Engelbart: Developing the Underlying Concepts for Contemporary Computing (1997) | Hacker News Reader

Engelbart: Developing the Underlying Concepts for Contemporary Computing (1997)

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28 pointsjoaobatalha5 comments

offtopic, but does anyone know where I can download NLS/Augment? OpenAugment website seems to be down. From what I understand, the server could be loaded on a DEC-20 virtual machine while the clients could be accessed via a MS-DOS terminal. It's not being sold anywhere, so I figure this would be "abandonware". and hopefully downloadable somewhere.

I would like to play with this, as there is nothing quite like this in the market.

I am answering my own question because I got a reply from engelbart institute. Posting here so other people can benefit:

Hi Steve,

Happy to answer your questions. I'm wondering what's your interest and how you learned about it?

Sorry I missed your earlier email. Unfortunately NLS/augment is not available to download, although we are trying to get a copy running again, but that could be awhile and access would be limited at first. And we don't have any extra keysets unfortunately, nor do I know the status of Open Augment :(

But the great news is that Dean Meyer who got his start in Doug Engelbart's lab and spent the last 30+ years as a management consultant and author in the CIO arena, along the way developed a PC-based version of NLS/Augment called HyPerform - which I've recently started using myself - it has virtually all the basic editing, browsing, and publishing features of Augment and then some, and is very true to the original system. I'm planning

Learn more re: HyPerform system requirements and order information at http://www.ndma.com/resources/ndm8543.htm

Let me know if you have any questions, Best,

. . .

Oh also if this is any interest to you, we've just resurrected HyperScope -- a web browsing prototype including most of the Augment browsing, jumping and viewspec features -- at http://hyperscope.org. If you want to take that for a spin, see the download instructions at the site. If you're on a mac, you can download this wine-wrapped firefox2.0 to run on Mac that someone created for me, it's working great for me.

Tangentially related, but if you're an Emacs user, you can check out a package called GNU Hyperbole [0], with a component known as the Koutliner that has apparently been inspired by the Augment system. If you review the manual [1] under the Koutliner chapter, you'll find the quip below, apparently on importing files created through Augment, however one would do that.

"Files exported from the Augment system as text often have alphanumeric statement identifiers on the right side. You can import such files while maintaining their outline structure. Use {M-x kimport:aug-post-outline RET} and you will be prompted for the Augment buffer or file to import and the koutline to create."

[0] https://www.gnu.org/software/hyperbole/ [1] https://www.gnu.org/software/hyperbole/man/hyperbole.pdf

oh man the formatting on this. i want to read! but the two columns are overlapping.

I increased .w0 width from 800px to 1000px, And .x5 and .x6 padding-left from 400px to 460px.

Reading ok so far.

Ugggghh.

If you look for the exact title on ddg the second result should be a much more readable PDF.

EDIT: scratch that, it's also the second result on Google.

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