Xref: utzoo comp.sys.mac.hypercard:1748 alt.hypertext:224
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!lll-winken!arisia!fischer
From: fischer@arisia.Xerox.COM (Ronald A. Fischer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hypercard,alt.hypertext
Subject: Re: Hypertext, UNIX
Summary: Apple sponsors INTERMEDIA, hypercard is like assembler
Message-ID: <672@arisia.Xerox.COM>
Date: 4 Apr 89 00:13:33 GMT
References: <3045@cosmo.UUCP> <179@opus.NMSU.EDU> <1629@iesd.dk> <190@opus.NMSU.EDU>
Organization: Xerox PARC
Lines: 38

Apple Computer is one of the larger sponsors of the InterMedia project
at Brown University.  I suppose that at some point they're likely to
release it out on their higher end workstations.

There's an interesting story behind this which goes something like
this: Brown ported MacApp or some portion of the Mac toolbox calls
onto UNIX to support their development of IM.  Intermedia now depends
heavily on this code.  Apple is one of a consortium of sponsors for
IM.  The sponsors have varying rights to the resulting code.  For
Apple this is a drag because they don't have exclusive proprietary
rights (unless this has changed).  I wonder if Apple has required the
other sponsors to separately license from them the user interface
technology used in Intermedia?  That could give Apple a strong
position.

Apple's problem will be integrating embedded editors with its existing
toolbox in a compatible way, in addition to allowing compound
documents, although the latter could be acheived by substructuring
text forks.

Systems like InterMedia (or ENVOS NoteCards) are to HyperCard as
Microsoft Write is to Microsoft Word, or Assembly language is to
Modula-3.  Unfortunately these kind of relations make it hard to
provide upward compatibility, since one tends to hook deeply into low
level systems like HyperCard to accomplish the things that are
missing.

Perhaps we'll have a division of the Hypertext market into entry level
and professional tools.  Remember that in a few years Apple's next
generation OS and tools like Intermedia will make the current toolbox
and HyperCard look like the Apple // tools seem to us today.

(ron)
Ron Fischer
ENVOS Corp.
1157 San Antonio Rd.
Mountain View, CA 94043
415-966-6206