| Resource page for vh 1.10 | 24 Aug 2015 |
Pre-Web hypertext browser for the Jargon File.
Back when I was first working on the Jargon File, I distributed it for a while in a flat-text form in which all the references to entries were surrounded by curly brtaces, a la "{foo}". A guy named Ray Gardner thought "Hey, why don't I..." and write what we'd now call a browser for the File - it was screen-oriented, could page up and down, and could chase links. The right and left arrow keys hopped from link to link on the page; press enter on a link and go to the entry. The idea for the browser was Ray's, but some of the interface polish was mine.
What makes this interesting is that we weren't imitating the text-mode lynx browser and the World Wide Web - we were anticipating it. Shortly after vh's first release in 1991 I got email from a then-obscure programmer named Tim Berners-Lee hinting that he was doing some hypertext-related stuff and asking if I might be interested in collaborating on some standards. I replied "yes", but never heard back from him.
Of course Tim Berners-Lee didn't stay obscure for very long after 1991. I've wondered ever since if Ray Gardner and I actually influenced the design of HTML. If I ever meet Sir Tim, I'll ask him.
| COPYING | project license |
| READ.ME | roadmap file |
| NEWS | project news |
| vh-1.10.tar.gz | gzipped source tarball |
The project repository is at http://thyrsus.com/gitweb/?p=vh.git.
If you appreciate this code (and especially if you make money by using it) please support me on Patreon.
Changes the license from GPL to BSD.