fischer@arisia.Xerox.COM (Ronald A. Fischer) (04/06/89)
I agree with you that we should be using the term Hypermedia, in fact, its one of the terms Ted Nelson used back in "Computer Lib/Dream Machines." The interesting thing is whether all of the limitations that are inherent in HyperCard will keep it from meeting the capabilities of the next generation of hypertext or hypermedia tools. To get a better handle on what Hypercard is let's try to break it out into a classification. Given the state of current hypermedia products in UNIX, Hypermedia has the following aspects: media being linked - like TV, text, bitmaps, structured graphics, spreadsheets, etc. embeddable (or nestable) media editors - this is like HP New Wave, being able to put a complete spreadsheet into a word document, and still edit the spreadsheet. This is not what's done in current Mac and PC document procssors, they take a PICT which represents the visual of the data and insert it. If the original information is updated the PICT in the document doesn't change. With embedding it could. HP's New Wave allows this. references - where in the media you can link to. In text we'd like this to be words, paragraphs, characters, etc. In structured graphics, perhaps one would like to reference a group of rendered objects. links - these join an origin with a destination reference and might be classified so that you can determine when to follow them (like footnotes or citations). So, look at HyperCard. It has two media, text and bitmaps. It is possible, by convoluted means, to extend these to other media like a set of frames on a videodisk. But, HyperCard is not really extensible in that you cannot create new first class media objects for it, i.e. a structured graphics object that has its own editor commands up there in the menu bar. None of the media editors in HyperCard embed within one another. If they did, you could put a bitmap in running text, or more interestingly a LINK into running text. Embedded links would scroll with the text that contained them. Intermedia, NoteCards and other hypertext systems allow full embedding. Even Guide allows its own links to be embedded. Link origins in Hypercard can be a button placed anywhere on the display. Destination references are made to the "card" level and no finer than that. Nelson's Xanadu system originally proposed references be at the character level, hence Hypertext as the orignal name. If you read his book "Literary Machines" you can find out how binary hypertext supports Hypermedia. Links in HyperCard are not actually real objects in the sense that you cannot gather them and their references up. Neither are they classified. I believe that Hypercard is an interesting achievement as a minimal program prototyping environment. But, what is done with great difficulty in HyperCard is much easier in the more advanced Hypermedia systems, such as NoteCards, KMS, Intermedia, etc. HyperCard can be compared to the advanced HyperMedia products in the way the old "Electric Pencil" program (early word processor under CP/M) might be compared to Microsoft Word 4.0. The question is: will Apple extend HyperCard's capabilities so that other media, managed by outside applications, can be seamlessly linked? It probably doesn't matter as long as they're giving it away for free. It is a case of someone giving away a product that does 70% of what you need; you give up the last 30% in favor of a low (or zero) price. There is a large cost hidden in that last 30%; few people have realized how hard it is to write hypermedia applications with Hypercard, except perhaps the group reading this distribution. Hopefully the overall effect of Hypercard will be to make people realize the usefulness of the more advanced systems, rather than stifling their success. Further, I hope Apple enhances the integration of media supported by foreign applications into Hypercard soon, possibly with media editor embedding. (ron) [These are my own thoughts, not those of my employer.] Ron Fischer ENVOS Corp. 1157 San Antonio Rd. Mountain View, CA 94043 415-966-6206 Contacts for information on advanced hypermedia: NoteCards hypermedia system (Sun 3/4): contact Scot Reid, ENVOS Corp. at 415-966-6237 HP New Wave media editor embedding support (PC): contact HP at 800-752-0900 Guide hypermedia system (Mac, PC): contact Owl International at 206-747-3203 Intermedia hypermedia system (A/UX?): contact IRIS at 401-863-2001 Ted Nelson's Xanadu hypermedia system and books: contact Xanadu Operating Company at 415-856-4112 KMS hypermedia system (UNIX): Scribe Systems at 412-281-5959 There is also a product called ArchiText for the Mac, which I know nothing of. Can anyone provide a review?
amanda@lts.UUCP (Amanda Walker) (04/06/89)
It occurred to me while reading the recent comments about HyperCard's deficiencies that Apple has in fact produced an application that contains an extensible set of editors which can call each other and so on. It's called ResEdit. All we need now is something that will browse like HyperCard and be as extensible as ResEdit... Could be big fun. OK, who has some free time :-)? -- Amanda Walker <amanda@lts.UUCP> InterCon Systems Corporation -- This posting is cursed. As you read it you will be confuset by ther printeb wertz. Yer intelijen will vabni ..... XRT! XRT!
fischer@arisia.Xerox.COM (Ronald A. Fischer) (04/07/89)
ResEdit is extensible, but it isn't an embedded editor in that you can't place one media into the body of another kind of media, ie. graphics in text or a text field into graphics. In hypercard you can overlay media, but they're not attached to each other, only the "ether" of the card. Embedding media editors is to HyperCard as HFS is to the old flat file system on the Mac. Take a look at "Insets" in the Andrew editor from CMU or "ImageObjects" in the TEdit editor from ENVOS for excellent examples of this capability. (ron) Andrew (UNIX & X): distributed with X window system or call ITC at Carnegie Mellon University 412-268-6700. TEdit (Sun 3 & 4): Scot Reid at ENVOS Corp. 415-966-6237