Archy (software)

Archy is a software system that had a user interface that introduced a different approach for interacting with computers with respect to traditional graphical user interfaces. Designed by human-computer interface expert Jef Raskin, it embodies his ideas and established results about human-centered design described in his book The Humane Interface. These ideas include content persistence, modelessness, a nucleus with commands instead of applications, navigation using incremental text search, and a zooming user interface (ZUI). The system was being implemented at the Raskin Center for Humane Interfaces under Raskin's leadership. Since his death in February 2005 the project was continued by his team, which later shifted focus to the Ubiquity extension for the Firefox browser. Archy in large part builds on Raskin's earlier work with the Apple Macintosh, Canon Cat, SwyftWare, and Ken Perlin's Pad ZUI system. It can be described as a combination of Canon Cat's text processing functions with a modern ZUI (zooming user interface). Archy is more radically different from established systems than are Sun Microsystems' Project Looking Glass and Microsoft Research's "Task Gallery" prototype. While these systems build upon the WIMP desktop paradigm, Archy has been compared as similar to the Emacs text editor, although its design begins from a clean slate.…

Archy is a software system that had a user interface that introduced a different approach for interacting with computers with respect to traditional graphical user interfaces. Designed by human-computer interface expert Jef Raskin, it embodies his ideas and established results about human-centered design described in his book The Humane Interface. These ideas include content persistence, modelessness, a nucleus with commands instead of applications, navigation using incremental text search, and a zooming user interface (ZUI). The system was being implemented at the Raskin Center for Humane Interfaces under Raskin's leadership. Since his death in February 2005 the project was continued by his team, which later shifted focus to the Ubiquity extension for the Firefox browser. Archy in large part builds on Raskin's earlier work with the Apple Macintosh, Canon Cat, SwyftWare, and Ken Perlin's Pad ZUI system. It can be described as a combination of Canon Cat's text processing functions with a modern ZUI (zooming user interface). Archy is more radically different from established systems than are Sun Microsystems' Project Looking Glass and Microsoft Research's "Task Gallery" prototype. While these systems build upon the WIMP desktop paradigm, Archy has been compared as similar to the Emacs text editor, although its design begins from a clean slate. Archy used to be called The Humane Environment ("THE"). On January 1, 2005, Raskin announced the new name, and that Archy would be further developed by the non-profit Raskin Center for Humane Interfaces. The name "Archy" is a play on the Center's acronym, R-CHI. It is also an allusion to Don Marquis' archy and mehitabel poetry. Jef Raskin jokingly stated: "Yes, we named our software after a bug" (a cockroach), further playing with the meaning of bugs in software. ==Features== ===Persistence=== All content in Archy is persistent. This eliminates the need for, and the concept of, saving a document after editing it. The system state is preserved and safe from crashes and power outages: if the system crashes or power goes off, one simply restarts the system and takes up working where one left off when the problem occurred. ====Universal undo==== A detailed history of the user's interaction allows all actions to be undone since his/her very first action performed within Archy, and re-done again up to the most recent action. Universal and unlimited undo is one key element for the design goals stated in The Humane Interface, since it allows for all the user's work to be recovered in any case. ===Zoomworld=== Archy's zooming user interface (ZUI) element is called Zoomworld. It is a spatial, non-windowing interface: an infinite plane expanding in all directions and zoomable to infinite detail. Extra information on an item is provided by "flying" closer to inspect it, and the destinations of hyperlinks are inserted in-place instead of being represented by textual reference. Browsing in this Zoomworld can be done with a mouse; leap functions are used as a search facility. Archy's project developed some guidelines for Zoomworld and a working proof of concept, but the built prototype did not include code for zooming. Project members claim that a similar, but limited, zooming interface was tested in real world applications with remarkable success. With a single minute of training, novices were competent and comfortable with the system. Computer experts reportedly took longer, since they had more preconceived expectations to unlearn. The zooming hospital information system is described in The Humane Interface, including some screen shots. ==License== Archy was initially licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 License. This stated that derivative works "must give the original author credit, you may not use this work for commercial purposes, and if you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under a license identical to this one." Given the "non-commercial" clause, it was not free software. In November 2017, Aza Raskin changed the license to the MIT License. ==Commentary== The interface and functionality of The Humane Environment was compared and found similar to the Emacs editor for its text-based interface without dialog boxes, and its reliance on incremental search and a modifier key for issuing commands. Archy provides an increased focus on learnability and an emphasis in removing modes, which are common in Emacs. The requirement for the LEAP key to be pressed while searching as a quasimode has been criticized as uncomfortable. But note that the LEAP keys in the original Canon Cat are the two large red keys below the space bar; Archy uses the two ALT keys on either side of the space bar, found on most standard keyboards, which are a compromise to using it on commonly available hardware. ==See also== Ubiquity, a Firefox extension based on the same principles as Archy created by Mozilla Labs with Aza Raskin in the design team. ==References== Notes Interview with Aza Rasking about The Humane Environment project. Raskin's notes for a film by director Jennie Bourne Archy project at Archive.org Last? available copy of Archy Aza Raskin explains what happened to the Archy project Raskin's summary of the principles and design rules in "The Humane Interface" Enso A humane interface project seems to be a git archive of the archy source code Jef Raskin’s cul-de-sac and the quest for the humane computer - Ars Technica

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