Systems and Applications
Here is a list of existing systems,
past present and future, which we
have come across. These include
both academic research systems and
commercially available systems. The
order is random. Some Information
retrieval systems have crept in which
are not hypertext.
Based partly on the ECHT90 tutorial
by Paul Kahn
, IRIS . See also: Sources
of data . See also IR systems .the
RARE Networked Multimedia survey
.
A prototype system for building summary
articules from files, and indexing
them.
Multimedia Internet Mail Extensions
are relevant though they are neither
IR nor hypertext.
Library 2000
MIT project by Michael Charity. Full-text
index and bitmap graphic retrieval
system for MIT technical reports.
They don't want to use W3 because
they want to be free to change the
protocol any moment.
Developed by Milos Kravcik of University
of Bratislava for PCs. Portable
Academic Encyclopedia -- in progress.
We have a ZIP file of the system
in hypertext/Products/Interes.
InfoMesh
Karen Rosin Sollins . See ftp://allspice.lcs.mit.edu/pub/wp/wp.tex,
Mediaview
Note from Dick Phillips. See also
README . A graphics "publishing"
system.
Commercial PC/Modem "Information
Marketplace"
PC/Mac client for CWIS form Minnesota.
Supports index search and document
retrieval. Many other clients.
Hyper-G
CWIS for technical university of
Graz, Austria. Now fully deployed.
Home of the Hacker's Jargon. A gateway
from the Web exists. Their browsers
have access to HTTP servers as well.
We need a link here to their technical
notes. Seen a nice character-based
browser at JENC'92 .
Next in a line of research hypertext
systems from Brown University.
Experimental system. EHTS = Emacs-based
HyperText System Graphical browser
runs under X.
LinksWare
Hypermedia product for the Macintosh.
Produced by a one-man company in Monterey, California, USA, it was recently
reviewed (August, 1993 MacUser Magazine August '92 Dr. Dobbs Journal).
LinksWare establishes links between text, word-processor, sound, graphic,
movie and AppleScript files. It uses the original documents without importing
them and gives the appearance that the links are truly embedded within the
document, although no changes to the original are ever made. (This is so true
that links can even be made between files on read-only media such as CD-ROM.)
The product was featured on Apple's AppleScript CD-ROM and on MacTV.
Contact: Linksware@aol.com or TKV@delphi.com
LinksWare Corporation
641 Lily Street
Monterey, CA USA 93940
(408) 372-4155
WorldWideWeb initiative. A wide-area
system using hypertext and information
retrieval concepts. Originated at
CERN .
- verifies the availability of http and relative addressed links
- checks that all occurrences of a tag in the database are
associated with a link
- ensures a one-to-one correspondence between tags and links such
that only one tag can describe and link and a tag only goes to one
link.
The later two tests are to facilitate the user in maintaining a
correct mental representation of the hyper-space. As evident by the
increasing number of http servers going on-line, the user is faced
with the difficult task of quick, correct navigation. Maybe you have
seen a document one day, decided to go back to the document another day
and have taken a bit of valuable time relocation the document.
Unambiguous use of tags and links I hypothesis will only make this
process easier.
Wide-Area Information Service. The
protocol is based on an ANSI standard
Z39.50-1988. See also discussion
group, mailing list wais-discussion@think.com
and release notes . Putting a wais
access protocol onto WWW is a very
interesting possibility. JFG to look
at it. A getway exists.
Bootstrap Initiative
Don't know much about this it may
be tackling the same problem as us.
See Doug's seminar . A reference
is:
Engelbart, Douglas C. "Knowledge-Domain
interoperability and an Open Hyperdocument
System", "Proceedings of the ACM
CSCW90 Conference on Computer Supported
Cooperative Work", October 1990,
pp 143--156
I have the book (Tim). Doug has
an industry-based viewpoint in that
paper. He aims at a fairly complete
CSCW system, but suggests starting
with several pilot projects based
on Augment . This would furnish experience
needed for the next phase.
structured documents, kept as outline,
which allows zoom-in and zoom-out.
Link anchors are full pathname and
therefore can be across machines.
Ted Nelson's dream since early `60s:
all the world literature in one publicly
accessible global online system (analogy:
you can today get a telephone link
from anywhere to anywhere, so why
not from any text to any other?).
Every reference to a text will lead
to royalties being paid automatically
to the author. Autodesk, (the makers
of AutoCAD) will produce a product
"real soon now". Includes the use
of full versioning (claimed to be
horrifyingly complex), "hot links"
(called transclusions) and zippered
texts (eg. parallel texts like for
translations or annotations.)
NoteCards (Xerox PARC)
Written in Interlisp D, single user,
uses the card metaphor. There are
two camps: the card sharks, who propone
the idea that information comes in
card-size chunks, and the holy scrollers,
who propone that a hypertext node
can essentially be any size and therefore
has to be scrollable on the screen.
NoteCard links can be labelled with
keywords for filtering. The most
useful part of the system is its
graphical browser, wherein the user
can pick documents or edit links
between them. There is one composition
metaphor, the Filebox.
KMS (marketed by Knowledge systems)
A card system (claimed to have the
Hypercard model but in 1972), wherein
graphics and text can be mixed. The
com- mercial version allows two card
windows side by side (for copy-and-paste
operations). It was described as
"MacDraw with links". Its main feature
is that sub-second response time
is one of the design criteria. Scripts
were first used in KMS: the traversal
of a link can result in the execution
of a piece of code of arbitrary complexity
and effect (eg. Unix shell scripts).
There is no graphical browser. KMS
is multi-user but does not warn anyone
of simultaneous access, so during
updating, if two people edit the
same node, one loses...
Hyperties (university of Maryland)
Designed for browsing (idea that
many users will look at information,
only a few will author it), so it
is asymmetric and the authoring system
is not nearly as easy to use as the
browser. Single user, runs on PCs
with a research version for the Sun.
Anchors are created with markup in
the precompiled text.
A research tool developed at Brown
university (van Dam (yes, Andy,)
et al). The demo was impressive.
There is a data base system parallel
to the texts, that holds the links.
A web is a context of links, several
webs can be created over the same
set of documents. Several links can
emanate from the same anchor. Web
views can be presented, and they
also give the history of viewing
for each user. It runs under Apple's
old Unix version for the Macintosh
(and will not run on the current
version). It seems to be dead, since
there is no funding to continue the
research.
A product from Owl , a UK
company. Guide is based on Peter Brown's
work (U. of Kent, 1984). Runs on MS-Windows and Macintosh with a
development version for Unix. Documents may contain text and graphics,
structure is given in application-specific files called "guidelines".
Access to video and documents from other applications possible. There
is no web visualization.
The system for the Macintosh (Apple,
1987). Many claimed this not to be
a hypertext system, but then the
majority of real applications presented
used it. This is the product that
made hypertext take off. It is the
BASIC of the 1990s. It follows the
card model (but has scrolling fields...)
Incorporates graphics and text. Other
media are accessible through extensions.
Powerful scripting language. It is
the only one with which I personally
have a lot of experience. The problem
with Hypercard is that any fancy
application requires writing scripts,
but its advantage is that the scripting
language allows you to do most of
the things that are absent from other
systems.
SGML-oriented, X/posix based, portable.
From EBT .
Toolbook
Hypercard like but has an object
type drawing package rather than
canvas type, and an object oriented
scripting lan- guage. From what little
was said about it, it seems to be
better than Hypercard.
Analyst
Runs over ParcPlace SmallTalk, available
for Sun, Mac, Dos. The document model
is of an information center where
different types of documents are
assembled from forms, databases,
spreadsheets, maps, graphics and
folders (which are like directories).
Each document type has its own editor.
Queries may result in virtual folders,
somewhat like SQL views. Some support
for artificial intelligence. (Who
made it? -Tim)
HyperNews for sun workstations
Try contacting the developers on
newsdev@turing.ac.uk.... See news
article .
For the PC:
Multimedia for MSDOS from Southampton
University. Neat.
A hypertext system with annotation,
graphics mixed with text. Commercial.
Last modified: August, 1994