From: Bruce E. Durocher II (bedii_at_qwest.net)
Date: Tue Mar 01 2005 - 17:49:04 PST
O.K. For this to make sense you have to get a paragraph of the theory
behind the Cat. To oversimplify outrageously, Raskin's idea (which he
wanted to implement in the Mac and which may have been the reason he
left the group after Jobs came in) was that there'd be no such thing as
a visible operating system, or programs, or anything like that--you'd
just the Cat's work page. You could enter code and it'd execute, any
data could interact with any other data in the system, and many other
details I don't remember without sitting down at the Cat's keyboard.
Because of this, a standard search function wasn't really practical.
What Raskin did was add the "Leap" keys. If you held down the left
"Leap" key and typed "T" the cursor would jump forward to the first
entry that began with that letter. If you held down the "Leap" key and
kept typing so you'd done a "TA" the cursor would leap to "Table." If
you typed "TAL" it would jump to Tall, "TALLE" would jump to the first
example of, say, Tallequah. The right "Leap" key jumped backwards in
the document. It's the simplest and fastest way of navigating around a
document that I've ever used or seen.
On Mar 1, 2005, at 7:53 AM, Clare Shepherd wrote:
> I realise the loss to the community of Jef Raskin. , and I know of his
> link
> to the Canon Cat, but for the uninitiated, what are the jump keys. I
> followed the link to the photo and saw the two keys marked "Leap". What
> function did they have. Sorry to be so dumb.
> Clare
Bruce E. Durocher II
bedii_at_qwest.net
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