Editing Symbolics Document Examiner

'''Symbolics Document Examiner''' is a powerful and early [[hypertext]] system developed at [[Symbolics]] (a manufacturer of high-end [[workstation]]s) by [[Janet Walker (computer scientist)|Janet Walker]] in 1985. The Symbolics Document Examiner was first used for a hypertext implementation of the Symbolics manual in the sixth release of the [[Genera (operating system)|Genera operating system]], and was well liked, winning an award from the Society for Technical Documentation.<ref>"The Document Examiner included with Release 6 won an award from the Society of Technical Documentation. The Symbolics Graphics Division introduced S-Paint, S! ! -Geometry, S-Render, and S-Dynamics as part of an integrated video-compatible image-making and image-processing facility." "[http://www.sts.tu-harburg.de/~r.f.moeller/symbolics-info/symbolics-tech-summary.html Symbolics Technical Summary] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060908213559/http://www.sts.tu-harburg.de/~r.f.moeller/symbolics-info/symbolics-tech-summary.html |date=2006-09-08 }}", 1985</ref>

==History==

[[Image:X-document.gif|thumb|300px|right|A screenshot of the included help documentation in Genera being looked at with Document Examiner.]]

The Symbolics manual was an 8,000-page document that was represented in a 10,000-node "hyperdocument" containing 23,000 [[hyperlink|links]] in all. The entire manual required 10 MB of [[hard disk drive|storage]] space - a significant amount in 1985, even on the [[Lisp machine]]s Symbolics sold. The Symbolics Document Examiner used a hierarchical structure, which differed from other experimental hypertext systems; it apparently was partially inspired by an even earlier hypertext system, the precursor to [[Texinfo]] which originated with [[Emacs]].<ref>"We saw no reason to have the underlying information structure be reflected in the user interface model unless that structure was a good model for interacting with information.   My experience in trying to help users with a tree-structured   information interface (the INFO subsystem in EMACS) led me to believe that a book-like interface would be more palatable for many people." pg 8 of Janet H. Walker's "[http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=317448&coll=portal&dl=ACM Document Examiner: Delivery Interface for Hypertext Documents]". 1987, ''Proceedings of the ACM conference on Hypertext''</ref>

Symbolics Document Examiner users could add bookmarks, which allowed returning to specific items easier; this method was later incorporated in graphical [[web browser]]s. The system also supported on-line substring searching. The biggest drawback to the Symbolics Document Examiner was that users could not make changes to any information or to a document's navigation.

The authoring environment for the Document Examiner was Symbolics Concordia. With Symbolics Concordia it was possible to edit all documentation.

==References==
{{reflist}}

==External links==
* [http://www.ifis.uni-luebeck.de/~moeller/symbolics-info/docex/docex.html Symbolics Document Examiner screenshots]
* [http://www.open-video.org/details.php?videoid=8027 Janet Walker explains the Document Examiner]

[[Category:Hypertext]]


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