Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site hoptoad.uucp Path: utzoo!hoptoad!gnu From: gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) Newsgroups: alt.hypertext Subject: Hypertext Usenet Message-ID: <3296@hoptoad.uucp> Date: Fri, 6-Nov-87 22:05:32 EST Article-I.D.: hoptoad.3296 Posted: Fri Nov 6 22:05:32 1987 Date-Received: Sun, 8-Nov-87 16:59:06 EST Organization: Nebula Consultants in San Francisco Lines: 65 [I would've cross posted to comp.society.futures but it's a "mod" group and doesn't allow links to other groups.] [Apple's Hypercard has more to do with "hype" than with "hypertext". If you are looking for a hypertext system, look elsewhere. I think of hypercard as "shell scripts for the Mac".] Now to the real topic -- the Hypertexting of Usenet. People [in comp. society.futures] have been proposing various strange character conbinations to indicate hypertext content. This is pretty silly. (1) We haven't figured out what kinds of information we want to convey, so picking a representation is premature. (2) We already have a representation for the major thing we need -- document to document links. This is the notation. Most proposed hypertext systems give the ability to link one piece of text with another one, down to the character or word level. Usenet currently only provides this at the article level, but for the next few years I think that's fine. Current literary references (citations, bibliographies, footnotes, etc) typically refer to the page or section level, which is about the same amount of text as a Usenet article. ----- A major problem with turning the Usenet into a hypertext system is the automated following of links. Let's say I have an article which references article <1234@hop.toad.com>. I don't have a copy of 1234. (Maybe it expired, maybe I didn't subscribe to it, maybe it got dropped by somebody 3 feeds away.) How do I get a copy? Currently this is all done manually. Though there are large archives kept at various places, automated retrieval, even if you know the unique message-ID of the article, is in an infant stage. Before we start considering how to build the user interfaces and such, I think we should shore up the infrastructures so that all the data which is *somewhere* accessible on the network can be gotten without human intervention. *Then* build mechanisms, beyond the current References: lines and such, for indexing this information so that you can go from a desire-for-info-on-widgets to a bunch of article-IDs to the actual articles. Ideally I'd like to see a distributed database, updated when any user does an "s" command to save a copy of an article (if that user & site are willing for other people to be able to get it from them), that would allow anybody else to locate and retrieve that article. Hugh Daniel and Jeff Anton and I sat down and designed a candidate database setup a month ago, and it may be doable with a year or two of work. ----- This is not to say that we should abandon user interface work on the Usenet; far from it! But the timbers under the net are pretty rotten for the kind of loads we will want to put on 'em, once we have better user interfaces. John -- {pyramid,ptsfa,amdahl,sun,ihnp4}!hoptoad!gnu gnu@toad.com Love your country but never trust its government. -- from a hand-painted road sign in central Pennsylvania