Hypertext Editing System

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. It was the first hypertext system available on commercial equipment that novices could use.

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 ran on an IBM System/360 Model 50 mainframe computer, which was inefficient for the processing power required by the system. The program was used by NASA's Houston Manned Spacecraft Center for documentation on the Apollo space program. The project's research was funded by IBM but the program was stopped around 1969, and replaced by the FRESS (File Retrieval and Editing System) project.

The immediate future of this system will be concerned with its improvement and adaptation for increased convenience. These capabilities include a number of subprograms for acting on various features of a hypertext, and for adding new features to this hypertext editing system.

Attributes may also be assigned by the user to annotations and to labels. Attributes assigned to tags will either be permanently defined within the system — such as `bibliography` and "`this text is a quotation` tags" — or defined by the user. The system-defined tag attributes may communicate with other programs such as a "set up bibliography" program). All tags may be listed and indexed by attributes.

New facilities will be added to provide automatic steering or routing through a hypertext on the screen, or automatic sequence selection during printout. The user would specify which alternative is to be taken by instructions such as "take the happy alternative, when it exists." This would correspond to Bush's trails, and Engelbart's trail markers.

A number of other facilities will simplify and clarify the user's work. Multiple "windows" may be created on the screen, permitting the user to see and work on several parts of his text complex at once, for example letting him copy a text string from one area to another, with both in view.

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