Announcing HyperScope v1.0!

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

Last March, I announced the HyperScope project. Six months later, I’m proud to announce the release of HyperScope v1.0. More information is available from the HyperScope web site.    (L5E)

We’re throwing a little release party at SRI in Menlo Park tomorrow night to celebrate, and it looks like we’re going to have a great crowd. We’re also announcing a contest to write HyperScope file transformers. The prize? No less than lunch with the man himself, Doug Engelbart. (Or, if you’re not in the Bay Area, then you’ll win an autographed poster.)    (L5F)

It has been an intense and gratifying experience. I’ve known Doug for almost seven years now, and I’ve studied his work intensely for longer, and I still learned a tremendous amount. Much of that learning was the result of collaborating with an unbelievable team, including Doug, his daughter Christina Engelbart, Jonathan Cheyer, and the man who wrote the HyperScope code, Brad Neuberg.    (L5G)

I’m looking forward to sharing much of that knowledge over the next few months. For now, play with the software and participate in our community. The best document (for now) to play with is Doug’s classic 1962 paper, “Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework.”    (L5H)

Welcome, Jonathan!

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

Jonathan Cheyer has joined the blogosphere. In addition to being a great guy, a friend, and sometime basketball partner, he’s a longtime member of the Collaboration Collaboratory, a core HyperScope contributor and the Open Source Community evangelist at Solid. And as the tech lead for the Computer History Museum‘s NLS/Augment Restoration Project, he’s indisputably the most knowledgable person about Doug Engelbart‘s Augment under the age of 40. Welcome, Jonathan!    (KXZ)

URI Syntax for the HyperScope

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

At last Tuesday’s HyperScope meeting, Jonathan Cheyer and I spent an inordinate amount of time debating the syntax for HyperScope URIs, much to the amusement and chagrin of our peers. Although the topic may seem insignificant, it is actually quite layered with no easy answers. I’m going to summarize the issues here. Most of you will probably not care about the intricacies of the argument itself, but at minimum, it should reveal a bit more about the project itself.    (KI2)

HyperScope is meant to be a transitional tool that will enable people to play with Augment‘s more sophisticated capabilities within their existing environments. In the immediate future, that means the Firefox web browser (and probably Internet Explorer as well). In the not-to-distant future, that could extend to a range of applications, from Eclipse to OpenOffice and beyond.    (KI3)

This intent strongly informs our requirements. In particular, we need to make sure we are bootstrapping the system on top of existing technologies (such as URIs) effectively and correctly, and we need to make sure the system is evolvable. Both of these requirements play a big role in our debate.    (KI4)

So what’s all the fuss about? One of Augment‘s coolest (and most fundamental) features is its sophisticated addressability. The example most folks know about manifests itself as Purple Numbers, namely the ability to reference a specific node in a document in a standard way. But Augment can do much, much more. It can do path expressions, similar in spirit to XPath, which allows you to reference some subset of nodes in a document. (See my notes on transcluding a subset of nodes via Purple Numbers).    (KI5)

You can also embed View Specs in an address. For example, suppose you decided that the best way to view a page was the first level of nodes only. You could specify that as a View Spec in the link itself, so that when someone followed that link, they would see only the first level of nodes rather than the entire document.    (KI6)

With the HyperScope, we’re bringing these capabilities to the plain ol’ World Wide Web — that is, assuming your client knows how to interpret these addresses properly. With our initial release (due September 2006), this will require loading a JavaScript library. All document addressability will happen entirely on the client-side. This is a good thing for a lot of reasons, the most important being adoptability. It will be easy for people to play with the HyperScope. All they’ll have to do is click on a link in Firefox (and probably Internet Explorer).    (KI7)

However, the fact that we’re doing a client-side only version of the HyperScope does not preclude the creation of a joint client/server version or even a mostly server-side version where the client is essentially a dumb web browser. In fact, we’d encourage the creation of both. We don’t care some much about implementation as we do capabilities and interoperability.    (KI8)

Here’s the question: How should we include these extended addressing capabilities in real-life URIs?    (KI9)

There are three possible solutions:    (KIA)

  • Embed them as a fragment address (i.e. following a hash mark at the end of the URI).    (KIB)
  • Embed them either as part of the path or query string parameters (i.e. following a question mark at the end of the URI).    (KIC)
  • All of the above and more.    (KID)

I side with the first and third solutions. Jonathan thinks it should be the second.    (KIE)

Fragment Address    (KIF)

Pros:    (KIG)

  • These extended capabilities seem to belong here semantically. Purple Numbers are an obvious example of this. XPointer is another.    (KIH)
  • The URIs will be bookmarkable as the user manipulates the document from the HyperScope. We can do this, because we can change the fragment identifier from within JavaScript. We can’t do the same with any other part of the URI.    (KII)

Cons:    (KIJ)

  • These URIs cannot be used for a server-side only solution, because HTTP does not pass the fragment identifier to web servers.    (KIK)

Path or Query String    (KIL)

Pros:    (KIM)

  • Can be used for client-only or server-only solutions, or anywhere in between.    (KIN)

Cons:    (KIO)

  • You’re still left with the problem of a standard addressing syntax that doesn’t interfere with any other kind of addressing. For example, if you’re going to use a query parameter, what do you call it? Granted, if you namespace it correctly, the likelihood of namespace clash is tiny, but it’s still there.    (KIP)
  • No one’s building a server-side only solution right now.    (KIQ)

Why Limit Yourself?    (KIR)

This is ultimately my argument: Go with the first syntax for now, because it best suits our current needs, and don’t worry about the fact that it won’t satisfy all potential future needs, because nothing will. What’s important is that we standardize the conceptual semantics, and then standardize the syntax to the extent possible. In all likelihood, most people will be passing these links around by copying and pasting them anyway, so the actual link syntax isn’t completely critical.    (KIS)

Announcing the Hyperscope Project

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

One of the new projects I have the joy of being involved with this year is Doug Engelbart‘s Hyperscope. Doug recently got a bit of NSF funding to build an Open Source prototype of his vision for a Hyperscope, and Doug asked me to lead the project.    (KAT)

You can read more about the project on the project blog. In short, we’re replicating the original hypertext system’s (Augment) browsing (jumping) and viewing capabilities in Firefox.    (KAU)

Why is this significant? Because even though most of the world knows that Doug Engelbart built the first hypertext system in the 1960s, very few people have ever seen and experienced the system first-hand. And boy, is it a doozy. Doug continues to use the system every day, and it has capabilities that no other system has today.    (KAV)

We want the world to see these features, and we want the world to have the opportunity to learn from them and to integrate them into their own systems. We also want the world to realize that these are not features for features’ sake, but are part of a much larger vision of how society can (and must) get collectively smarter.    (KAW)

This project — and Doug’s larger vision — is about improving society’s ability to collaborate. And that’s why I’m involved. We’re not building code for code’s sake (although the code will kick ass). We are kicking off a larger community conversation about how we can improve collaboration, and how we can and should improve our tools to augment our capabilities.    (KAX)

Join The Community    (KAY)

We’ve got a fantastic core team in place. Brad Neuberg is our lead developer. I’ve written about Brad’s coworking efforts, but I haven’t written about how he’s a kick-butt developer who’s doing wild things with AJAX. More importantly, he’s also a deep thinker, which is an absolute requirement to be successful in this position, a leader in the Open Source community, and a lifetime Engelbart fan (not a requirement, but it didn’t hurt).    (KAZ)

Also joining us is Jonathan Cheyer. Jon’s a long-time member of the Collaboration Collaboratory, and he’s also the tech lead for the Computer History Museum‘s NLS/Augment Restoration Project. I’m pretty sure he’s the most proficient Augment user under 40, and I’m quite certain he knows more about Augment’s internals than anyone else under 40.    (KB0)

What makes the project even more fun is that we’ve been working with folks from Doug’s original lab. His daughter, Christina Engelbart, is program manager and is also sharing her insights into how the system was used as well as her knowledge of Doug’s larger vision. Jeff Rulifson and Charles Irby, the first software leads in Doug’s lab, have shared a lot of their knowledge with us, as have Harvey Lehtman and Raylene Pak. These gatherings have not only been extremely educational — stories galore — they have been tons of fun, and we want to encourage other ex-ARC folks to touch base with us and be part of this new community.    (KB1)

Some additional acknowledgements: Mark Finnern is one of Doug’s biggest supporters, and he has given Doug a valuable forum at Future Salon. He also hooked us up with Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt of Firefox fame, two very cool guys who spent some time with Doug and whom we hope will continually engage with this community. A big shout out also to Philip Gust, also of the NLS/Augment Restoration Project, Dorai Thodla, who experimented with an early prototype of the Hyperscope in Java, and Dave Thomas and his OpenAugment team.    (KB2)

Please join us! Subscribe to our mailing lists and blog (and weekly podcasts), and participate on our Wiki. I’ll mostly blog about the project on the project blog, but I’ll also occasionally discuss stuff here. Brad is also blogging about the project. We’ll also be at SuperHappyDevHouse this Saturday doing an Augment jam session.    (KB3)

Blue Oxen Associates    (KB4)

I’m involved with this project for personal and professional reasons. As I said earlier, this is not just about building a piece of code. It’s about engaging with the community at large and building a movement that falls squarely within the mission of my company. The Hyperscope project will help ground larger conversations about how we can and should improve tool interoperability and usability. More importantly, it will ground larger conversations about process and the bigger picture.    (KB5)

At a very concrete level, the Hyperscope falls well within our goal to bring these deeper ideas into existing tools. Not surprisingly, the Hyperscope should integrate very easily with PurpleWiki (as well as other Wikis), providing a new, slick and useful browsing capability. As the project progresses, I’m looking forward to evolving our tools, as well as seeing other folks evolve theirs.    (KB6)

On a personal level, Doug is why I’m in this business. I’ve never been happier with my work than I’ve been in the past three and a half years at Blue Oxen Associates. I bring people doing meaningful work together, I help them collaborate better, and I do it in an open way that hopefully has a much larger societal impact. It’s intellectually satisfying and emotionally fulfilling. And I wouldn’t be doing any of this had it not been for Doug, who’s been a mentor, a friend, and a cheerleader.    (KB7)

In a way, starting Blue Oxen Associates was my gift to him — a commitment on my part to carry out his larger vision. But working on the Hyperscope is a much more concrete way of returning the favor, and I look forward to doing this for him and for the community at large.    (KB8)