Five Working Xanadu Systems
Notes on:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_o8q4Sp-w0
Team has created five different Xanadu systems.
1. Keio Hypertransaction System
1 Client. 2 Servers. A document server and a payment server.
An author could input and edit on the screen. The document would be composed as an EDL. (Edit Decision List) Contributors would be paid for each download (which would include web.transclusions)
2. OpenXanadu
You can see this one in the browser (it’s pretty cool!)
All implemented in the browser. The principle is that not only is the quotation available but there is a visible link between the sources which should be able to be linked from anywhere.
3. Xanadu Cambridge
In the browser it brings text from within. people.ted-nelson has another video walking through this system
4. Xanadu Classic Software
An Operating System. Has a server underneath and shows similarities between two revisions. Has a pyxi interface (python xanadu interface). Maintains both xanalinks and web.transclusions
Uses tumblers - strings of numbers with period separators.THis is where you get the source of the document, the characters to bring in, etc.
5. Xanadu Space
A 3D visualization of Xanadocs.
Thoughts
All of the web.xanadu prototypes go out of the way to show their difference to regular hypertext as if Xanadu was 3D and regular web was 2D. With the state of the web as it is now does it need to be as different as his representations? Things like quotebacks seem to provide similar functionality in the existing web infrastructure. Especially in Xanadu Space he uses wacky visualizations of text that seem sub-optimal especially when compared with the printed word or the word on screen which is 2D and yet still can be intertextual.
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