendly relational database", with a lot of overlap between them).
throwaway81523 5y ago
Incremental search as I'm used to the term certainly existed long before and still exists now: did the Cat do something different? Were the Cat and the Epson HX20 both programmed in Forth? I may be getting the two of them confused. I remember hearing that one or both ended up buggy because the software effort bogged down.
- TuringTest 5y ago
  > Incremental search as I'm used to the term certainly existed long before and still exists now: did the Cat do something different? Yes, it did. It included two functions that significantly change the system's user-friendliness: - Search and navigation was done through quasi-mode interactions, instead as with point-and-click. This gave end-users the powerful keyboard-only navigation capabilities of vi, without all the cognitive load of its navigation&commands mode. - All content in the system was organized as a single infinite stream of text. There were special characters for sections and files, so you could always navigate to the previous/next section or file by leaping to that character. And you could open a section or file by typing the character plus the file name. Several of these conventions have been since adopted by browsers' "smart address bars", allowing users to navigate the web through a limited version of this keyboard-first style. But there is no desktop environment that fully takes advantage of these principles for a general audience. Typically, only some power users benefit from a similar workflow in controlled environments like Emacs, without all the simplicity and gentle learning curve of the Canon Cat.
  - throwaway81523 5y ago
    > powerful keyboard-only navigation capabilities of vi, without all the cognitive load of its navigation&commands mode. Do you mean something like emacs and other modeless editors? Emacs particularly, had incremental search in the 1970s.
    - TuringTest 5y ago
      > Do you mean something like emacs and other modeless editors? Emacs particularly, had incremental search in the 1970s. Yeah, and I suspect it may have influenced Raskin in designing the Canon Cat. But good luck with quasimodes and spacial navigation among files in Emacs. The refined interactions provide an extra value in terms of approachability that Emacs is notorious for lacking. The Canon Cat was easy to learn even for advanced use, something that you'll never hear about Emacs.
mschaef 5y ago
> Incremental search was a great idea, but it's like Jef bet the farm on that one idea. Incremental search was a headline feature, but it was far from the only novel idea. Among others, Raskin also removed the notion of files with separate lifecycles on disk and in memory. Rather than presenting files, the Canon Cat worked by offering workspaces that were persistently stored on a floppy disk. Take a workspace disk to a Cat and the entire workspace state is available to you without worrying about loading specific files, etc. He also took a minimalist approach to the application suite. Rather than switching between multiple fixed function apps, he extended the core word processor app with calculator, terminal, and programming capabilities. In an era where mass-market PC's only really ran a single fixed function app at a time, this was a huge step forward. > I find it incredible that it used to take getting a machine manufactured en masse to push out a UI idea like this. In one sense, it didn't. There was also the SwyftCard, which brought similar concepts to an Apple ][ expansion card. You view that in the context of a mid-80's ecosystem that also had the likes of TopView, Windows, GEOS and the like, and there was a great deal of contemporary prior art to the notion that it did not take a new machine to introduce a new UI concept. Having said that, there is a sense in which it did take hardware to introduce a new UI concept. Maybe the best semi-current parallel is the original Apple iPhone. Running iOS on a contemporary Windows CE mobile phone would not have produced the same level of experience - there were aspects of the Apple hardware design that were very important to the overall experience. So it was with the Cat also. The notion of a machine that booted off a single disk into a complete workspace state is one example, but so is the keyboard. (Which included not only the specific Leap keys, but also front labels on the keys for specific functions and a "Use Front" key that selected those operations. > Now we can emulate any idea you want to try in a web browser, emulator, etc.... As long as it fits into the hardware you have available. Just as a counterpoint, I can emulate Castelvania Symphony of the Night on my iPhone, but it's a comparatively terrible experience to play using a flat touch screen instead of a normal controller. The software is there, but the experience is not.

jll29 5y ago

One hope is that thanks to retro computing at least a lot of the older ideas don't get lost. It's indeed surprising that there are not more new ideas around. Recent noise is only about bigger, faster and cheaper.

TuringTest 5y ago
> It's indeed surprising that there are not more new ideas around. There are lots of new ideas... if you know where to look ;-) The problem is that, being new, they are neither widely distributed nor as well refined as the old ones. Keep an eye on 'modern note taking' productivity tools in the orbit of 'second brain' or 'networked thought'; they are upgrading many of the principles of the Canon Cat to the current networked environment, and follow through on the spirit of the classic "augmenting the human intelect" dream. I believe they have the potential to replace the outdated desktop metaphor, and offer a digitally native metaphor for information processing and productiviy.
- ByThyGrace 5y ago
  No links, sources, places to start looking?
  - TuringTest 5y ago
    It's better to do an internet search for those terms, and look at what catches your eye according to your interests. There are many players pushing for their own understanding on how to reach that goal, and I would not promote any one over the others (especially as they all seem to be a bit unripe right now). Look for modern notetaking apps (Notion, Obsidian, logseq, Airtable, Roam Research... and "alternatives to" any of those) to see what style of knowledge management I'm talking about (there are two main varieties - the "outliner" and the "user-friendly relational database", with a lot of overlap between them).

throwaway81523 5y ago

Incremental search as I'm used to the term certainly existed long before and still exists now: did the Cat do something different? Were the Cat and the Epson HX20 both programmed in Forth? I may be getting the two of them confused. I remember hearing that one or both ended up buggy because the software effort bogged down.

TuringTest 5y ago
> Incremental search as I'm used to the term certainly existed long before and still exists now: did the Cat do something different? Yes, it did. It included two functions that significantly change the system's user-friendliness: - Search and navigation was done through quasi-mode interactions, instead as with point-and-click. This gave end-users the powerful keyboard-only navigation capabilities of vi, without all the cognitive load of its navigation&commands mode. - All content in the system was organized as a single infinite stream of text. There were special characters for sections and files, so you could always navigate to the previous/next section or file by leaping to that character. And you could open a section or file by typing the character plus the file name. Several of these conventions have been since adopted by browsers' "smart address bars", allowing users to navigate the web through a limited version of this keyboard-first style. But there is no desktop environment that fully takes advantage of these principles for a general audience. Typically, only some power users benefit from a similar workflow in controlled environments like Emacs, without all the simplicity and gentle learning curve of the Canon Cat.
- throwaway81523 5y ago
  > powerful keyboard-only navigation capabilities of vi, without all the cognitive load of its navigation&commands mode. Do you mean something like emacs and other modeless editors? Emacs particularly, had incremental search in the 1970s.
  - TuringTest 5y ago
    > Do you mean something like emacs and other modeless editors? Emacs particularly, had incremental search in the 1970s. Yeah, and I suspect it may have influenced Raskin in designing the Canon Cat. But good luck with quasimodes and spacial navigation among files in Emacs. The refined interactions provide an extra value in terms of approachability that Emacs is notorious for lacking. The Canon Cat was easy to learn even for advanced use, something that you'll never hear about Emacs.

mschaef 5y ago

> Incremental search was a great idea, but it's like Jef bet the farm on that one idea. Incremental search was a headline feature, but it was far from the only novel idea. Among others, Raskin also removed the notion of files with separate lifecycles on disk and in memory. Rather than presenting files, the Canon Cat worked by offering workspaces that were persistently stored on a floppy disk. Take a workspace disk to a Cat and the entire workspace state is available to you without worrying about loading specific files, etc. He also took a minimalist approach to the application suite. Rather than switching between multiple fixed function apps, he extended the core word processor app with calculator, terminal, and programming capabilities. In an era where mass-market PC's only really ran a single fixed function app at a time, this was a huge step forward. > I find it incredible that it used to take getting a machine manufactured en masse to push out a UI idea like this. In one sense, it didn't. There was also the SwyftCard, which brought similar concepts to an Apple ][ expansion card. You view that in the context of a mid-80's ecosystem that also had the likes of TopView, Windows, GEOS and the like, and there was a great deal of contemporary prior art to the notion that it did not take a new machine to introduce a new UI concept. Having said that, there is a sense in which it did take hardware to introduce a new UI concept. Maybe the best semi-current parallel is the original Apple iPhone. Running iOS on a contemporary Windows CE mobile phone would not have produced the same level of experience - there were aspects of the Apple hardware design that were very important to the overall experience. So it was with the Cat also. The notion of a machine that booted off a single disk into a complete workspace state is one example, but so is the keyboard. (Which included not only the specific Leap keys, but also front labels on the keys for specific functions and a "Use Front" key that selected those operations. > Now we can emulate any idea you want to try in a web browser, emulator, etc.... As long as it fits into the hardware you have available. Just as a counterpoint, I can emulate Castelvania Symphony of the Night on my iPhone, but it's a comparatively terrible experience to play using a flat touch screen instead of a normal controller. The software is there, but the experience is not.