Hypertext Editing System: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 17:17, 9 February 2021

Revision as of 17:17, 9 February 2021

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The '''Hypertext Editing System''', or '''HES''', was an early [[hypertext]] research project conducted at [[Brown University]] in 1967 by [[Andries van Dam]], [[Ted Nelson]], and several Brown students.<ref name="hypertext50">Brown University Department of Computer Science. (23 May 2019). [http://cs.brown.edu/events/halfcenturyofhypertext/ A Half-Century of Hypertext at Brown] </ref> It was the first hypertext system available on commercial equipment that novices could use.<ref>Barnet, Belinda. (2010). [http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/4/1/000081/000081.html Crafting the User-Centered Document Interface: The Hypertext Editing System (HES) and the File Retrieval and Editing System (FRESS)]. Digital Humanities Quarterly, Vol 4 No 1.</ref>

HES organized data into two main types: links and branching text. The branching text could automatically be arranged into menus, and a point within a given area could also have an assigned name, called a label, and be accessed later by that name from the screen. Although HES pioneered many modern hypertext concepts, its emphasis was on text formatting and printing.

HES required an [[IBM 2250]] display console and a large memory partition on Brown's [[IBM System/360 Model 50]] campus [[mainframe computer]] which limited its use: "Although it was shared with others, it was a multi-million-dollar piece of technology housed in a large machine room that van Dam’s team was able to use as essentially a personal computer between midnight and 4 AM."<ref name="hypertext50" /> The program was used by [[NASA]]'s Houston Manned Spacecraft Center for documentation on the [[Apollo program|Apollo]] space program.<ref>van Dam, Andries. (1988, July). [http://www.cs.brown.edu/memex/HT_87_Keynote_Address.html Hypertext '87 keynote address]. ''[[Communications of the ACM]]'', 31, 887–895.</ref> The project's research was funded by [[IBM]] but the program was stopped around 1969, and replaced by the [[File Retrieval and Editing System|FRESS]] (File Retrieval and Editing System) project.