

Canon Cat - ido
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_Cat

======
michael_nielsen
A Jef Raskin followup project to the Canon Cat is Archy:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archy> Fascinating UI concept: largely search-
based, with everything persistent (no saving), infinite non-windowing work
area, and many other interesting features.

~~~
TFrancis
Everyone should read Jef Raskin's The Humane Interface. He expresses many of
his interface ideas used with the Canon Cat and Archy in the book. I now
consider thoughtful interface design a moral decision.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Humane_Interface>

~~~
ggchappell
From that article:

> Every action should be undoable, even after a document or application has
> been closed and reopened.

At first, this sounded ridiculous. Undo after a save? But then I realized I do
that now & then myself, using a version control system. So here I am editing a
DVCS-managed document. Pre-save undo is handled by the editor, while post-save
undo is handled by the DVCS (which is nice, but I usually have to look up how
to do it).

All this underscores what crappy interfaces we really have, and how we get
used to them, and so overlook their _serious_ flaws.

~~~
TFrancis
Jef doesn't think you should have to save. It should be automatic. I've been
thinking about a system that version controlled a file after every keystroke.
It would be a little heavy but, consider that you could undo anything forever.

------
vitovito
Raskin's book, The Humane Interface, is basically what kicked me over into UX
from development.

The Canon Cat is absolutely fascinating, and I got to study one for a research
project in college.

Archy never really got traction. Creating a text editor from scratch in Python
wasn't the way to go; starting with something like Gecko and contentEditable
would have gotten them somewhere -- anywhere -- faster.

Jef Raskin passed away shortly before my college research project, very sad,
but the project was to extrapolate from the proposals in The Humane Interface
and examine if they still applied today. The big issue is that Raskin, THE and
the Cat only explored text editing in any level of detail. You can imagine how
the ideas could apply to any sort of process on the PC, from system management
(Time Machine) to video editing (non-linear) to web browsing (Ubiquity), but
none of his published work discusses it (except for maybe his QuickDraw
thesis, which I read so long as as to have forgotten it in its entirety), so
you're entirely on your own to envision what it might have looked and worked
like.

He was also a big fan of zooming UIs which I am, to this day, not sold on (but
Oberon looked neat, I'll have to check it out).

Speaking of Ubiquity, Raskin's work lives on through his son, Aza, who
formerly ran Humanized (I still run Enso on my Windows PC), and now runs
Mozilla Labs.

Emulating a Canon Cat would be neat. Putting a real Canon Cat online would be
hard without the special keys. It wouldn't be inconceivable to put an Apple
IIe online, and plug in a SwyftCard: essentially a basic Canon Cat expansion
card for the Apple IIe. There have been some efforts to get a copy of
SwyftWare, the software version of this (I've even emailed Aza asking if he
had a copy) and try to get it running in an emulator, but no-one's had any
luck in the few years I've been watching people try (I own an Apple IIe with a
SwyftCard).

------
mrinterweb
Funny. I named my cat Conan, but I had no idea he was being named after a
computer as well as a talk show host and barbarian.

~~~
alecst
Canon =! Conan

------
moe
Flagged - no content.

~~~
ido
Are you implying the wikipedia article contains no content that might be
interesting to HN readers?

The CC is quite extraordinary in terms of its UI, and yet many people are
unfamiliar with it.

~~~
moe
I flagged it because the submission contains no content. It's just a link to a
random(?) wikipedia page. The page was last modified in November 2008. The
device was released in 1987.

You do know what the N in HN stands for?

Seriously, are we gonna submit half of wikipedia now? I'm sure the pages for
Newton, Apple II, Atari, Amiga and other vintage hardware are no less relevant
than this.

~~~
ido
> What to Submit[1]:

> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting.

If you think any of the pages you've mentioned are interesting and would spur
conversation than I think you should submit them.

If HN readers disagree they won't up vote it.

[1] <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

