3 ms·

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 H

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.
guenthert 5y ago
The Epson HX-20 came with BASIC and afaik, hardware and software were fairly successful. Nothing stopped you from writing a FORTH interpreter/compiler for it though (and I'm sure, I haven't been the only one who did).
- throwaway81523 5y ago
  Aha, I checked, I was thinking of the Epson QX-10, which had something called Valdocs, that was originally written in Forth. Valdocs hit some roadblocks that Forthers still debate about, and was (per Wikipedia) later rewritten in C.

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.

guenthert 5y ago

The Epson HX-20 came with BASIC and afaik, hardware and software were fairly successful. Nothing stopped you from writing a FORTH interpreter/compiler for it though (and I'm sure, I haven't been the only one who did).

throwaway81523 5y ago
Aha, I checked, I was thinking of the Epson QX-10, which had something called Valdocs, that was originally written in Forth. Valdocs hit some roadblocks that Forthers still debate about, and was (per Wikipedia) later rewritten in C.