ND-NOTIS

ND-NOTIS was a tightly integrated yet modular 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 MS Windows running in networks of Norsk Data servers.

It was very 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 very popular in Germany and in the UK (local municipality, DHSS etc.)

The NOTIS family of products was presented to the British Computing Society by Jeremy Salter. Roger Tagg et al. (BCS, End User SG, 1985) and endorsed as the BCS model for user interface. The same endorsement 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.

Where it was offered it had no real competitors. There are still features and functionality that no other system supports - such as 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 and still is. 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".

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Wikipedia