{"id":2169,"date":"2010-10-29T04:07:24","date_gmt":"2010-10-29T08:07:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/richard.rathe.org\/"},"modified":"2010-10-29T11:20:28","modified_gmt":"2010-10-29T15:20:28","slug":"hypertext-before-the-world-wide-web","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/hypertext-before-the-world-wide-web","title":{"rendered":"Hypertext Before the World Wide Web"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I was a resident in 1988 I wrote a bit of software called HYTEXT<\/strong>\u2014a hypertext publishing system for MS-DOS computers. I knew nothing about networks at the time, but I did create a mark-up language<\/strong> that anticipates HTML in many ways. I recently came across a paper copy of my original documentation and thought it would be a good idea to reproduce a few pages here for posterity. The original program and documentation are on 5.25 inch floppy discs that I have no way to read. But I googled it and found my 22 year old file online!<\/a> So the circle is complete.<\/p>\n

Here is my representation of two “web pages” displayed on a 80 column by 24 line<\/strong> (!)\u00a0monochrome display…<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I called these pages “Topics<\/strong>” and you could scroll them 12 lines at a time using the Page\u00a0Up and Page Down keys. You navigated the links using the arrow keys<\/strong> and pressing Enter. This is very similar to text-only browsers<\/strong> still in use today (such as Lynx<\/a>). In addition there were two means of showing additional information without jumping to another topic. Popup Cards<\/strong> contained brief annotations and definitions, very similar to the “hover box<\/strong>” commonly used on Web pages today. Expansion Text<\/strong> allowed the author to hide lines of text<\/strong> that would only appear if the user pressed a special key. Again this technique is frequently used on Websites to compress content<\/strong> for easier \u00a0scanning\/browsing. Here is a conceptual diagram of how it worked…<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Notice the hooks for external files<\/strong> and programs<\/strong>. The next version added direct calls to the OS for directory listing, etc. The complete package came with a runtime module<\/strong> and could produce stand-alone hypertext books<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Finally, I coined the concept of “Hypertesting” by assigning weights to each link and controlling backward navigation…<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Here are a few other selected pages of original documentation…<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> <\/span>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> <\/span>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And links to two hypertext documents I created:\u00a0hytdoc.htx<\/a> and msdos.htx<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was a resident in 1988 I wrote a bit of software called HYTEXT\u2014a hypertext publishing system for MS-DOS computers. I knew nothing about networks at the time, but I did create a mark-up language that anticipates HTML in many ways. I recently came across a paper copy of my original documentation and thought … Continue reading “Hypertext Before the World Wide Web”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2169","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2169"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2171,"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2169\/revisions\/2171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}