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Recreating the Canon Cat document interface - Little Lab

lab.alexanderobenauer.com · 3,436 words · saved by 2 readers

My work is supported by members. If you find my work valuable and have the means, consider supporting it with a membership or sponsorship! This members-only article has been made publicly available. You can see more of my work at alexanderobenauer.com. The last chapter of Bootstrapping Computing is all about user environments. One of the more unique user environments mentioned is found on the Canon Cat, an obscure machine that didn’t last long on the market, but took some specific philosophies to an extreme, presenting fascinating implications for how users might interact with their personal computers. The Cat’s user environment was one long text stream. There are some caveats to this next statement, but basically: that’s it! There was no mouse, only a keyboard. In fact, the Cat did away with WIMP entirely — there were no windows, no icons, no menus, and no pointer. There was no file hierarchy and no need to name things. None of your text was automatically timestamped. It was just you,

Recreating the Canon Cat document interface March 26, 2025 My work is supported by members. If you find my work valuable and have the means, consider supporting it with a membership or sponsorship! This members-only article has been made publicly available. You can see more of my work at alexanderobenauer.com . The last chapter of Bootstrapping Computing is all about user environments. One of the more unique user environments mentioned is found on the Canon Cat, an obscure machine that didn’t last long on the market, but took some specific philosophies to an extreme, presenting fascinati

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