 | This article contains content that is written like an advertisement .(October 2019) |
ND-NOTIS was a office automation suite by Norsk Data introduced in the early 80s, running on the SINTRAN III platform on both ND-100 and ND-500 architectures. It was also available on Microsoft Windows running in networks of Norsk Data servers. [1] [2]
ND-NOTIS was successful, and was the main product line of the company for quite a while, cementing its position in the Norwegian government office automation market. It was also widespread in Germany and in the UK (local municipality, DHSS etc.)
The NOTIS family of products was presented to the British Computer Society by Jeremy Salter. Roger Tagg et al. (BCS, End User SG, 1985) and was received with praise as the BCS model for user interface. The same praise was awarded to NOTIS-IR as a model for information storage and retrieval. The European Commission published in 1985 NOTIS-IR as reference model for document and information search and retrieval.
ND-NOTIS was unique for its time and had innovative features like multilingual input and search.
Norsk Data also sold custom-made Tandberg Data TDV-2200 terminals as "NOTIS terminals" with special keys for text editing. Other terminals were "endorsed", provided new keycaps and branded as "NOTIS Terminals" - including the Facit "Twist" - that would show a page standing.
Components included:
NOTIS was unique then. It captured the notion of different user interfaces, or terminals; and managed a common user interface for all applications that used the platform. So a key on the keyboard would in all applications "mean" the same.
It relied on an interface system "User Environment" to hold in one place all user profile and preferences. That is everything from log-in name and password, language preference, application skills and user rights to see, edit and change document - or data in applications. It came as a full "Document management" package, with full support for workflow - which was used by 3rd party application software.
Another first was multi-lingual support, - also part of the user interface. Regardless of where you logged on, the system would know of your preferences, and allow you to resume last task. The system also supported full editing from right to left. All deliveries to the Norwegian public sector required capability to use three language, and that in the same office, all three languages would be used, even in the same document. So to sell in its main market, it need multilingual support. That included all messages, error messages and user interaction. The error messages could also be adapter from "novice" to "expert".
Another feature was the full support for SGML - or "S-code". This allow the text editor to be used to edit and view the first HTML documents created - on hardware running NOTIS. The alternate character set - "T-code" was the CCITT, now ITU T.56 standard character set - used in all television sets to show teletext/"Text TV". So, the systems had full support for semi-graphical input and display, but just a few terminals supported this. Beware that an important customer was CERN, where they at the end of the 1980s worked on what you are now using - the WWW. ND-NOTIS had full support for HTML at that time.
The main selling point was the - WYSIWYG - What you see is what you get. In 1983, most text editors used "codes" that had to be inserted in the text, like "^p" meaning "paragraph. Even in the early days of text editors on Windows, most text systems were like that.[ citation needed ] However, NOTIS-WP, would show where the line ended and a new page started for a long time. The Standard Generalized Markup Language was developed as an international standard, and version 2 of this is the "Extended SGML" or XML that is approved by ODMA.
The "back-end" to all these modules were also flexible. You had direct file system exposure - that included network mounted files. However, with NOTIS-DS it included "Document Storage" and management - a full Electronic Document Management System (as found in systems such as Documentum and OpenText's Livelink today). The EDMS was based on a generic software interface, but only SIBAS was used commercially. This allowed fully localisation transparent document storage and retrieval. That of course demanded NOTIS-IR to search in all the documents. Software today used to power both Google and Altavista.
NOTIS-ID was an alternative NOTIS-DS, with restricted functionality, in that this would interface to mail exchanges only. So if you stored a document to an email-recipient, you sent an email. Likewise, if you received an email, this would appear in your mail-count, and you could read it in NOTIS-WP like any other document.
Norsk Data needed NOTIS to avoid duplicating applications. So the software was used in professional text production systems, for newspaper and magazine production - by "NORTEXT". It was reviewed a number of times here and found to be "best of breed" by e.g. the Seybold Report on newspaper systems. Hence demanding users were close to the developers - which may explain the success.
The list here will become endless since NOTIS was linked to three application generators - beside the Query part. All of these were fully capable of making large applications system, that could also update databases. The most successful link was to "Unique" - an application package developed outside Norsk Data to support SIBAS but later was enhanced to interface to a number of RDBMS. Unique was successful in the UK, implementing systems for the DHSS and local municipalities. The other platforms were "BIM" (Business Information Systems) and "ABM" (Application Building and Maintenance). A full interface was made to "Systemator" to provide full support to newspaper systems generated by this. Norsk Data marketed and sold the system as integrated with their offerings for the medical sector ("Infomedica") and hospital systems;- for local community in Scandinavia and the UK based on Unique(i.e.DIALOGUE-1); - for engineering documentation in Europe: CAD/CAM as Technovision and even to the F-16 Flight Simulator.
NOTIS-QL - also marketed by Norsk Data as "Access-1", is still commercially available as "QBEvision". It has also been licensed under several names with full product sold by CA.
The NOTIS family was fully ported to Microsoft Windows, but was incredibly difficult to move with its huge customer base. For a time there were plans to include "Ami" into the family, to gain some market momentum - but its very difficult to move when your users do not want to make the change and are so happy with the way things are.
The NOTIS family was ported to Norsk Data NDIX Unix line, but here suffered because Unix had problems with coping with the key sequences required (terminfo/termcap was incomplete compared to the proprietary "VTM".). This is still used in telecommunication, all SMS messages use this character set.
The NOTIS way of sorting was included in the first version of Sybase, which was acquired by Microsoft as DS1. This taught Microsoft to arrange sort sequences in Windows according to national character sets ("codepage").
NOTIS-WP was the testbed for SGML and HTML. A very visible remnant of NOTIS-WP is the font size parameter in HTML: 1 for tiny and all the way up to 5 for huge.
There is still no other system available that will grant you "only one user interface and make all into one system". You have to fill in the expense report in Oracle HR and type the letter summarising the reason for the expense in some other text editor. With Notis, you clicked on field for providing the information, and WP would fire up, allowing you to write the letter - not as in Wikipedia where you have to supply own mark-up, but with the document template ready. The complete document would then be stored in the application database, with the expense report data. [1] [2]
A document type definition (DTD) is a specification file that contains set of markup declarations that define a document type for an SGML-family markup language. The DTD specification file can be used to validate documents.
A file viewer is a utility application software on operating systems, such as Linux, macOS, or Windows. The file viewer is responsible for user access of files located on a data storage device. File viewers allow the user to open and view content on a device, such as a Personal Computer (PC) or a mobile phone.
HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It defines the content and structure of web content. It is often assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScript.
A markuplanguage is a text-encoding system which specifies the structure and formatting of a document and potentially the relationship between its parts. Markup can control the display of a document or enrich its content to facilitate automated processing.
The Standard Generalized Markup Language is a standard for defining generalized markup languages for documents. ISO 8879 Annex A.1 states that generalized markup is "based on two postulates":
WordPerfect (WP) is a word processing application, now owned by Alludo, with a long history on multiple personal computer platforms. At the height of its popularity in the 1980s and early 1990s, it was the market leader of word processors, displacing the prior market leader WordStar.
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. The World Wide Web Consortium's XML 1.0 Specification of 1998 and several other related specifications—all of them free open standards—define XML.
HCL Notes is a proprietary collaborative software platform for Unix, Windows, Linux and macOS, sold by HCLTech. The client application is called Notes while the server component is branded HCL Domino.
A content management system (CMS) is computer software used to manage the creation and modification of digital content . A CMS is typically used for enterprise content management (ECM) and web content management (WCM).
Norsk Data was a minicomputer manufacturer located in Oslo, Norway. Existing from 1967 to 1998, it had its most active period from the early 1970s to the late 1980s. At the company's peak in 1987, it was the second largest company in Norway and employed over 4,500 people.
A query language, also known as data query language or database query language (DQL), is a computer language used to make queries in databases and information systems. In database systems, query languages rely on strict theory to retrieve information. A well known example is the Structured Query Language (SQL).
In computing, text-based user interfaces (TUI), is a retronym describing a type of user interface (UI) common as an early form of human–computer interaction, before the advent of bitmapped displays and modern conventional graphical user interfaces (GUIs). Like modern GUIs, they can use the entire screen area and may accept mouse and other inputs. They may also use color and often structure the display using box-drawing characters such as ┌ and ╣. The modern context of use is usually a terminal emulator.
Web development is the work involved in developing a website for the Internet or an intranet. Web development can range from developing a simple single static page of plain text to complex web applications, electronic businesses, and social network services. A more comprehensive list of tasks to which Web development commonly refers, may include Web engineering, Web design, Web content development, client liaison, client-side/server-side scripting, Web server and network security configuration, and e-commerce development.
The following tables compare general and technical features of notable email client programs.
Isearch is open-source text retrieval software first developed in 1994 by Nassib Nassar as part of the Isite Z39.50 information framework. The project started at the Clearinghouse for Networked Information Discovery and Retrieval (CNIDR) of the North Carolina supercomputing center MCNC and funded by the National Science Foundation to follow in the track of WAIS and develop prototype systems for distributed information networks encompassing Internet applications, library catalogs and other information resources.
SoftQuad Software was a Canadian software company best known for HoTMetaL, the first commercial HTML editor. It is also known for Author/Editor, the first specialized SGML editor, and Panorama, the first browser plugin for SGML. Panorama demonstrated the need for standardization of SGML on the web, which eventually resulted in the development of the XML specification.
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. It further provides for the capture or input of information which may be returned to the presenting system, then stored or processed as necessary. The method of accessing a particular page or content is achieved by entering its address, known as a Uniform Resource Identifier or URI. This may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content. Hyperlinks present in resources enable users easily to navigate their browsers to related resources. A web browser can also be defined as an application software or program designed to enable users to access, retrieve and view documents and other resources on the Internet.
Nota Bene is an integrated software suite of applications, including word processing, reference management, and document text analysis software that is focused on writers and scholars in the Humanities, Social Sciences, and the Arts. The integrated suite is referred to as the Nota Bene Workstation. It runs on Microsoft Windows and Macintosh.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the Perl programming language: