Archive-name: xanadu/faq.html
Last-modified: 1996/06/29
Version: 1.52

Xanadu FAQ

This document contains information about the Xanadu Project which may be of interest to the general public and readers of the xanews mailing list. It is currently maintained by avatar@xanadu.com.au (Andrew Pam) of Xanadu Australia and posted approximately monthly.

This document is copyright (c) 1994-1996 Xanadu Australia and may be freely distributed in any media providing it is not modified in any way and no fee is charged either for this document or for any composite work in which it is included.

This FAQ and other Xanadu information are also available at http://www.xanadu.com.au/xanadu/ or http://www.xanadu.net/xanadu/.

Questions in this document are numbered, and answers are labelled with letters of the alphabet. Thus 1 is the first question, and 1a is the first  answer to the first question. Suggestions for additions, corrections and expansion of the material in this document are welcomed.

Contents

1. What is Xanadu?
2. What requirements do Xanadu systems aim to meet?
3. What software meets some of the Xanadu requirements?
4. What is the history of the Xanadu system?
5. How can I contact Project Xanadu?
6. What Xanadu-related merchandise is currently available?
7. What is the history of the name "Xanadu"?

1 What is Xanadu?

1a

Xanadu is a trade and service mark of Project Xanadu for computer software and services for electronic publishing and media manipulation. See question 5 below for Project Xanadu contact details.

1b

Xanadu is the original hypertext and interactive multimedia system, under  continuous development since 1960. See question 4 below for the history of the Xanadu system.

1c

Xanadu is an overall paradigm - an ideal and general model for all computer  use, based on sideways connections among documents and files. This paradigm is especially concerned with electronic publishing, but also extends to all forms of storing, presenting and working with information. It is a unifying system of  order for all information, non-hierarchical and side-linking, including  electronic publishing, personal work, organisation of files, corporate work and  groupware.

All data (for instance, paragraphs of a text document) may be connected  sideways and out of sequence to other data (for instance, paragraphs of another  text document). This requires new forms of storage, and invites new forms of presentation to show these connections.

On a small scale, the paradigm means a model of word processing where  comments, outlines and other notes may be stored conceptually adjacent to a document, linked to it sideways. On a large scale, the paradigm means a model of publishing where anyone may quote from and publish links to any already-published document, and any reader may follow these links to and from the document.

1d

Xanadu is an ideal of open electronic publishing based on the paradigm mentioned in answer 1c above. It is intended to  be especially free and fair, where all authors and readers are considered equal.  It is a complete business system for electronic publishing based on this ideal  with a win-win set of arrangements, contracts and software for the sale of copyrighted material in large and small amounts. It is a planned world-wide publishing network based on this business system. It is optimised for a point-and-click universe, where users jump from document to document, following  links and buying small pieces as they go.

1e

The Xanadu Australia formal problem definition is:

We need a way for people to store information not as individual "files" but  as a connected literature. It must be possible to create, access and manipulate this literature of richly formatted and connected information cheaply, reliably  and securely from anywhere in the world. Documents must remain accessible  indefinitely, safe from any kind of loss, damage, modification, censorship or  removal except by the owner. It must be impossible to falsify ownership or track individual readers of any document.

This system of literature (the "Xanadu Docuverse") must allow people to  create virtual copies ("transclusions") of any existing collection of  information in the system regardless of ownership . In order to make this  possible, the system must guarantee that the owner of any information will be  paid their chosen royalties on any portions of their documents, no matter how  small, whenever and wherever they are used.

2 What requirements do Xanadu systems aim to meet?

2a

Every Xanadu server is uniquely and securely identified.

2b

Every Xanadu server can be operated independently or in a network.

2c

Every user is uniquely and securely identified.

2d

Every user can search, retrieve, create and store documents.

2e

Every document can consist of any number of parts each of which may be of any  data type.

2f

Every document can contain links of any type including virtual copies("transclusions") to any other document in the system accessible to its owner. Permission to link to a document is explicitly granted by the act of publication. Links are visible and can be followed from all endpoints.

2g

Every document can contain a royalty mechanism at any desired degree of  granularity to ensure payment on any portion accessed, including virtual copies ("transclusions") of all or part of the document.

2h

Every document is uniquely and securely identified.

2i

Every document can have secure access controls.

2j

Every document can be rapidly searched, stored and retrieved without user  knowledge of where it is physically stored.

2k

Every document is automatically moved to physical storage appropriate to its frequency of access from any given location.

2l

Every document is automatically stored redundantly to maintain availability  even in case of a disaster.

2m

Every Xanadu service provider can charge their users at any rate they choose for the storage, retrieval and publishing of documents.

2n

Every transaction is secure and auditable only by the parties to that  transaction.

2o

The Xanadu client-server communication protocol is an openly published standard. Third-party software development and integration is encouraged.

3 What software meets some of the Xanadu requirements?

3a

HyperWave (formerly Hyper-G) is based on the Xanadu ideas and supports requirements 2a-2d, bivisible and bifollowable links from requirement 2f, requirements 2h-2j and 2o.

4 What is the history of the Xanadu system?

Ted Nelson thought up the whole thing in 1960, and has been speaking and publishing about the idea since 1965. In that year he also coined the terms "hypertext" and "hypermedia" for non-sequential writings and branching  presentations of all types. (The term "interactive multimedia" seems to have  become popular recently.)

Since that time there have been a long series of changing designs embodying  these ideas:

       1960:
                       Nelson's designs showed two screen windows connected by visible lines, pointing from parts of an object in one window to corresponding parts of an  object in another window. No existing windowing software provides this facility  even today.
       1965:
                       Nelson's design concentrated on the single-user system and was based on  "zipper lists", sequential lists of elements which could be linked sideways to other zipper lists for large non-sequential text structures.
       1970:
                       Nelson invented certain data structures and algorithms called the "enfilade" which became the basis for much later work (still proprietary to Xanadu  Operating Company, Inc.)
       1972:
                       Implementations ran in both Algol and Fortran.
       1974:
                       William Barus extended the enfilade concept to handle interconnection.
       1979:
                       Nelson assembled a new team (Roger Gregory, Mark Miller, Stuart Greene,  Roland King and Eric Hill) to redesign the system.
       1981:
                       K. Eric Drexler created a new data structure and algorithms for complex  versioning and connection management.

The Project Xanadu team completed the design of a universal networking server  for Xanadu, described in various editions of Ted Nelson's book "Literary Machines" (see answers 6a and 6b below).

       1983:
                       Xanadu Operating Company, Inc. (XOC, Inc.) was formed to complete  development of the 1981 design.
       1988:
                       XOC, Inc. was acquired by Autodesk, Inc. and amply funded, with offices in Palo Alto and later Mountainview California. Work continued with Mark Miller as  chief designer.

The 1981 design (now called Xanadu 88.1) was topped off but Miller began a redesign. Xanadu 88.1 was not subjected to quality control or released as a product.

Dean Tribble and Ravi Pandya became co-designers and work on the redesign  continued.

       1992:
                       Autodesk entered into the throes of an organisational shakeup and dropped  the project, after expenditures on the order of five million US dollars. Rights  to continued development of the XOC server were licensed to Memex, Inc. of Palo Alto, California and the trademark "Xanadu" was re-assigned to Nelson.
       1993:
                       Nelson re-thought the whole thing and respecified Xanadu publishing as a system of business arrangements. Minimal specifications for a publishing system  were created under the name "Xanadu Light", and Andrew Pam of Serious Cybernetics in Melbourne, Australia was licensed to continue development as Xanadu Australia.
       1994:
                       Nelson was invited to Japan and founded the Sapporo HyperLab. Memex changed  their name to Filoli. SenseMedia became  the second Xanadu licensee under the name of "Xanadu America".
       1996:
                       Nelson became a Professor of Environmental Information at the Shonan Fujisawa Campus of Keio University.

5 How can I contact Project Xanadu?

5a

The Xanadu Team

       Email
                       Write to xanadu-request@xanadu.com.au to  join the Xanadu mailing list. Members of the Xanadu team monitor and contribute  to the list on a regular basis.

5b

Project Xanadu

       Email
                       ted@xanadu.net (Ted Nelson)
       Snail mail
                      

5c

Xanadu Australia

               Email
                               avatar@xanadu.com.au (Andrew Pam)
               Snail mail
                              

5d

Xanadu America

                       Email
                                       sle@xanadu.net (Sam Epstein)

6 What Xanadu-related merchandise is currently available?

6a

The following items are available from:

• Books:
• "Computer Lib" by Ted Nelson, 1976 collector's edition for $100.
• "Literary Machines" by Ted Nelson, 1993 edition for $25.
• "Xanadu Hypermedia Server documentation", 1993 draft for $250.
• Papers:
• "Virtual World Without End", 16 pages for $10.
• "Xanadu Space 1993", 8 pages for $10.
• Videos:
• "A Technical Overview of the Xanadu System", NTSC $75, PAL $100.
• Misc:
• Xanadu Flaming X pin for $50.

Add $5 postage and handling per $50 ordered, plus $15 for orders outside the USA. All prices quoted are in US dollars.

6b

"Literary Machines" is also available from:

6c

An audio cassette of "Xanadu - Publishing with Royalty", Ted's talk at ONE BBSCON in Atlanta August 1994, is available as tape #694-9 for US$7 plus US$5  shipping and handling (international orders add 20%) from:

7 What is the history of the name "Xanadu"?

7a

Marco Polo mentioned the original palace "Shan-Du", somewhere near Beijing,  in his autobiography.

7b

Samuel Taylor Coleridge published the poem "Kubla Khan", considered the sexiest in the English language, in the early 19th  century. Supposedly Coleridge wrote a thousand lines in his mind while in an opiate trance, but was interrupted while trying to write it down by the infamous "person from Porlock" who bothered him on trivial business and made him forget the rest of the poem. This has been disputed by scholars who didn't believe  there actually could have been any more to the poem. Coleridge was inspired by  the autobiography of Marco Polo mentioned in answer 7a above, which he was reading.

7c

Orson Welles, in his famous film "Citizen Kane", named the palace of Charles Foster Kane "Xanadu" after the Coleridge poem.  It was based on the real life palace of San Simeon owned by William Randolph  Hearst.

7d

Ted Nelson named his World Publishing Repository (trademark of Project Xanadu) project after the Coleridge poem,  to suggest "the magic place of literary memory where nothing is forgotten".

7e

The secret hideout of Mandrake the Magician in the comic strip of the same name was called "Xanadu" (presumably after the Coleridge poem).

7f

The rock group Rush released a song called Xanadu, obviously inspired by "Kubla Khan", on their 1970s album "Farewell to Kings".

7g

The 1980 movie "Xanadu" starring Olivia Newton-John as a muse was also named after the Coleridge poem,  as an allusion to literary inspiration. She also sang the title song.

7h

The pop group "Frankie Goes To Hollywood" released a 1984 album named  "Welcome To The Pleasure Dome", on which the title song contains the line "In  Xanadu did Kubla  Khan a pleasure dome erect".

7i

Greg Bear used "Kubla Khan" in his 1984 science fiction novel "The Infinity Concerto" and its sequel "The Serpent Mage" (collectively published as "Songs of Earth and Power"), in which the poem is considered a song of power whose completion would  have vast political and social implications. The book also features a massive palace called Xanadu.

7j

David Butler based the plot of his 1986 science-fiction novel "The Men Who Mastered Time" around the story of "Kubla Khan".

7k

Douglas Adams used the story of the creation of the Coleridge poem mentioned in answer 7b above as a central part of the plot of his science-fiction novel "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective  Agency".

7l

Douglas Adams wrote a 1990 BBC Television documentary called "Hyperland" starring himself, former "Doctor Who" Tom Baker, Ted Nelson and many computer  industry luminaries. The documentary discussed the Xanadu system and quoted "Kubla Khan".

Credits

This FAQ was written by avatar@xanadu.com.au (Andrew Pam). Much of the material in the answers to questions 1, 4 and 6 was graciously provided  by Ted Nelson.

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