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 with Apple Computer for fourteen years, then with Sun ...

and first implemented in the Apple IIc. 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 Computer. The ''e'' in the name stands for ''enhanced'', referring to the fact that several popular features were now built-in ...

forming part of the Enhanced IIe upgrade. A slightly revised version was then released with the

Apple IIGS The Apple IIGS (styled as II), the fifth and most powerful of the Apple II family, is a 16-bit personal computer produced by Apple Computer. While featuring the Macintosh look and feel, and resolution and color similar to the Amiga and Atari ST ...

. 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. Box-drawing characters typically only work well with monospaced fonts. In ...

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 The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...

. 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) characters defined by the ASCII Standard from 1963 and ASCII compliant chara ...

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. ''Call-A.P.P.L.E.'' is the monthly journal publication of the Apple Pugetsound Program Library Exchange (or ''A.P.P.L.E.'') The magazine was published from 1978 until 1990 when it was discontinued; after a 12-year lapse publication was restarte ...

'' 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 0x18,0E (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 Applesoft BASIC is a dialect of Microsoft BASIC, developed by Marc McDonald and Ric Weiland, supplied with the Apple II series of computers. It supersedes Integer BASIC and is the BASIC in ROM in all Apple II series computers after the original ...

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 Aqu ...

block. � Not proposed for Unicode

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

Running Man

Accessing MouseText characters

Inclusion in Unicode

See also

References