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The Canon Cat was an innovative, task-dedicated, desktop computer released in 1987. On the surface it was not unlike the dedicated word processors popular in the late 1970s to early 1980s, but it was far more powerful and incorporated many unique ideas for data manipulation. There is a current software project underway, initiated by Jef Raskin himself, to develop a similar yet even more capable system for today's computing systems. The project (called Archy) is designed to eventually replace current software interfaces. Apple IIc Generally, a microcomputer is a computer with a microprocessor (µP) as its CPU. Another general characteristic of these computers is that they occupy physically small amounts of space. ...
1987 is a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
A word processor (also more formally known as a document preparation system) is a computer application used for the production (including composition, editing, formatting, and possibly printing) of any sort of viewable or printed material. ...
Archy is a proposed radically new system for interacting with many kinds of computers. ...
The user interface is the part of a system exposed to users. ...
Description The Cat was primarily the brainchild of Jef Raskin, originator of the Macintosh project at Apple in 1979. It featured an innovative text user interface not making use of any mouse, icons, or graphics. All data was seen as a long "stream" of text broken into several pages. Instead of using a traditional command line interface or menu system, the Cat made use of its special keyboard, with commands being activated by holding down a "Use Front" key and pressing another key. The Cat also used special "Leap keys" and, by typing strings of characters, the user could navigate to the next occurrence of a particular character string. early computer Source: http://www. ...
early computer Source: http://www. ...
Jef Raskin outdoors, photographed by his son, Aza Jef Raskin (March 9, 1943–February 26, 2005) was an American human-computer interface expert best-known for starting the Macintosh project for Apple Computer in the late 1970s. ...
The box for Mac OS X v10. ...
Apple Computer, Inc. ...
1979 is a common year starting on Monday. ...
TUI (Text User Interface) is a retronym that was coined sometime after the invention of graphical user interfaces, to distinguish them from text based user interfaces. ...
Operating a mechanical 1: Pulling the mouse turns the ball. ...
Several desktop icons from the Windows operating system A computer icon is a small graphic, usually ranging from 16 pixels by 16 pixels up to 128 pixels by 128 pixels, which represents a file, folder, application or device on a computer operating system. ...
Computer graphics (CG) is the field of visual computing, where one utilizes computers both to generate visual images synthetically and to integrate or alter visual and spatial information sampled from the real world. ...
Rxvt is a VT102 terminal emulator A command line interface or CLI is a method of interacting with a computer by giving it lines of textual commands (that is, a sequence of characters) either from keyboard input or from a script. ...
A menu is a graphical user interface element which allows the user to select one among several, presumably related, choices. ...
A prototype OLED keyboard. ...
In computer programming and some branches of mathematics, strings are sequences of various simple objects. ...
The machine's hardware consisted of a 9-inch black-and-white monitor, a single 3½-inch 256 KB floppy disk drive and an IBM Selectric-compatible keyboard. It used a Motorola 68000 CPU (like the Macintosh) running at 5 MHz, had 256 KB of RAM, and an internal 300/1200 bit/s modem. Setup and user preference data was stored in 8 KB of non-volatile (battery backed-up) RAM. The Cat's array of I/O interfaces encompassed one Centronics parallel port, one RS-232C serial port (DB-25), and two RJ-11 telephone jacks for the modem loop. The total weight of the system was 17 lb (7.7 kg). Mid-19th century tool for converting between different standards of the inch An inch is an Imperial unit of length. ...
Nineteen inch (48 cm) CRT computer monitor A computer display, monitor or screen is a computer peripheral device capable of showing still or moving images generated by a computer and processed by a graphics card. ...
A kilobyte (derived from the SI prefix kilo-) is a unit of information or computer storage equal to either 1024 or 1000 bytes. ...
A floppy disk is a data storage device that is composed of a circular piece of thin, flexible (i. ...
The IBM Selectric typewriter (occasionally known as the IBM Golfball typewriter) is the electric typewriter design that brought the typewriter into the electronic age starting in 1961. ...
A prototype OLED keyboard. ...
The Motorola 68000 is a CISC microprocessor, the first member of a successful family of microprocessors from Motorola, which were all mostly software compatible. ...
This CPU uses numerous pins to connect to the motherboard. ...
A megahertz (MHz) is one million (106) hertz, a measure of frequency. ...
Different types of RAM. From top to bottom: DIP, SIPP, SIMM 30 pin, SIMM 72 pin, DIMM, RIMM RAM redirects here. ...
A modem (a portmanteau word constructed from modulator and demodulator) is a device that modulates an analog carrier signal (sound), to encode digital information, and that also demodulates such a carrier signal to decode the transmitted information. ...
This article is about the computer interface. ...
Centronics is: A manufacturer of dot matrix computer printers, formerly based in Hudson, New Hampshire and reselling printer mechanisms manufactured by Brother Industries, Ltd. ...
In computing, a parallel port is an interface from a computer system where data is transferred in or out in parallel, that is, on more than one wire. ...
RS-232 (also referred to as EIA RS-232C or V.24) is a standard for serial binary data interchange between a DTE (Data terminal equipment) and a DCE (Data communication equipment). ...
A male DE-9 serial port on the rear panel of a PC. In computing, a serial port is an interface on a computer system with which information is transferred in or out one bit at a time (contrast parallel port). ...
DB-25 is a RS-232 D-shell connector, with a total of 25 pins across two rows. ...
RJ-11 is a physical interface often used for terminating twisted pair type cables. ...
Officially the pound is the name for at least three different units of mass: The pound (avoirdupois). ...
The international prototype, made of platinum-iridium, which is kept at the BIPM under conditions specified by the 1st CGPM in 1889. ...
An extensive range of application software was built into 256 KB of ROM: standard office suite programs, communications, a 90,000 word spelling dictionary, and user programming toolchains for Forth and assembly language. Rom is also the name of a toy and comic book character Rom (Spaceknight). ...
In computers, an office applications suite, sometimes called an office suite, productivity suite, offimatic suite or integrated offimatic program, is a application software intended to be used by typical clerical and knowledge workers. ...
Forth is a reflective, procedural programming language and programming environment. ...
Assembly language or simply assembly is a human-readable notation for the machine language that a specific computer architecture uses. ...
History The Canon Cat was targeted at low-level clerical workers such as secretaries. After six months on the market and with 20,000 units sold, Canon discontinued the Cat. The Cat was released into a market of newer GUI-based computers like the Apple Macintosh that were finally becoming useful business computers, which were replacing dedicated word processing machines wholesale. The Cat, while considerably more capable than most machines, simply "looked outdated". It was mistaken for an old-style word processor rather than being seen as a precursor to a new way of handling information or as a very early form of Information appliance. An example of graphical user interface in Microsoft Windows XP An example of graphical user interface in Apples Mac OS X An example of one of the many X Windows graphical user interfaces available for Linux A graphical user interface (or GUI, pronounced gooey) is a method of interacting...
The box for Mac OS X v10. ...
Information appliance (IA) refers to any device that can process information, signals, graphics, animation, video and audio; and can exchange such information with another IA device. ...
Jef Raskin has offered an alternate theory to the demise of the Cat. He had originally been building a Cat-like machine at Apple as the Macintosh, until Steve Jobs took over the project and forced him out, turning it into a very different GUI-based machine. Jobs himself was soon forced from Apple, and started to build a new machine at NeXT. While starting this company he approached several Japanese companies for funding, including Canon. Raskin claimed that it was Jobs' influence and pooh-poohing of the machine that was the primary reason for its cancellation. Whether or not this is true, or simply the side-effect of personal animosity between the two, is not known. Steve Jobs gives a keynote address. ...
Look up Next in Wiktionary, the free dictionary Next can refer to: what comes after this one. ...
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