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From: rwb@castle.ed.ac.uk (Richard Bingham)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc,alt.hypertext
Subject: Re: Hypertext on IBM-PCs
Message-ID: <3407@castle.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 3 Jun 90 07:25:04 GMT
References: <9004150754.AA16288@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> <4652@pegasus.ATT.COM>
Reply-To: rwb@castle.ed.ac.uk (Richard Bingham)
Organization: Dept. of Veterinary Pathology, University of Edinburgh
Lines: 44

In article <4652@pegasus.ATT.COM> psrc@pegasus.ATT.COM (Paul S. R. Chisholm) writes:
>> A faculty member on our campus has asked about hypertext software for IBM
...
>> Paul Motsuk, motsuk@cua.bitnet, motsuk%cuavax.dnet@netcon.cua.edu
>
>I've read a little bit about such packages; I don't have any direct
>experience.  I can give you some pointers.
>
>IBM has jumped into this market with a product called LinkWay.  All I
>know about this is that it's described in a book called IBM LINKWAY:
>HYPERMEDIA FOR THE PC (written by Richard Harrington, Bill Fancher, and
>Peter Black, and published by John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 0-471-51298-2).
...
...   has a version of that software for MS-Windows.  Guide, from Owl,
>is another Windows-based hypertext system.
...
>Paul S. R. Chisholm, AT&T Bell Laboratories

Thanks for the useful review of what is available.  I can report that I
have tried Linkway and Guide.  

Linkway is being sold in the U.K. by IBM at a price (to educational institutes)
which makes most shareware seem rather expensive.  Their price was almost
too low to refuse!  However I didn't like it very much as it seems a bit
clumsy to use - in particular the text editor is a pain, particularly if
you try and import text from other files.  I never did solve how to import
pre-drawn graphics - although the manual is very readable, it often lacks
essential details when things start to go wrong.  However it does have
the advantage of not requiring MS-Windows, so that it will run on a fairly
basic PC and in most screen modes (though in MCGA mode it doesn't look too
nice).

I much prefer Guide, though it definitely helps to have a powerful processor.
I started with Guide on an ordinary XT clone, and it was *slow*.  Now I have
it on a 386 machine, with 8 MB RAM, and it goes very nicely indeed.

Richard Bingham


-- 
Richard W. Bingham, Dept. of Veterinary Pathology, University of Edinburgh,
Summerhall,  Edinburgh,  EH9 1QH,  Scotland
Tel: +44 31 667 1011 Ext. 5281    FAX: +44 31 668 4341
R.Bingham@ed.ac.uk  (or) R.Bingham%ed.ac.uk@nss.cs.ucl.ac.uk