It's as inevitable as what we now call "AJAX".

From "SimCity, Cellular Automata, and Happy Tool for HyperLook (nee HyperNeWS (nee GoodNeWS))":

https://donhopkins.medium.com/hyperlook-nee-hypernews-nee-go...

>NeWS was architecturally similar to what is now called AJAX, except that NeWS coherently:

>…(drum roll)…

>1) Used PostScript CODE instead of JavaScript for PROGRAMMING.

>2) Used PostScript GRAPHICS instead of DHTML and CSS for RENDERING.

>3) Used PostScript DATA instead of XML and JSON for DATA REPRESENTATION.

HyperTIES Discussions from Hacker News:

https://donhopkins.medium.com/hyperties-discussions-from-hac...

>[...] Also here’s a link to an article about the NeWS version of HyperTIES that we developed at HCIL, and some demos of HyperTIES and its Emacs based authoring tool, which had pie menus and embedded interactive PostScript “applets” in 1988.

>Designing to Facilitate Browsing: A Look Back at the Hyperties Workstation Browser

>https://medium.com/@donhopkins/designing-to-facilitate-brows...

>[...] HyperTIES was an early hypermedia browser and authoring tool developed at the University of Maryland Human Computer Interaction Lab under the direction of Ben Sheniderman. (I helped develop the NeWS version of HyperTIES in PostScript, FORTH, and Emacs MockLisp on the Sun.)

>[...] Ben Shneiderman’s paper “User interface design for the Hyperties electronic encyclopedia” describes both the PC and Unix SunView window system version of HyperTIES, which we subsequently reimplemented for the Sun NeWS window system as a multimedia browser written in C, using PostScript to render and implement the user interface, and FORTH for scripting, as well as an authoring tool written in UniPress Emacs MockLisp, which we described in this paper published in Hypermedia, vol. 3, 2 (1991)101–117:

>[...] HyperCard inspired Arthur van Hoff to develop a network aware version of HyperCard in PostScript for James Gosling’s networked-PostScript-based NeWS Window System. It was originally called “GoodNeWS”, then called “HyperNeWS”, then finally released as a product called “HyperLook”, which I worked on with Arthur and used to port SimCity to X11/NeWS on SunOS/Solaris.

>[...] Bongo was unique at the time in that it actually let you edit and dynamically compile scripts for event handlers and “live code” at run-time (in contrast with other tools that required you to recompile and re-run the application to make changes to the user interface), which was made possible by calling back to the Java compiler (which Arthur had written before at Sun, so he knew how to integrate the compiler at runtime like a modern IDE would do). Without the ability to dynamically edit scripts at runtime (easy with an interpreted language like HyperTalk or PostScript or JavaScript, but trickier for a compiled language like Java), you can’t hold a candle to HyperCard, because interactive scripting is an essential feature.

SimCity, Cellular Automata, and Happy Tool for HyperLook (nee HyperNeWS (nee GoodNeWS)):

https://donhopkins.medium.com/hyperlook-nee-hypernews-nee-go...

>[...] HyperLook is a HyperCard-inspired graphical user interface development environment from the Turing Institute, but reinvented with networking, and programmed and rendered in PostScript code and graphics.

>[...] HyperLook was so far ahead of its time that there still isn’t anything quite like it today. But HyperCard itself has inspired many other systems like Scratch, Snap! and Lively Kernel, which go much further than HyperLook ever did in many ways, using SmallTalk or JavaScript instead of HyperTalk or PostScript.

>[...] The Axis of Eval: Code, Graphics, and Data: Structured PostScript graphics, data and code are the axis around which everything rotates.

Alan Kay on “Should web browsers have stuck to being document viewers?” and a discussion of Smalltalk, HyperCard, NeWS, and HyperLook:

https://donhopkins.medium.com/alan-kay-on-should-web-browser...

HyperLook SimCity Demo Transcript

https://donhopkins.medium.com/hyperlook-simcity-demo-transcr...