Talk:Hypertext

message: It is very noticable that this article is much more about MEMEX than about hyperlinks? Can someone add stuff on hypertexts themselves? Bit strange having html as a "see also"? --(talk to)BozMo 10:31, 23 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Just Memex?

message: It seems odd to me that the HyperText Transport Protocol is not mentioned in the article. I feel that a protocol designed to facilitate networked hypertext systems would be worthy of at least a link. Anyone disagree? - mjb 22:00, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm afraid I do. HTTP is used by browsers, but really doesn't have anything to do with hypertext as a concept. HTML documents are just as happy on a hard disk and can just as easily be held on an FTP server. None of these makes any difference to the hypertext aspect of the documents - that's all handled by HTML. --KayEss 07:33, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

text: The browser is a bastardized version of the the concept in which the exitor does not edit but only views documents.  This presumably because they want to sell editors seperatly or simply do not want people editing.
obviously there owuld need to be passwords or some kind of identy verification depending on which page you were editing.
Tim Sheridan sparky@navpoint.com  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.94.233.174 (talk) 15:15, 24 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Relationship to HTTP noteworthy 

message: The article mentions Wikimedia (the foundation). In this context, shouldn't that be MediaWiki (the software) instead? --Steven Fisher 06:36, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  MediaWiki vs. Wikimedia 

message: Text retrieval (TR) is simply cross-reference (XR) from text to text, hence hypertext (XT). That is, the ideas of TR, XR, XT, and the like largely overlap and closely resemble one another. XR splits into XR in context (XRIC) and XR out of context (XROC) in close analogy to KWIC and KWOC long ago, respectively. The narrow or common sense of hypertext implies XRIC, while the wide or true sense includes XROC as well. From the text retrieval point of view, hypertext as a new retrieval paradigm, objecting to XROC or subjecting itself mainly to XRIC, sounds like a self-defeating misnomer, because text retrieval and cross-reference well comprise both XROC and XRIC in themselves. Hypertext was coined in 1965 by Ted Nelson who used to object to the wide spectrum of text retrieval or cross-reference and subject it mainly to the narrow idea of transclusion, or simply quotation, aiming for text patchwork rather than retrieval. --KYPark 16:12, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Now you really just went off the deep end.  Those terms you are proposing --- XROC and XRIC --- are not in wide use anywhere (I just ran a Google search).  Even granting that you are trying to define two new terms for the purpose of streamlining a discussion, your English is so hopelessly incoherent that I am not sure what you are trying to define them as.  You really need to take a remedial English class.  --Coolcaesar 06:04, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Text retrieval

message: ===Hypermedia Joyce Studies===
* Notes on Contributors   
* Donald F. Theall, Joyce's Practice of Intertextuality: the Anticipation of Hypermedia and its Implications for Textual Analysis of Finnegans Wake  
--KYPark 19:29, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Virtual hypertext

message: * Notes on Contributors   
* Donald F. Theall, Joyce's Practice of Intertextuality: the Anticipation of Hypermedia and its Implications for Textual Analysis of Finnegans Wake  
--KYPark 19:29, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Hypermedia Joyce Studies

message: The content added from the ON reference remains in this article, but the reference has been removed. This action is disputed and a conversation is ongoing here.  Uriah923 06:32, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Value of ON content and quality of reference 

message: No Mention of BT's failed attempt to claim a prior patent on hyperlinks. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/08/23/bt_loses_hypertext_claim/
We can to diferenciating  betwen hypertex(literature) and hypertex, becauste is diferent. --199.26.12.5 15:20, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: BT

message: The recent TabTalk addition is interesting and seems worth citing. But I think it would be better if moved to a separate TabTalk page to receive the current multi-paragraph description, along with a link in addition to the patent reference to support "No original research" criteria.
Then collapse the multi-paragraph TabTalk discussion to a sentence interleaved with the other synopsis of notable hypertext systems. Grlloyd 11:19, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I just reviewed the relevant patent.  TabTalk appears to be more of an advanced OS shell with partial hypertext features.  But not very impressive; ZOG was doing the same thing and a whole lot more back in 1977.  I am personally familiar with most of the technical literature on hypertext going back to the 60s and TabTalk was never mentioned at all.  I don't think it's even worth wasting space on here.--Coolcaesar 04:52, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that it is not very impressive wrt other systems, and deserves at most a brief mention and footnote on hypertext page. But rather than delete the TabTalk addition, I think it's worth saving, particulary since it's not other cited in the literature that you or I are aware of, and has credible evidence of relevant commerial intent. The Hypertext article seems to be evolving a nice little history of the vision, technology evolution, and early attempts to disseminate hypertext technology vs. commerical products. We know the Web won; I think it's good to provide supporting detail if it rises above the "two students wrote a hypertext like system as a programming project in 1982 but no-one every used it or heard of it again". The patent,  commercial intent and some evidence of acceptance in NASA (which was also the first user of HES) make me believe a TabTalk article is worthwhile. Having also found the patent and some supporting history (http://www.mall-net.com/tt/ circa 1995), I think it's worth the space Grlloyd 11:33, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, the fact that it is not impressive (as you just conceded) means it is not worth mentioning here when there are so many other worthy systems that should be discussed here in more detail like Baylor's Virtual Notebook System (the one that pioneered the use of the term "page" among many other innovations).  This is not the place for first publication of any synthesis or argument for the historical importance of TabTalk; that would be in violation of Wikipedia:No original research, a core Wikipedia policy.  Under WP:NOR, TabTalk needs to be recognized somewhere else as important before it can be discussed here.  Wikipedia only paraphrases and objectively reports on original research done elsewhere; it cannot be a first publisher of such research.  See also Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not, which includes the famous section on "Wikipedia is not a soapbox."  --Coolcaesar 22:03, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggestion: Give TabTalk its own page and tighten Hypertext page 

message: I added a bad paragraph, but then I did find the original source material.  Reference to Buckland's criticism is valuable, but as originally presented, it was so out of context as to confuse the uninitiated more than enlighten.  Just the omission of the date got me going, as 1992 is to a criticism of hypertext as 1450 is to a criticism of popular literacy.   
 
5. "Associative trails." Bush had a low opinion of indexes and classification schemes:
"Our ineptitude in getting at the record is largely caused by the artificiality of systems of indexing. When data of any sort are placed in storage, they are filed alphabetically or numerically, and information is found (when it is) by tracing it down from subclass to subclass. It can be in only one place, unless duplicates are used; one has to use rules as to which path will locate it, and the rules are cumbersome. Having found one item, moreover, one has to emerge from the system and re-enter on a new path." (Bush, 1945a, 106).
This account shows no awareness of the ability of indexing and classification systems to bring related material together through collocation and syndetic structure and indicates that Bush's understanding of information retrieval was severely incomplete. Bush declared, in effect, that retrieval should not function as conventional indexes do but as the human brain does, i.e. "as we may think." Bush thought that the creation of arbitrary associations between individual records was the basis of memory, so he wanted a "mem(ory-)ex", or "Memex instead of index." The result was a personalized, but superficial and inherently self-defeating design. Instead of indexing documents directly by their contents or characteristics, Bush proposed coding documents by their perceived relevance to some theme, such as the superiority of the short Turkish bow during the crusades. Documents perceived as relevant to the same theme were thereby linked to each other by a common coding, which provided a "trail" through the collection of documents. In effect, however, each trail is an indexing concept and the code for each trail is, in effect, an indexing term.
Relevance judgements, however, are notoriously inconsistent, situational, and likely to change as one's knowledge evolves. Since Bush's trails were based, not on the contents of the document but on perceived relevance of documents to trails, any individual's pattern of trails would be unlikely to be satisfactory for any other user. A personalized information system may be advantageous for an individual but has limited usefulness for others. Furthermore, perceptions of relevance are less stable than perceptions of subject content. For this reason conventional subject-based indexing remains tolerable, indeed preferable, in practice, because a system based directly on relevance, as in the Memex, could not change itself automatically to reflect continuously changing perceptions of relevance. The trails, being based on one individual's personal knowledge and perceptions of relevance, would be highly obsolescent. As a user's knowledge increased, perceptions of relevance would change, and the trails would need to be remade. Any given pattern of trails would remain appropriate only so long as the user did not learn anything from the use of the Memex--or in any other way.
I find that to be a rather large departure from the original quote.  To my mind Bush is not directing his remark toward the ontology of information retrieval.  It's rather a narrow remark about mechanical felicity.  He begins by pointing out, in imprecise language, the artificiality of all collocation schemes.  He is definitely beginning from the premise that index must exist relative to a (necessarily artificial) collocation order which defines the document retrieval path.  
This is true up to a point.  However, in electronic retrieval systems, the collocation order is now regarded as a low-level implementation detail.  When a web server translates a URL path to a document path (if the file is served somewhat literally), most of the collocation takes place in the directory index structures implicit to the file system.  URLs are regarded as distributed and hierarchical and not thought of as collocations at all.  
I didn't immediately comprehend why Bush did not simply put forward that every document is simply granted a unique number (or hierarchical tupple) on inclusion to the information system.  It is easy to accomplish this *within* a spool of microfilm.  He seems to be thinking about problems associated with the interchange of spools.  Well, you would need to duplicate a DNS-like system with a hierarchical numbering authority to ensure non-conflict.  Does an index cover all the spools you might have or not have?  That's a significant practical problem.  
Nevertheless, I don't see the quote introduced by Buckland as reflecting on Bush's grasp of information retrieval in general.  Bush is griping about an annoying practical problem which has subsequently been dealt with in the DNS/URL space.  You have to have some system of reference in place to establish any kind of link from one document to another, or a position in another.  It matters not whether you favour trails over indices.  Bush's comment strikes me a gripe about the cumbersome nature of reference in general within the guise of a rigid collocation system.  
The emergence of crowd-sourcing and folksonomies (ick, ick) challenge Buckland's assertions about "relevance judgements being notoriously inconsistent".  Within the notorious inconsistency, (quasi) useful patterns nevertheless emerge.  Here I think it is Buckland falling short of envisioning the automation required to extract those patterns on a practical basis, or the possibility of emergent categories as experienced on the Wikipedia.  
I haven't studied the Bush material itself.  How well did he manage to differentiate the mechanical issue of naming systems (potentially distributed) and document reference from his envisioned information structures within that system?  I don't find Buckland's criticism particularly illuminating, but it does point the way to some important questions.  I should point out my own bias that conceptual innovators tend to find themselves oscillating between theoretical modes of perception and pragmatic modes of perception, not yet being able to properly differentiate quite where the line belongs.  It becomes much easier in retrospect to differentiate collocation orders from hierarchical naming systems. MaxEnt 01:27, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: MaxEnt: this is a fascinating analysis.  I'm just back from Hypertext '07, and a paper along these lines, reconciling details of Goldberg, Bush, and the original Xanadu "tumbler" scheme in terms of the now-familiar framework of DNS and hierarchical filesystems would certainly be well received by Hypertext '08.  That said, in Wikipedia we're getting right up to the edge of original research.  I'd suggest taking one more pass at the Goldberg/Bush passage, with an eye to tightening it, removing extraneous detail, and trying to say something about the Xanadu tumblers scheme which does, I think, belong in this context.  My main concern is that the precursors shouldn't overshadow the pioneers! MarkBernstein 20:11, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Buckland

message: Recent pruning of the external links to Hypertext Fiction included removing links to Eastgate_Systems.  I think that's wrong. I'm an employee of Eastgate, but I'm also past program chair of the Hypertext Conference (twice), and I'm program chair of WikiSym 2008, and in this context I'd appreciate extension of assumption of good faith to this discussion.  Eastgate has been publishing hypertext fiction since 1990, and its catalog includes the majority of titles discussed in books about literary hypertext, taught in courses on hypertext fiction, and examined in conferences and monographs.  I'd prefer links to specific works of hypertext fiction in this place, but understand the desire for a concise list. Concision means trimming the list as much as possible, but not more.  (I'd prefer to discuss this by email bernstein@eastgate.com if discussion is necessary)  18:44, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that the link to Eastgate's published hypertext fiction, nonfiction and poetry is historical and relevant, but the stand-alone external "Eastgate" link did not make that clear. I added a brief next note (catalog of published hypertext fiction, nonfiction and poetry) which I hope may help settle the disagreement. --Grlloyd 20:46, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hypertext Fiction Link 

message: I'm fairly well acquainted with the new media literature its history, but I'm skeptical of the "Tutor-Tech's" claim to be the first hypermedia authoring tool.  It was not part of Hypertext '87.  I don't believe it was cited in Conklin's 1986 review article.  It has not been widely discussed in histories of hypertext if, in fact, it has been discussed at all.  The claim to priority is especially doubtful, since HES, FRESS, NLS/AUGMENT, and perhaps early versions of TIES and NOTECARDS were earlier. Broadly speaking, I think PLATO might be considered a sort of early hypertext tool.  
For the present, I propose to edit the entry simply to remove the mistaken claim to priority.  I think the best course for the poster, assuming he or she knows about Tutor-Tech, might be to write a short paper on the system and its contributions and publish it in the ACM Hypertext Conference or, perhaps, in a history of science conference, and then to come back and amend the encyclopedic history to incorporate it.  MarkBernstein (talk) 13:36, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with Mark's suggestion that PLATO should be included in a hypertext timeline both for its adoption and use in higher education and for it's influence on LOTUS NOTES developed by Ray Ozzie, Tim Halvorsen, and Len Kawell, all of whom had worked at CERL ref http://thinkofit.com/plato/dwplato.htm and http://www.platohistory.org [50th Anniversary of PLATO conference June 2-3 2010 featuring Ray Ozzie and others ]. --Grlloyd (talk) 21:12, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tutor-Tech 

message: I've removed a long discussion of Tim Sheridan's reported contribution to the invention of hypertext.  I was at Hypertext 87, and have been part of the program committee for most of the subsequent hypertext conferences, and I'm quite familiar with the literature.  I've never heard of this work. I don't believe it's every been cited. The section was poorly sourced.  It may have been a hoax, or simply original research, or perhaps an axe being ground. 
I've also removed, more reluctantly, a paragraph about Christoph Alexander. It's an interesting observation, but this sort of heavily cross-referenced writing was not unheard-of even in 1977; see the literature on "programmed instruction" for examples, as well as early fiction of Coover, Fowler, and (cited here) Borges.   Moreover, my impression is that the Alexander book's cultural influence came in two waves; first, a period of professional interest centered rather tightly in Latin America and Southern France, and then -- much later -- a burst of interest in broader tech circles thanks to the Gang of Four and their book Design Patterns. The first appearance of patterns in the hypertext literature was a Daniel Schwabe paper in '96 or '97, followed by my "Patterns of Hypertext" paper in '98.  MarkBernstein (talk) 14:44, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I removed once again the uncited paragraph about Sheridan. I defer to those more knowledgeable than I on the topic, but I am certainly able to confirm that there is no existing literature about Tim Sheridan. He is not appropriate to this article. Binksternet (talk) 15:52, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sheridan 

message: hi, just wanted to point out that the redirection to this page from 'hypotext' is inaccurate.  Heterodiamond (talk) 17:34, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  redirection from 'hypotext' 

message: I just noticed that User:Sofia Koutsouveli inserted two major inaccuracies on 17 March 2014 that have not been corrected: 
1. Actually, the Memex could not implement hypertext, as is obvious to anyone who has read the relevant works by Michael Buckland and G. Pascal Zachary.  
2. Xanadu wasn't a model, it was supposed to be a full-fledged business and technological enterprise. It is clear from Nelson's own books that he wanted to be what Thomas Hughes would call a system builder.
Any objections before I fix this? --Coolcaesar (talk) 05:21, 26 April 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: i know and think highly of Buckland's book. I'd try to express Buckland's point with some care and tact, though. Point 2 is correct, but Xanadu was also a model, and that model was influential. MarkBernstein (talk) 09:27, 31 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed revisions to edits by [[User:Sofia Koutsouveli]] on 17 March 2014 

message: This information deleted from the lead section is in need of clarification, I think.  Why should highlights or paragraphs be omitted ever? What is a highlight? What does "hyper-structured" mean? What is a hypertext node? Embedded how? Control the display of what? No context or sources are given, and therefore the relevance of this information is not clear. Half of it seems to be jargon. —Coconutporkpie (talk) 05:18, 31 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Lead section: last paragraph deleted

message: See Talk:History of hypertext. --Coolcaesar (talk) 12:16, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  The article on [[History of hypertext]] should be merged back into this article 

message: In the Hypertext Fiction section, there is mention of Marshall McLuhan and paradigm shifts. I would like to suggest an edit point to some research completed by Ray Siemens et. al ("HCI-Book? Perspectives on E-Book Research 2006-2008") that reader research is still in its infancy and requires significant development. Pointing to that article and including a citation would, I think, be productive for alerting interested readers to new modes of research. Thenewpulp (talk) 22:17, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: The COI issue has been addressed. Please consult my Wikipedia profile page. Thank you. Thenewpulp (talk) 22:36, 2 February 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Reader-centric research

message: Hello, I would like to recommend an addition to the paragraph that discusses Marshall McLuhan and ends with "hypertext links." Please find it below:
Importantly, this development puts the reader, rather than the author, at the center of the paradigm made available by hypertexts. Yet “the figure of the reader in much editorial theory often remains abstract and even mystified” in modern scholarship.”
Note: I am a Wikipedian-in-Residence and further information about this position can be found at my Profile page. Thenewpulp (talk) 21:26, 2 February 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: This seems appropriate; I've gone ahead and added your request. Mehmuffin (talk) 19:11, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

text: Thank you, this was really helpful. Mejorasi723 (talk) 15:13, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Reader-Centric Research

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Until this [] edit in 2011, the origin of the term ‘hypertext’ was held to be 1965. The cited edit changed this (incorrectly) to 1963 but gave no reference. Yet ‘hypertext’ is only first known, in print, from in three contexts all in 1965:
* January 1965. A talk at Vassar Computers, Creativity, And The Nature of The Written Word (see Nelson's memoir Possiplex (p.149) but which Nelson has stated was ‘only in mimeograph’, i.e. not formally in print.
* 24–26 August, 1965 The Proceedings of the 1965 20th National Conference, pp.84–100.
* October 1965. The Hypertext in Congress of the International Federation for Documentation—see https://archive.org/details/thehypertext/TheHypertext/).
Whilst Nelson likely had the notion of interlinked documents for some while previously, it was thus August 1965 when the use of the word ‘Hypertext’ was first recorded in print. Indeed, in the Vassar talk (and in Vassar internal publications reporting int) the form used was ‘hypert-text’, reflecting the lack of a clearly cited usage.
The Ted Nelson pages correctly references the August 1965 ACM Conference but—likely due to this page—then incorrectly states 1963 as the origin source.
Correcting this and the derivative error on the Ted Nelson page should fix a large number of incorrect of references that use this page's body copy as a primary source (rather than that page's correct [sic] primary sources).
Further reference sources: Nelson's Literary Machines (Editions '81 through '93), Belinda Barnet's Memory Machines (Ch.4, 2013, Anthem Press), Dechow & Stuppa's Intertwingled; the work and influence of Ted Nelson (2015, Springer Open) Mwra (talk) 21:56, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Correcting mis-sourced origin date for Nelson's neologism ‘Hypertext’