MouseText is a set of 32 graphical characters designed by
Bruce Tognazzini
Bruce "Tog" Tognazzini (born 1945) is an American usability consultant and designer. He is a partner in the Nielsen Norman Group, which specializes in human-computer interaction. He was an early employee of Apple Computer, staying with the comp ...
and first implemented in the
Apple IIc
The Apple IIc is a personal computer introduced by Apple Inc. shortly after the launch of the Macintosh 128K, original Macintosh in 1984. It is essentially a compact and portable version of the Apple IIe. The IIc has a built-in floppy disk driv ...
. They were then retrofitted to the
Apple IIe
The Apple IIe (styled as Apple //e) is the third model in the Apple II series of personal computers produced by Apple Inc., Apple Computer. It was released in January 1983 as the successor to the Apple II Plus. The ''e'' in the name stands for ...
forming part of the Enhanced IIe upgrade. A slightly revised version was then released with the
Apple IIGS
The Apple IIGS (styled as II) is a 16-bit personal computer produced by Apple Inc., Apple Computer beginning in September 1986. It is the fifth and most powerful model of the Apple II family. The "GS" in the name stands for "Graphics and Sound" ...
.
By including
box-drawing character
Box-drawing characters, also known as line-drawing characters, are a form of semigraphics widely used in text user interfaces to draw various geometric frames and boxes. These characters are characterized by being designed to be connected horiz ...
s, MouseText made it possible to display simple
text user interface
In computing, text-based user interfaces (TUI) (alternately terminal user interfaces, to reflect a dependence upon the properties of computer terminals and not just text), is a retronym describing a type of user interface (UI) common as an ear ...
s resembling the Macintosh
graphical user interface
A graphical user interface, or GUI, is a form of user interface that allows user (computing), users to human–computer interaction, interact with electronic devices through Graphics, graphical icon (computing), icons and visual indicators such ...
. Since the Apples lacked the ability to display user-defined characters in text mode, all GUI-like displays beyond crude
ASCII art
ASCII art is a graphic design technique that uses computers for presentation and consists of pictures pieced together from the 95 printable (from a total of 128) character (computing), characters defined by the ASCII Standard from 1963 and ASCI ...
approximations had to use the slower and more memory-hungry graphical mode before MouseText was available. MouseText resulted in an eightfold increase in display speed for mouse applications, bringing such text-based applications as word processors up to the same speed as the original Macintosh. Word processors running on the two computers would not be confused with one another, however, as the mouse under MouseText would move in discrete jumps from character cell to character cell, rather than the smooth movement of the Macintosh, and text was still monospaced.
Running Man
The original version of MouseText in the Apple IIc included a depiction of a figure running, perhaps to portray the action of
running a program. This icon was later found to be unnecessary, and Tognazzini sent a letter to ''
Call-A.P.P.L.E.'' magazine warning developers not to use them, as they would be replaced.
The MouseText characters replaced a redundant set of inverse uppercase characters (@,A..Z,
\,^,_) in the Alternate character set.
Image:mousetext-original.png, Original MouseText with Running Man
Image:mousetext-revised.png, Revised MouseText found in Apple IIGS
Accessing MouseText characters
There are two main ways to put MouseText characters on the screen.
* Enable the alternate character set by writing to location 0xC00F (49167). Then write values in the 0x40 (64) through 0x5F (95) range to the screen.
* Enable the 80-column firmware (which also enables the alternate character set), and use the control character sequence 0x0F, 0x1B (15, 27) to turn inverse and MouseText printing on, followed by characters in the @,A..Z,
\,^,_ set, followed by the sequence 0x18, 0x0E (24, 14) to turn MouseText and inverse printing off. (Other methods of turning inverse printing on and off may also be used.)
For example, in
Applesoft BASIC the following code fragment will display the MouseText representation of a
folder:
]PR#3
]INVERSE : PRINT CHR$(27);"XY";CHR$(24); : NORMAL
Inclusion in Unicode
Version 13.0 of the
Unicode, Unicode Standard, released March 2020, includes all of the MouseText characters except the two Apple logos, mostly in the
Symbols for Legacy Computing
Symbols for Legacy Computing is a Unicode block containing graphic characters that were used for various home computers from the 1970s and 1980s and in teletext broadcasting standards. It includes characters from the Amstrad CPC, MSX, Mattel Aqua ...
block.
See also
*
Apple II character set
*
Marlett, a TrueType font used in
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...
for rendering scalable UI elements
References
{{Reflist
* Apple Technote Mouse #6
* Apple IIc Technical Reference Manual
* Apple IIGS Hardware Reference Manual
Apple II History Chap 8
Apple II family
Character sets