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TidBITS#32/26-Nov-90
====================

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Topics:
    TidBITS Survey!
    HyperSymposium
    A Cork Computer
    HyperCard Confusion
    Reviews/26-Nov-90


TidBITS Survey!
---------------
  This is our 32nd issue, and it seems like a fine time for the
  first official TidBITS Survey. "Why the 32nd issue?" you ask. No
  reason whatsoever, we assure you, except that it's nice to know
  who out there reads TidBITS. It's not easy for us to tell what
  sort of people read TidBITS, how they read it, or even how popular
  TidBITS is. So here's the survey, and we ask you to please respond
  via email or snail mail. We'd especially like you to answer the
  first set of questions, and if possible, to answer the optional
  ones as well. Thanks!

  Send completed surveys in any form you wish to any of these
  addresses:

* Internet:
    [e-mail]
    [e-mail]
    [e-mail]
    [e-mail]

* America Online: Adam Engst

* CompuServe:
    :INTERNET:[e-mail]
    (or :INTERNET plus any other Internet address above)

* GEnie: Sorry we have no account on GEnie and are unaware of any
    gateways to the Internet. You'll have to use snail mail.

* Snail mail:
    Adam Engst
    TidBITS
    901 Dryden Rd. #88
    Ithaca, NY  14850   USA


Basic Questions

0. We'll start with the easy ones. What is your name?

1. They're not getting much harder. In what town and country do
  you live?

2. Another easy one. Do you read TidBITS regularly?

3. From where do you download or otherwise acquire TidBITS?

3a. If download statistics are listed, approximately how many
  others download each issue of TidBITS from that source?

4. Do you redistribute TidBITS to other people or online services,
  such as your mother or a local BBS?

4a. If you do redistribute TidBITS, approximately how many people
  read each issue that you redistribute? Really?

5. Do you use TidBITS articles in user group or university (or
  other non-profit) publications? (You can, you know, as long as
  you credit us.)

6. Have you found the TidBITS Archive useful for looking up
  information?

* (For the following questions, 1 is low, 10 is high, and only
  integers exist)

7. On a scale of 1 - 10, how knowledgeable are you as a Mac user,
  if a DOS user who has never seen a Mac is 0 on the scale?

8. On a scale of 1 - 10, how knowledgeable are you as a HyperCard
  user/author?

9. On a scale of 1 - 10, how often do you use the contact
  information to contact companies?

10. On a scale of 1 - 10, how often do you use the references to
  related articles?

11. Do you have HyperCard 2.0 yet? You'll want to get it soon,
  because TidBITS will require it some time in the future. Of
  course at that point the distribution format will be text, so
  you'll only need it for the archiving features.

* Optional Questions

12. What do you like best about TidBITS?

13. What do you like least about TidBITS?

14. What sort of articles would you like to see in TidBITS that
  are not currently present?

15. What would make TidBITS easier to acquire and read?

16. What other Macintosh publications (paper or electronic) do you
  read regularly?

17. Are you interested in writing special issues (like the Xanadu
  issue, #30) or product reviews for TidBITS? If so, please
  contact us via email for more information. We pay only in fame,
  since that's all we get.

18. What's your favorite color?

  That's 20 questions including the sub-questions, so we'll stop
  now. Give yourself 1 point for each question answered. Scores of
  more than 11 win. Scores of less than 3 indicate that you probably
  won't return the survey, so answer a few more questions and then
  send it in. At most it's a few minutes and a stamp and we
  guarantee never to do telephone surveys (or to sell your name to
  mailing list brokers). Also, we will share the results (especially
  the statistical significance of question 18) in TidBITS. Thanks
  for the enthusiasm, it keeps us going.


HyperSymposium
--------------
  [Editor's Note: Thanks to Terry Harpold for sending this for
  TidBITS. If you can make it to this session, we guarantee that it
  will be a stimulating hour and fifteen minutes. Most of you have
  read about Ted Nelson and Xanadu in our special issue, but Stuart
  Moulthrop and Jay Bolter may be less familiar. Stuart and Jay
  helped to make my degree in Hypertextual Fiction from Cornell
  University possible. Without Jay's Storyspace (more on Storyspace
  in a few weeks) and their combined support, I never would have
  completed my senior honors project. They are appropriate
  companions to Ted Nelson in that all three live and breathe
  hypertext, something that I wish were not so rare.]

  A Special Session of the 1990 Convention of the Modern Languages
  Association: "Canonicity and Hypertextuality: The Politics of
  Hypertext"

    Session #344
    Friday, 28 December 1990
    1:45 PM - 3:00 PM
    Grand Ballroom East, Hyatt Regency Hotel
    Chicago, Illinois

  Important note: Sessions of the MLA convention are generally open
  only to MLA members and their guests, though it is possible to
  register to attend only sessions on a given day. For more
  information on registration, contact:

    MLA Convention Office
    Modern Languages Association
    10 Astor Place
    New York, NY  10003-6981
    Telephone: [phone]


DESCRIPTION OF SESSION
  One of the principal assumptions of the promoters of hypertext
  applications is that the freeform, non-linear organization of
  linked documents in a hypertext system alters not only the way in
  which the document is consumed, but also how it (and the
  information it contains) is perceived. Hypertextuality, they
  argue, is a different kind of textuality; the experience of
  navigating a docuverse (a open set of documents by one or multiple
  authors, all or some of which may be linked in any number of ways)
  is qualitatively different than the experience of moving within
  the relatively closed space of a conventional, linear text.

  While the extent of these effects is still open to debate, there
  can be little doubt that the formal aspects of a hypertextual
  corpus offer unique challenges to the historical and institutional
  constitution of literary canons. Hypertextual literatures are
  fundamentally non-hierarchical, collaborative textual
  environments, in which traditional distinctions between authors
  and readers, or between more or less proficient readers, are
  subverted. In the most radical hypertext systems, these
  distinctions collapse completely.

  This panel will address the political dimension of hypertext as a
  literary mode and institutional practice. Each of the papers will
  analyze from a different perspective the effects of the
  fundamentally non-hierarchical, non-linear structure of document
  relations in a hypertext environment for the description and
  dissemination of a literary canon in that environment.
  Hypertextuality has a fracturing effect on structures of
  canonicity. If, as is widely believed by theoreticians of
  hypertext, these technical innovations in the deployment of
  textual information mark an historical and epistemological break
  with earlier forms of literature, then the consequences for the
  future shaping of what we have known as the literary canon are of
  enormous significance.


DESCRIPTION OF PAPERS
  The papers for the panel will be structured as a linked series of
  exchanges. The panel will begin with Ted Nelson's introduction of
  Project Xanadu, the best-known and most sophisticated hypermedia
  system currently under development. This presentation will include
  a brief slide presentation of the system in action and a
  discussion of its methods and philosophy. The slide presentation
  will serve as a nodal point for the discussions that follow. After
  this introduction, Nelson will present his analysis of the
  political consequences of a non-linear, non-hierarchical literary
  corpus, and the new literature that is taking shape in the
  development of hypertext systems. Stuart Moulthrop will follow,
  applying and critiquing Nelson's analysis in relation to the
  institutional domains of the academy, and, in particular, to the
  contradictions that emerge within pedagogical applications of
  hypertext for a profession that is founded on hierarchical
  relationships of canonicity. Jay David Bolter's paper will follow,
  addressing Nelson's conclusions from an historical and
  epistemological perspective, in which the political dimension of
  hypertext-as-a-new-literary-form is considered with relation to
  the history and philosophy of literature in the West.

  Though Nelson's presentation and analysis will to a large extent
  direct the shape of discussion in the panel, Moulthrop and Bolter
  will not be acting strictly as respondents. Our goal here is to
  weave the three presentations together so as to address the issues
  raised by Nelson from positions that, while in agreement with many
  of his conclusions, come to those conclusions by very different
  methods. The panelists will be working collaboratively on their
  presentations before the session, and are being encouraged to keep
  a large part of each presentation open for extemporaneous
  divagation.

1) Ted Nelson: "How Xanadu (Un)does the Canon"

2) Stuart Moulthrop: "(Un)doing the Canon (1): The Institutional
  Politics of Hypertext"

3) Jay David Bolter: "(Un)doing the Canon (2): Hypertext as Polis
  and Canon"


DESCRIPTION OF PANELISTS

TERENCE HARPOLD
  (Session leader), Comparative Literature, University of
  Pennsylvania

* Related Publications:

1) "The Grotesque Corpus: Hypertext as Carnival." (In a
  forthcoming special issue of _Computers and Composition_. Spring,
  1991.)

2) "Hypertext and Hypermedia: A Selected Bibliography." _The
  Hypertext/Hypermedia Handbook_. Emily Berk and Joseph Devlin, eds.
  New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991.

3) "Threnody: Psychoanalytic Digressions on the Subject of
  Hypertexts." _Hypermedia and Literary Studies_. Paul Delany and
  George Landow, eds. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991. 171-184.

TED NELSON
  Founding Designer, Project Xanadu; Distinguished Fellow, Autodesk,
  Inc.

* Widely considered the foremost theoretician of electronic
  textuality, hypertext and hypermedia in the world. He is generally
  credited with having coined the terms "hypertext" and "hypermedia"
  in his writings on electronic textuality in the mid-1960s, and
  with being the first to advance the concept of a universal server
  for electronic document linkage.

* Founding designer of Project Xanadu, the twenty-odd year-old
  hypermedia project that is the ancestor and paradigm of nearly
  every hypertext system since devised.

* Related publications:

1) _Computer Lib: You Can and Must Understand Computers_. Redmond,
  WA: Microsoft Press, 1987

2) _Literary Machines_. Swarthmore, PA: T.H. Nelson, 1981.
  _Literary Machines_. Vers. 87.1. Guide Envelope Document.
  Bellevue, WA: OWL International, Inc., 1987.

3) Innumerable articles and lectures on electronic textuality and
  hypertext.

STUART MOULTHROP
Associate Professor of English, University of Texas, Austin.

* Related Publications:

1) "Hypertext and 'the Hyperreal'." _Proceedings Hypertext '89_.
  November 5-7, 1989, Chapel Hill, NC. New York: ACM, 1989. 259-267.

2) "In the Zones: Hypertext and the Politics of Interpretation."
  _Writing on the Edge_ 1.1 (1989): 18-27.

3) "Making Nothing Happen: Hypermedia Fiction." _The Hypertext/
  Hypermedia Handbook_. Emily Berk and Joseph Devlin, eds. New York:
  McGraw-Hill, 1991.

4) "Reading from the Map: Metonymy and Metaphor in the Fiction of
  'Forking Paths.'" _Hypermedia and Literary Studies_. Paul Delany
  and George Landow, eds. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991. 119-132.

5) Numerous publications on electronic gaming and interactive
  fiction.

JAY DAVID BOLTER
  Assistant Professor of Classics, University of North Carolina,
  Chapel Hill.

* Leader of the design and programming team for Storyspace, a
  hypermedia design and authoring system for the Apple Macintosh
  platform. Storyspace will be published by Eastgate Systems in
  December, 1990.

* Related Publications:

1) _Turing's Man: Western Culture in the Computer Age_. Chapel
  Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984.

2) "The Idea of Literature in the Electronic Age." _Topic: A
  Journal of the Liberal Arts_ 39 (1985): 23-34.

3) "Topographic Writing: Hypertext and the Electronic Writing
  Space." _Hypermedia and Literary Studies_. Paul Delany and George
  Landow, eds. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991. 105-118.

4) _Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of
  Writing_. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1990.


  Information from:
    Terence Harpold
    Graduate Group in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory
    420 Williams Hall
    University of Pennsylvania
    Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104
    Telephone: [phone]
    America Online: THARPOLD
    Bitnet: tharpold@penndrls
    CompuServe: 72647,2452


A Cork Computer
---------------
  A Texas company called Cork Computer Corp. claims to have designed
  a computer requiring only the 128K ROMs from a Mac 512KE, Plus, or
  SE to give it a IIci's performance. The Cork System 30 has
  everything that IIci does, including onboard video driving most
  monitors on the market, a 25MHz 68030, 68882 coprocessor, three
  NuBus slots, and a SuperDrive. Cork says that its added a Motorola
  56001 DSP chip, which provides CD-quality audio in and out as well
  as 9600 baud fax and modem capabilities (it may be v.everything
  [that's our term for modems that have v.22, v.22 bis, v.32, v.42,
  v.42 bis, MNP 1-5, and other abbreviations and codes after their
  names]). Cork claims the System 30 is completely compatible with
  current Mac software, because otherwise no one would buy it, which
  is extremely astute.

  The trick to all of this is the ROMs. The 128K ROMs are pretty
  capable, but they lack Color QuickDraw, which didn't surface until
  the Mac II's 256K ROMs. Luckily for Cork, much of the 256K ROM
  code can be obtained from patches and INITs. Potential buyers will
  wish to keep in mind that the ROMs are optimized for the processor
  in the original machine - so a Cork System 30 might not be as fast
  as a true IIci. Still, at about $2300 for a base system, it's not
  a bad deal if it runs all or most Macintosh software.

  You've never heard of Cork Computer Corp.? Not too surprising, but
  you may have heard of another firm, Texas MacStuf (formerly Texas
  MacExpress), a mail order firm formed to fund the years of work
  needed to develop the Cork System 30.

  Apple Legal has apparently been informed of Cork's work on the
  System 30 and currently has no problems with it. Cork is cautious
  of the litigious nature of the industry though, and has retained
  the services of an international law firm with an excellent
  Intellectual Properties department. Everything Cork has done has
  been passed by the lawyers first, which accounts for Cork's
  confidence that its machine is legit. From talking to Cork, I
  gathered that it is designing and marketing its machine not to
  challenge Apple's dominance, but to broaden the Mac market. It
  knows that there are millions of Macs out there with the 128K
  ROMs, and if the Cork System 30 can turn those machines into
  powerful machines once again, it will be a victory for the
  abstract Macintosh as well as for Cork. Who loses? No one
  particularly, though a powerful Macintosh clone might steal some
  sales from the PC-clone makers.

    Cork Computer Corp. -- 512/343-1301
    9430 Research Blvd., Bldg. 2 Suite 250
    Austin, TX 78759

  Information from:
    Doug Davenport -- [e-mail]
    Cork Computer Corp. representative

  Related articles:
    PC WEEK -- 26-Nov-90, Vol. 7, #47, pg. 27
    InfoWorld -- 12-Nov-90, Vol. 12, #46, pg. 8


HyperCard Confusion
-------------------
  Yes folks, the epic tale of confusion continues. We just saw a
  press release from Claris and there are not one, not two, but
  three different releases of HyperCard 2.0. Don't worry, though,
  the HyperCard program is exactly the same among the three. If
  you're anything like us or other people on Usenet, you want to
  know what comes with each package. This wasn't made clear in the
  Claris press release (where do they get these press writers,
  anyway?). First the brouhaha when they announced that there would
  be two versions of HyperCard and forgot to mention that they would
  be the same program, and now this). Luckily for all of us, Kevin
  Calhoun, the HyperCard project leader checked into it and
  clarified the matter.

  Here's the deal as of Monday, 03-Dec-90 at 15:49. I'm not making
  any guesses as to what will change by tomorrow, but I'll have sent
  out this issue by then (yes, we work on a flexibly tight
  deadline). Package #1 of HyperCard is the one that everyone who
  buys a new Mac gets, which is the HyperCard 2.0 program, three
  stacks, and a wimp 35-page manual. This version is set to the
  Typing level of access, but that can be changed.

  Package #2 of HyperCard is the $49 upgrade kit, which includes
  five disks, the same wimp 35-page manual, a 600-odd page HyperTalk
  guide. You're paying for that last manual and the telephone
  support, but it's probably a good reference book - the previous
  one for HyperCard 1.x was quite good. Claris says the upgrade kit
  won't ship until around Christmas.

  Package #3, the Development Kit, includes Package #2 and as a
  special bonus it has three more manuals, "Getting Started With
  HyperCard," "The HyperCard Reference Guide," and "Beginners' Guide
  to Scripting." Supposedly, the upgrade is the differential between
  the complete HyperCard 1.x and the Development Kit, which is aimed
  at people who are interested in programming in HyperCard but have
  never done so before. Of course, the Development Kit costs $199
  and won't be out until February of '91, so it's probably cheaper
  to order the upgrade and buy a third party book that teaches
  HyperCard programming for $30, saving yourself $125 or so in the
  process.

    Claris -- 800/628-2100

  Information from:
    Kevin Calhoun -- [e-mail]
    Mary Bushnell -- HyperCard Product Specialist at Claris


Reviews/26-Nov-90
-----------------

* InfoWorld
    Macintosh LC, pg. 96
   (Yup, a slow week)

References:
    InfoWorld -- 26-Nov-90, Vol. 12, #48


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