Jef Raskin's Humane Interface Released

cold wolf writes "With a new site layout and information, the Raskin Center has also just released Archy (formally known at The Humane Interface). It is currently in Alpha phase and Windows only, as an executable."

Comments

Archy: An Introduction

[smittyoneeach]

Imagine a system where you can send email, write a book, make calculations, manipulate pictures, navigate the Web -- do whatever you want to do anytime at all, without having to switch in and out of applications. Imagine a system that never loses your work or buries it in a maze of folders, a system that doesn't wrestle with you on your way to getting something done, a system that effortlessly boosts your speed and productivity by 20 percent or more.
That's Archy. It's the answer to a host of problems that have made you mistrust, and at times hate your computer. Up until now, you've blamed yourself when your computer went off the rails. Guess what? You were right and your computer was wrong.
For two decades now, the graphical user interface -- or "GUI" (pronounced "GOO-ey") -- has been the de facto standard for human-computer interaction. But researchers have known for a long time that GUIs are inherently flawed. Nevertheless, this gooey environment has reigned supreme for so long that we've come to accept it as normal and necessary. Up until now we've had no choice.
Now we do.
In his book, The Humane Interface, Jef Raskin -- creator of the Macintosh project at Apple -- said, "Creating an interface is much like building a house: If you don't get the foundations right, no amount of decorating can fix the resulting structure."
When Jef began designing Archy, he didn't try to tweak or tinker with the GUI interface. He didn't try to decorate it. He cleared the blackboard and built a system from the ground up, giving prime consideration to the latest scientific research on human cognition.
The result is a new user interface that looks and feels completely different. Where your current computer still demands that you conform to its way of doing things, Archy adapts to your way of doing things, the humane way.
The principles behind Archy's design are applicable to all kinds of information appliances and the machines that depend on them. Today that includes aircraft, automobiles, scientific instruments, and industrial machinery. In this sense, Archy Alpha Release 1 is the beginning of a movement. Our long-range goal is a world where enlightened user interface design -- taking account of our limitations and taking advantage of our natural abilities -- becomes the standard. Our first product demonstrates that computers can add ease, convenience, power, and efficiency to our lives without adding to the list of our frustrations.

Does Tufts use it?

Karma Whoring and Lazy Linking

[fm6]

It'd be easier to just send us to the Archy Introduction instead of copying the entire page onto Slashdot.

And that link should have been in the story itself, instead of a link to the download page. You want to read something about a program before you go to all the hassle of downloading and installing it.

Re:AppleDoc rehashed?

[pavon]

I think I am correct in assuming that you are referring to the OpenDoc system, which both Apple and IBM worked on.

This project shares several technical similarities with OpenDoc but it has a significantly different goal. The purpose of the OpenDoc system (and OLE, COM, ActiveX, .NET, KDE KParts, and GNOME Bonobo after it) was to reduce duplicate effort on the behalf of programmers by implementing high level document objects which could be easily reused in applications. This would mean that similar tasks in different applications would be done the same way, because they were using the same code, but you would still have applications.

Now if this method of programming became widespread, applications would basically just be a bunch of documents object glued together with extra features added - commands and tools that operate on the document object. This project would do away with applications all together, by creating a system framework and graphical shell that provides the "glue" that applications used to. To compare the difference consider a library written in C vs. a set of UNIX command line tools. Both implement the same functionality, both can be save the programmer time in implementing a task, and both can be flexibly combined to do new things. However to you the C library you have to be a programmer, and have to create a library write a full program with its own interface, and finite feature set. With the command line tools, you can right a full program with them (a shell script), but you can also issue the commands in real-time from the shell. With the C library, you have to do extra work to make the application extendable (your own plug-in system), with the command line tools, the ability to add new commands and recombine them in new ways is built into the shell.

The UNIX shell has limitations though. Its interface and framework (stdin, stdout, pipes, redirect) is primarily useful for filtering documents, not for interactively editing them. Which is why all the unix editors are basically monolithic applications (with their own plug-in and scripting systems).

The goal of this project to make an operating environment that is more pleasant and powerful to use. It intends to do so by making a graphical shell and system framework that will allow for the developer to make software that consists purely of documents and tools that operate on documents, with no applications to wall things off.

I hope this explanation is useful - it is a bit abstract, but the details could fill an entire book. In fact they did :)

Re:AppleDoc rehashed?

[n1ywb]

Don't forget the Xerox PARC Alto before ALL of those. Alto was highly document-centric.

Integrated applications -- This industry buzzword has been used to describe many things; here it means that text, graphics, tables, and mathematical formulae are all edited inside documents. In many other systems, different types of content are edited in separate application windows and then cut/pasted together. For example: a MacDraw drawing put into a Microsoft Word or Aldus PageMaker document can no longer be edited; rather, the original must be re-edited with MacDraw and then substituted for the old drawing in the document.

Not even Star is fully integrated in the sense used here. For example, though the original structured graphics editor, the new one (see History of Star Development, below), and the table and formula editors all operate inside text files, spreadsheets and freehand drawings are currently edited in separate application windows and transferred into documents, where they are no longer fully editable.

Archy = pogo stick. Usual GUI = bicycle.

[AtariAmarok]

"So let me get this straight: it requires special hardware to navigate properly and fails to follow conventions that have been around since electric typewriters themselves, and you're telling me that I am the one that doesn't get it?"

Give it up. It is like arguing with the idiot who commutes to work on a pogo stick who keeps insisting "but it IS better than your bicycle!!!". Part of the reason this analogy is so apt is that you will hardly find anyone using Archy ever, and hardly find anyone using a pogo stick.

Re:Archy = pogo stick. Usual GUI = bicycle.

[AtariAmarok]

"That's the whole point of Archy, using your keyboard is a lot faster than fussing around with a mouse. Therefore my analogy is sound."

Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. Mature UI's that have had to muster the "real world" of being tested against users take this into account. They offer a mix of mouse and keyboard. They also take into account user preferences: some users want to do things differently than other users. Archy even has a principle against this: they want to straightjacket the users into doing it just one way.

"Step away from the mouse" might be good advice for some users, but not for all. A UI must take into account these different preferences.