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Hypertext Essay #3: Development
©1997, 1999, 2000 by Scribble & Count, LLC. All rights reserved.(Written 10/97; rev. 9/00)
(This is the third essay in the series, which began with a basic introduction.)
The development of hypertext is both interesting and important. Interesting if you're a trivia buff or a "Digerati"; important for all of us, because it explains how we got into this mess we sometimes call the Hypertext Wars. [1999 ed: essay on Microsoft vs Oracle/Sun promised in 1997 being rapidly overtaken by events.]
Supporting citations are at the bottom of the essay.
Contents
This essay has the following sections:Hypertext Predicted / Term Coined / Hypertext Invented
Early Development (1980s)
Roots of Today's Conflict (1989-91)
Recent Developments (1994-97)
Situation Today (2000)
Citations
Invitations to Dialog
Hypertext Predicted / Term Coined / Hypertext Invented
That's right, the events occurred in that order.Prediction. Vannevar Bush, science advisor to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, wrote an article in the July 1945 Atlantic magazine speculating on the science of the future. It was a long article; the last two sections dealt with text that would jump from place to place and revolutionize how knowledge was indexed and catalogued. But Bush didn't use the term "hypertext".
Term Coined. That came 20 years later, in 1965. Ted Nelson was an author frustrated because he was limited by the linear progression of traditional text. He felt he could write better science fiction if he could dart hither and yon, so he described the technique he wanted (but didn't have) and called it "hypertext" -- which means, literally, "super text". (As we'll see in essay #4, in some ways, it really is super; but in other ways it's less effective than traditional means of communication.)
| Note: | In the late '60s and early '70s, I was among numerous librarians that were trying to write reference works that jumped from one fact to another. Because we didn't have hypertext, we had to use manual see-references, which weren't as effective. |
Invention. Hypertext was invented in 1975 at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Xerox spent a lot of money establishing and staffing the think tank, and had enough sense to leave the thinkers alone -- but the corporate big wigs didn't know what to do with the ideas the researchers dreamed up: hypertext; the first graphical computer; laser printing; Ethernet. (It was a breathlessly intense and confident time at PARC; the researchers said the only way to accurately predict the future was to invent it.)
Early Development (1980s)
The first practical use of hypermedia (the alternate term is necessary, because the link can come from a graphic or from text) was in Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs). Finally, in the early '80s, Xerox did try to produce a computer with a GUI, the Star. Never heard of it? Almost no one remembers it. In 1983, Apple brought out the Lisa, and a year later the Macintosh. That was the first real-world use of hypertext. To supplement it, Apple developed a help system called HyperCard.Roots of Today's Conflict (1989-91)
From here on is the part you have to know, even if you aren't interested in the culture. In 1989, hypertext took off in two very different ways.Tim Berners-Lee (at CERN, Europe's particle physics lab) developed HTML so that a select number of scientists could exchange and browse lengthy scientific papers. (Note: the "exchange" requirement forced HTML to comply w/ certain telecommunications standards and cross-platform compatibility strictures that wouldn't hamper an internal system.)
Bill Gates (at Microsoft) was finishing work on the Windows O/S and distributed internally a help system (later called WinHelp) to document it.
The essential points are that the two systems:
- began nearly simultaneously and developed at nearly the same pace, but
- were designed for very different purposes, for very different users, on very different computers.
Recent Developments (1994-98)
Several important things in the mid to late '90s:Mosaic (1994) & Netscape (1995): Refugees from CERN ended up at NCSA in Illinois, where they released a resource-gobbling browser for HTML. A spin-off from NCSA formed Netscape a year later.
WinHelp 4 (1995): The second version of WinHelp (for Windows 95 and NT 4) was a significant improvement over the WinHelp used in Windows 3.1, and was measurably more powerful than HTML. This will quickly become important, to Microsoft's chagrin.
HTML stagnation (1995-97): Diversity of hardware and squabbles among influential companies made progress virtually impossible for more than 2 years.
HTML Help (1996-98): Microsoft dropped the bombshell in February '96 that RTF-based help (WinHelp) would be replaced by HTML-based help -- but WinHelp authors, spoiled by the best hypertext system around, slowed development by insisting that all features of WinHelp 4 be somehow incorporated into HTML Help.
| Note: | Your author is among the guilty; during a Q&A following Lead Developer Ralph Walden's keynote address at a convention, he presented Ralph with a list of WinHelp features he "hoped" would make it into the first release of HTMLHelp. (Ralph replied then, and often since, that his worst professional mistake was spoiling us with WinHelp 4.) |
NetHelp (1996) & JavaHelp (1997): The two are both Java-compatible, and their developers were co-operating behind the scenes -- so when NetHelp folded in early 1998, the competition to Microsoft's HTML Help was slowed but not derailed.
HTML 4.0, XML, DHTML, CSS2 (1997/98): At least partially due to Microsoft's preoccupation with other challenges (such as anti-trust), the intensity of the Hypertext Wars subsided. The W3C took advantage of the lull, and released four sets of standards in six months.
Situation Today (2000)
[Add XML HTML 4]Contradictory, like a good news / bad news joke.
Hope: Will a properly chastened Microsoft finally co-operate with the rest of the world? (Or at least be distracted enough to allow unhindered progress on XML?)It's a Rorschach Test for geeks: you can tell your mood by determining which of the two previous sentiments resonates with you at the moment.
Despair: If so, then why is IE 5 in only modest compliance with HTML 4?; and xxxx?
Citations
Bush, Vannevar. "As We May Think." In Atlantic Monthly (July 1945). Http://www.ps.uni-sb.de/~duchier/pub/vbush/ [Last accessed: 5/13/99]"Cascading Style Sheets, level 2 CSS2 Specification." Http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/ [Last accessed: 5/13/99]
"HTML 4.0 Specification." Http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/ [Last accessed: 5/13/99]
Nelson, Ted. "Project Xanadu*."(R) Http://www.sfc.keio .ac.jp/~ted/XU/XuPageKeio.html [Last accessed: 5/13/99]
"XML 1.0 Recommendation." Http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml/ [Last accessed: 5/13/99]
Invitations to Dialog
You can influence this discussion by sending email to: bsanders@scribble-count.comIf your company (or a group you're associated with) is located along the Colorado Front Range from Longmont to Colorado Springs (including Gilpin, Clear Creek, and Summit counties), we have a presentation available on hypertext and where we think it is going -- and we'd be happy to present it to you. We've addressed professional organizations, user's groups, and chambers of commerce -- so we can customize the material to your needs.
Please email us for further information.
Next essay in series (#4: Technical Characteristics of Hypertext)
Next essay in series (#4: Technical Aspects)
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Rev. 10-Sept-00
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