Ha ha ha, suckers! I still have my Canon Cat from '87 and use it most days. I don't have to use emulation!
Seriously though... I did a contract for Jef in the early 80s and he showed me the Swyft card. Was happy to buy one of these things when it hit the shelf (though figuring out where to buy it from was kind of difficult.)
The keyboard doesn't have as good a feel as you might expect, so emulation will let you use a decent, modern keyboard. I still have a large box of floppies so that's not an issue. In the 90s I hacked together some FORTH code to read / write documents over the serial port, but it's a bit fragile.
Anyway... It's worth checking out. The only thing I would change would be up and down arrow keys. I think Jef had a philosophical problem with this which is why it never shipped with them. It's usable without them, it just seems a bit weird.
Surprised the article didn't mention the book "The Humane Interface" which was the book Jef wrote with the philosophical underpinnings of Swyft and IA/Canon Cat. Worth a read. Might be up on the Internet Archive.
My take on his book is it contains many tools one can use to reason about UX issues effectively. Parts of the book are dated, but that does not seem to take away from otherwise solid user interface discussion.
Honestly, I'm looking forward to hearing your experience with the Canon Cat, and does it match what's said in this article? It's very difficult to find specific operation videos of the Canon Cat, and they are also quite hard to understand.
Without knowing about Jef Raskin's ideas, I implemented something really similar to one of them in one of my Mac apps, Superkey. This idea in the Canon Cat was that you hold down a key and type text that you want to select anywhere in a document, then let go to select it - typically faster than reaching for a mouse or hitting arrow keys. In the Canon Cat it was an additional key (the leap key), below the space bar.
For the implementation in Superkey, you can select a key to use for this, like caps lock. The way I use it is I hold the caps lock key and type text, then the app uses OCR and optionally the macOS Accessibility API to search for matching text. Releasing the key or hitting enter will click (or double or triple click, etc) on a match.
Raskin's idea was of course more text-editing focused, and tapping on the leap keys will also move the cursor. I typically use Superkey to navigate UIs quickly, kind of as though UIs all have keyboard shortcut navigation. There are also limitations that Superkey faces, like not having access to offscreen parts of a document.
Hmm, I think I'd want that to be a toggle, not a hold; it seems like it would be difficult to type a longer search keyword/phrase while holding down a key.
I made a PCB for a keyboard and built it with forward and backward leap keys, “use front” keys etc, copying the Canon Cat. Now I “just” have to write the actual text editing software/OS for whichever microcontroller I end up using, and a case to hold it all together.
Oh yeah I’m subscribed to that channel and have been following along. That has some characteristics I’m interested in, but using my own hardware lets me make different decisions, like adding the leap keys I mentioned, and use full sized keys.
Good to know, that's what I was expecting. I'll have to give the Cat a spin! Also, thanks for this article and the Jef Raskin one - I thoroughly enjoyed them and their depth. I was in the middle of reading the book version of folklore.org (Revolution in the Valley) and these were a pleasant surprise.
In Superkey, all of the matches are highlighted yellow, and the selected one is highlighted green with a line to it from the text field. You can keep typing to narrow down the match, or you can navigate matches using the arrow keys (and optionally, cycle through them with the semicolon key, which is what I use). There's a screenshot at https://superkey.app.
For the Canon Cat, I'm actually not sure as I've only watched videos of this functionality there.
At the moment the Accessibility API results are limited to the frontmost window; it's on my todo list to expand this to additional windows and displays. Also, the green line will only be drawn on results on the main display - another item I plan on fixing.
Ha ha ha, suckers! I still have my Canon Cat from '87 and use it most days. I don't have to use emulation!
Seriously though... I did a contract for Jef in the early 80s and he showed me the Swyft card. Was happy to buy one of these things when it hit the shelf (though figuring out where to buy it from was kind of difficult.)
The keyboard doesn't have as good a feel as you might expect, so emulation will let you use a decent, modern keyboard. I still have a large box of floppies so that's not an issue. In the 90s I hacked together some FORTH code to read / write documents over the serial port, but it's a bit fragile.
Anyway... It's worth checking out. The only thing I would change would be up and down arrow keys. I think Jef had a philosophical problem with this which is why it never shipped with them. It's usable without them, it just seems a bit weird.
Surprised the article didn't mention the book "The Humane Interface" which was the book Jef wrote with the philosophical underpinnings of Swyft and IA/Canon Cat. Worth a read. Might be up on the Internet Archive.
Ars published an earlier long article about Raskin’s work which does discuss the book too:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/09/jef-raskins-cul-de-s...
My take on his book is it contains many tools one can use to reason about UX issues effectively. Parts of the book are dated, but that does not seem to take away from otherwise solid user interface discussion.
Honestly, I'm looking forward to hearing your experience with the Canon Cat, and does it match what's said in this article? It's very difficult to find specific operation videos of the Canon Cat, and they are also quite hard to understand.
Oh. Okay. I should do some videos.
Without knowing about Jef Raskin's ideas, I implemented something really similar to one of them in one of my Mac apps, Superkey. This idea in the Canon Cat was that you hold down a key and type text that you want to select anywhere in a document, then let go to select it - typically faster than reaching for a mouse or hitting arrow keys. In the Canon Cat it was an additional key (the leap key), below the space bar.
For the implementation in Superkey, you can select a key to use for this, like caps lock. The way I use it is I hold the caps lock key and type text, then the app uses OCR and optionally the macOS Accessibility API to search for matching text. Releasing the key or hitting enter will click (or double or triple click, etc) on a match.
Raskin's idea was of course more text-editing focused, and tapping on the leap keys will also move the cursor. I typically use Superkey to navigate UIs quickly, kind of as though UIs all have keyboard shortcut navigation. There are also limitations that Superkey faces, like not having access to offscreen parts of a document.
Hmm, I think I'd want that to be a toggle, not a hold; it seems like it would be difficult to type a longer search keyword/phrase while holding down a key.
You can also set a keyboard shortcut to activate it as a toggle.
Brilliant idea for power users. Are there any comparable apps for Linux or Windows?
Edit: Supposedly there isn't one for windows, wow. https://www.reddit.com/r/windowsapps/comments/1cfw3bw/iso_ap...
Not that I'm aware of, but I do have plans to at least bring some version of this to Windows at some point.
I made a PCB for a keyboard and built it with forward and backward leap keys, “use front” keys etc, copying the Canon Cat. Now I “just” have to write the actual text editing software/OS for whichever microcontroller I end up using, and a case to hold it all together.
Consider checking out this fellow's project. He's making an e-ink text editor: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5jL92TrQ803IKtdFwmUC...
Oh yeah I’m subscribed to that channel and have been following along. That has some characteristics I’m interested in, but using my own hardware lets me make different decisions, like adding the leap keys I mentioned, and use full sized keys.
> you can select a key to use for this
Might be a good use for a foot pedal I have lying around!
what happens if there are multiple matches in the document?
(author) Next one in sequence. You can leap forwards or backwards. On the Cat, there is also a LOCAL LEAP for within the current document only.
Good to know, that's what I was expecting. I'll have to give the Cat a spin! Also, thanks for this article and the Jef Raskin one - I thoroughly enjoyed them and their depth. I was in the middle of reading the book version of folklore.org (Revolution in the Valley) and these were a pleasant surprise.
Thanks for the kind word! They were fun to write.
In Superkey, all of the matches are highlighted yellow, and the selected one is highlighted green with a line to it from the text field. You can keep typing to narrow down the match, or you can navigate matches using the arrow keys (and optionally, cycle through them with the semicolon key, which is what I use). There's a screenshot at https://superkey.app.
For the Canon Cat, I'm actually not sure as I've only watched videos of this functionality there.
just downloaded Superkey and am trying it
how do I cycle using the arrow keys? currently using the arrow keys moves the cursor for the text in the search box
edit: tab seems to work. but sometimes Seek only works on one monitor (the one which has a window is selected), sometimes it finds results on both
Up and down arrow keys will cycle matches.
At the moment the Accessibility API results are limited to the frontmost window; it's on my todo list to expand this to additional windows and displays. Also, the green line will only be drawn on results on the main display - another item I plan on fixing.
A shame THE/Archy and RCHI aren't mentioned!
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