Xanadu
Background
Xanadu is Ted Nelson's vision and project
Ted Nelson is inventor of the term "hypertext"
(above picture from http://www.ibiblio.org/pioneers/nelson.html)
Worked at Keio University in Japan
Now self-employed? (2004)
He ignores the culture and customs of academia
Examples
Almost all citations he makes are to his own work
He arguably sounds conceited
His writing style on technical matters is unusual
But: he is acknowledged as a founding father of hypertext
Transpublishing
Read the transcopyright article.
Xanadu and the Web
Consider the Web as the worlds largest digital library
Xanadu is a claim, vision, and example of something better
"The World Wide Web was...what we were trying to *prevent*"
"The...Web ...trivializes our...hypertext model with one-way ever-breaking links and no management of version or contents" - http://xanadu.com/ (4/27/05)
"The Web displaced our principled model with something...chaotic and short-sighted"
"There is an alternative. Markup must not be embedded. Hierarchies and files must not be part of the mental structure of documents. Links must go both ways. All these fundamental errors of the Web must be repaired. But the geeks have tried to lock the door behind them to make nothing else possible." - http://ted.hyperland.com/buyin.txt
"Project Xanadu has had as its purpose to build a deep-reach electronic literary system for worldwide use"
Terms and Concepts
Nelson has quite a few of these!
Xanadu - The name given to the mansion built by Kane in "Citizen Kane"
Famous 1941 movie, available on video
Seems to portray publishing giant William Randolph Hearst
(Worth seeing!)
Deep interconnection
Intercomparison
Reuse/frictionless reuse
Recent History
Nelson obtained his B.S. in 1959
PhD in 2002 from Keio University
What are his comments on the Web?
"I DON'T BUY IN"
"The Web isn't hypertext, it's DECORATED DIRECTORIES!"
"What we have ...is the ...victory of typesetters over authors"
"...the most trivial form of hypertext that [can be] imagined"
"The original hypertext project, Xanadu®..."
"Xanadu has... a pure structure of links"
"and facilitated re-use
of content"
"Instead, today's nightmarish new world is controlled by 'webmasters,'
tekkies unlikely to understand the niceties of text issues and
preoccupied with the Web's exploding alphabet soup of embedded formats.
XML is not an improvement but a hierarchy hamburger.
Everything, everything must be forced into hierarchical templates!"
"the 'semantic web' means that tekkie committees will decide the world's true concepts for once and for all."
"Enforcement is going to be another problem :)"
"It is ...strange ... but...people...think that's how it must
be"
"There is an alternative"
"Markup must not be embedded."
"Links must go both ways."
"All these fundamental errors of the Web must be repaired.
But the geeks have tried to lock the door behind them to make nothing else
possible."
"We fight on."
"More later."
*Note*: he may be right about certain technical needs
*But*: his way of thinking seems warped
(he may be exaggerating a bit, one hopes)
And in another URL...
"The most important thing is to re-introduce the concept of
deep quotability [in] hypertext"
"I have worked out, with my colleagues...
formats that allow quotation in any part."
"Naturally they are completely incompatible with current Web browsers"
"We hope to fix that."
"using these formats, it is ...possible to open quotations in a window"
"we hope to have a browser plug-in one of these days that can assemble quoted portions taken from different documents."
(MultiBrowser!)
"To practice what I preach,"
"I will be publishing mostly in text format"
Docuverse
A "universe" of documents and the system that manages them
Example:
The Xanadu docuverse
Is the Web is a docuverse?
Site for open source Xanadu code
Why "udanax"?
http://www.sfc.keio.ac.jp/~ted/XUsurvey/xuDation.html
Most up-to-date survey paper
Xanalogical structure
Bidirectional links
Profuse links
Content links (survivable deep links)
Transclusion
Parallel documents
Transpointing windows
Transpointing windows: screen shot of the 1998 working demo
Fig. 5. Screen shot of transpointing windows by Ka-Ping Yee, showing his PYXI viewer served from Udanax Green server (xu88 model). Only transclusions happen to be shown, though PYXI also handles content links.
...early and final drafts of the Declaration of Independence (111), highlighting transclusions and differences with color.
Why Have Transpointing Windows?
Supports "parallel commentary"
Supports document comparison
(e.g. declaration of independence figure)
Useful whenever documents must be seen in relation to each other
scholarship, legislation, diplomacy, etc.
Comparison of successive document versions
Better than what Word does?
To assist in reorganizing during complex rewrite tasks
Claims reorganization is central to complex rewrites
My experience: yes, but would transpointing windows help?
(I just use hardcopy and scissors!)
Pullacross editing
Fig. 6. Pullacross editing is another use of transpointing windows (simulated graphic).
Transclusion Vs. Content Links
Transclusion is an approach to reuse
Can involves giving credit, payments, permissions, versions...
Content Links are "better" hyperlinks
Transpointing windows can show transclusion or content linking
Example of transclusion:
An HTML document with frames
...transcludes other documents by dynamically bringing them into the individual frames
Content links
Example:
