The WebCard project is moving forward again. My latest work involved card initialization and URL visiting.

When a new Web card is created, the associated URL is now inserted as text in the content area of the card. This is useful documentation and prevents the potential confusion of a blank card.

Speaking of card initialization, the WCD.AskURL function that prompts for a URL initially prefilled the input buffer with https:// to spare some typing. But testing revealed an unexpected behavior of NCP.AskUser, the NoteCards API function URL prompting is built upon.

As soon as the user starts typing, NCP.AskUser deletes the prefix https://, whereas I assumed the new text would be appended to https://. To avoid the confusion WCD.AskURL no longer prefills the input buffer unless the function is called with an optional prefix. Even if deleted when the user types, the current URL will serve as an initial reminder when editing a card URL.

Finally, I factored out the code that visits a URL into its own function WCD.VisitURL since I'll eventually revise the feature and call it in other contexts.

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I started working on URL validation in WebCard and soon bumped into a bug.

When creating a new Web card, WebCard prompts for a URL to store in the card. I wrote the predicate WCD.ValidURLP to do some minimal validation and make sure the input resembles a URL. For example, the function checks whether the input starts with https://, http://, or mailto:. Although I don't want to write a URL parser I ended up adding more logic than anticipated.

I could skip URL validation altogether and defer error cheking and reporting to the web browser. Or allow URLs with no URL scheme such as interlisp.org that a browser can handle. But it's probably better to have full URLs as a form of card documentation.

Next I tried calling WCD.ValidURLP from WCD.AskURL, the function that prompts for a URL in a loop until the input is valid. An Interlisp iterative statement with a bind clause controls the loop.

But I'm getting syntax errors for bind in the statement. I checked the documentation, read sample code, and tested a few variations.

I'm still struggling with this.

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I wrote some throwaway code to experiment with editing cards of type Web in WebCard, my RetroChallenge 2024 project. The goal is to make the card read only with the least amount of effort.

In a NoteCards hypertext a Web card is a stand-in for a website, a placeholder for a URL that gets visited when links leading to the card are clicked. The Web card type inherits from the Text type but, since the user isn't supposed to enter text into a Web card, the card should be read only.

An approach I tried is to override the card editing operation for the Web type. The overridden function was a no-op that did nothing and immediately returned, as I thought not calling the TEdit editor would prevent text from being entered or modified.

It turned out the function worked even too well and did nothing at all, really. Like, not even opening or displaying the card.

Back to the drawing board.

A more substantial function would involve additional complexity to interact with TEdit, which would do nothing anyway. An easier approach is to make the content of a Web card read only in the constructor as soon as it's created.

I'm actually also considering to drop the read only requirement and allow editing the content of Web cards. It could be handy to enter a description or note about the website.

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Success!

My WebCard prototype made NoteCards visit a site on the World-Wide Web for the first time. Think of it as a wormhole that connects the old world of hypertext with the new world of the modern web. WebCard, a NoteCards extension for visiting websites, is my RetroChallenge 2024 project.

This is my Linux desktop just after NoteCards visited a website for the very first time:

The Table of Contents window near the bottom left of the screen is a filebox of a NoteCards hypertext. Under “NOTE CARDS” the filebox container card lists a link icon, a clickable area that leads to the indicated card “Medley Interlisp Project”. This card of type Web inherits from the type Text and holds a URL to visit.

When I clicked on “Medley Interlisp Project”, WebCard opened the corresponding card — blank in the screenshot — next to the Table of Contents. Then WebCard commanded Firefox to visit the URL https://interlisp.org stored in the card. The window of Firefox, already running, came to the foreground and displayed the website in a new tab.

This milestone comes after fixing a bug in the Web card constructor. To put my core idea to the test I deferred some non essential refinements and went straight for the website visiting functionality.

How does the functionality work? The NoteCards API provides a hook to override the operation of traversing links to specific types of card. To this effect WebCard sets an alternate function as the value of the LinkIconLeftButtonFn property of the symbol Web that names the type. NoteCards calls the alternate function when a clicked link has a Web card as the destination.

WebCard's alternate function is WCD.TraverseWebLink. It fetches the URL from a card, displays the card, and opens the URL in the system browser.

The screenshot shows both the Web card, next to the Table of Contents, and the code of WCD.TraverseWebLink in the Lisp editor at the top center. The comment, however, is out of date after fixing a series of issues.

What went wrong? A combination of misunderstandings and incomplete information made WebCard generate argument type errors, as I wasn't sure about the arguments of WCD.TraverseWebLink. On top of this, I called the internal function NC.TraverseLink that implements the default link traversal but I ended up not needing anyway.

Reading the sources of a few NoteCards functions cleared all doubts. To fix the issues I updated the code of WCD.TraverseWebLink but not the comment as I was eager for a test run.

The WebCard prototype is crude, but it works and validats my strategy of overriding the link traversal behavior.

An alternative I initially considered is to advise the NoteCards API functions for opening and displaying cards. However, unlike overriding link traversal which the API fully supports, advising is a fragile kludge that works around the API.

Now that the core feature of WebCard is in place I can continue the development.

WebCard is far from complete. There's still work to do to override editing Web cards, extend Web card construction, deal with input validation and error handling, check for visited URLs, and customize the bitmap of Web link icons. WebCard needs documentation and demo notefiles too.

#WebCard #Interlisp #Lisp

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I fixed a bug in the initial code of WebCard, my RetroChallenge 2024 project.

An infinite loop in the constructor of the Web card type caused a stack overflow that aborted Medley. The Web constructor was supposed to call the constructor of the parent card type Text. But I misunderstood the NoteCards API and used NCP.CardTypeFn which ended up calling the Web constructor itself, hence the infinite loop.

The fix was easy: call the supertype's constructor with NCP.ApplySuperTypeFn. Troubleshooting the issue was a great learning experience.

With the bug out of the way I fleshed out a bit more of the Web card constructor. I wrote code to query the user for a URL and store it in the property list of the card. This gives persistence for free as NoteCards automatically stores properties to and retrieves them from notefiles.

There's still some card initialization to do in the case the constructor is passed the option to not display the card, but I'll leave it for later.

In my initial plan the constructor would query the user also for an optional card title but I dropped the idea. NoteCards already allows adding and editing card titles, so forcing this from the constructor seems redundant and possibly confusing. Like NoteCards, by default WebCard names new cards Untitled.

Reporting my progress and plans to the Medley Interlisp team sparked an interesting conversation on rapid prototyping in Interlisp and the Lisp development style. For example, I learned the Interlisp advising functionality was designed as a prototyping tool.

I'm not yet sure what to work next, whether to handle card editing or go straight for the website visiting functionality. The latter is the only missing piece of an early prototype.

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The initial Interlisp code of WebCard, my RetroChallenge 2024 project, defines the new type “Web” of NoteCards card. It's the first step for extending NoteCards to visit websites.

The main code is in the function WCD.CreateWebCardType, a thin wrapper around the NoteCards API function NCP.CreateCardType. The former passes to the latter the name of the new type Web, the name of the type Text it inherits from, an alist of functions that implement the overridden card operations, and an alist of customization parameters.

So far the only operation the Web type overrides is card creation via the constructor WCD.MakeWebCard. The function crashes Medley and ends the session but I left it there as I wanted to have something in place.

Although the initial code is little more than a stub, it's an important foundation the rest of WebCard will flesh out or build upon.

Next, I need to figure out why WCD.MakeWebCard crashes. Aside from removing a roadblock, the troubleshooting will provide insight into how card creation works.

The code is available at the project repo. WebCard function names and symbols start with the WCD. prefix as a form of limited namespace isolation as Interlisp has nod direct support for packages.

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Now that I entered the RetroChallenge 2024 the next step is to flesh out the scope and details of my WebCard project, a NoteCards extension for visiting websites. What will WebCard do? How will it work?

Specification

In NoteCards the area of a card or filebox that makes up a link icon, when clicked, displays a destination card or filebox. Links typically look like outlined rectangles that contain a bitmap and the title of the destination.

The destination of a WebCard link is a page on the World-Wide Web designated by a URL.

Clicking on a WebCard link icon, which has a custom bitmap, will launch the web browser of the host operating system, if not already running, and direct the browser to visit the URL associated with the WebCard link. WebCard will also display a stand in NoteCards card that shows the URL and title of the web page, advising to view the page itself in the browser. No text, links, or media can be inserted in the stand in card.

Clicking on the same WebCard link more than once will notify that the associated web page may already be displayed in the browser, offering to direct the browser to visit the page again.

Other than that WebCard and NoteCards will have no control over the browser and its tabs and windows, which the user may close or change at any time. Since WebCard is not a WebView it won't render web pages or HTML either.

To add a web link to a hypertext the user will create a card of type Web. WebCard will ask for the destination URL and an optional title and create a stand in card that displays the information. The user will then insert NoteCards links to Web cards with the usual link creation commands and specify an appropriate stand in card as the destination.

WebCard will come with basic documentation and sample notefiles that demonstrate web links.

Design

To implement this functionality WebCard needs a way of opening web pages in a browser and adding clickable web links to a hypertext.

Opening web pages

Opening web pages from Lisp is easy.

As part of the modernization effort the Medley Interlisp team implemented UNIXUTILS, a library of utilities for running Unix programs and controlling processes. The UNIXUTILS function ShellBrowse does exactly what I want: it executes the xdg-open command of the host operating system and passes it a URL to open in the system browser.

As a consequence of this decision the host operating system must support the relevant XDG specification.

Adding clickable web links

As for inserting clickable web links, the design of NoteCards funnels to a natural solution.

In NoteCards, the destination of a link must be a card or filebox. Therefore, for a link to lead to a web site, the link can have as its destination a special card that stands for the associated web URL. Traversing that link triggers the activation of the web browser.

The NoteCards API supports defining new types of cards with custom behavior implemented as a set of standard operations. Since card types are arranged in an inheritance hierarchy, defining a new type often involves overriding just a few operations and letting the system invoke the default behavior of the parent types for the others.

WebCard will define the new card type Web that inherits from the Text card. I expect to override a handful of operations, mostly for card creation and editing.

WebCard needs to activate the browser when a Web card is opened or displayed as a result of traversing a link. But since the API doesn't support overriding or hooking into these operations I'll have to come up with something different, such as advising the default behavior. The advice will direct the browser to visit the URL and pass control to the default behavior to open or display the stand in Web card in NoteCards.

The NoteCards API does allow to override the operation of traversing links to cards. I may augment such a behavior to also control the browser for Web card destinations, which may be easier and cleaner than adivising other operations.

As for editing, WebCard will allow changing only the URL and title of a card but not the content. Aside from that, I hope to get away with skipping the default editing behavior without having to interact with TEdit. It's an indirect way of making the Web card content read only.

Discussion

Along with the supporting functions and data, implementing this functionality should be achievable in one month or less.

WebCard will have little control over a web browser. In addition, web pages will be displayed only in a browser outside of NoteCards. Despite the limitations, I expect WebCard to provide genuinely useful functionality and allow integrating hypertexts with external content.

The design of WebCard is similar to traditional NoteCards extensions. When the system was in active use in the 1980s, some extensions invoked external functionality such as controlling laserdiscs or playing media, or connecting to dial-up databases to perform queries and populate cards with the results.

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Team Lisp is ready to play: I'm entering the RetroChallenge 2024 (RC2024) with a NoteCards project targeting Medley Interlisp.

The RC2024 announcement explains the point of the challenge is to do something new, learn, and have fun with retro systems:

In a nutshell, the RetroChallenge is a loosely disorganised gathering of RetroComputing enthusiasts who collectively do stuff with old computers for a month.

The goal of my RC2024 project, WebCard, is to extend NoteCards to visit sites on the World-Wide Web. The project logo borrows the NoteCards card box icon and its nice retro vibes:

NoteCards is a pioneering hypermedia system developed at Xerox PARC in the 1980s as a Medley Interlisp application. Since it's a pre-web system, NoteCards runs locally and never interacted directly with the web. So I'll develop an extension to open sites using the web browser of the host operating system Medley Interlisp runs under.

However, WebCard is not meant as a WebView or anything like that. Although it will just open websites by calling a modern browser, the feature will expand the hypertext capabilities of NoteCards in interesting ways.

My main motivation for the project is to continue the learning and fun I'm having experimenting with NoteCards.

This is also an opportunity to bridge the past and present of hypertext. And, since I'm in the Medley Interlisp project team who comprises some of the original developers, including NoteCards co-creator Frank Halasz, I'll be able to discuss and learn the system from its own implementors. Which, again, is a way of bridging the past and present of computing.

I will host the code on the WebCard repository, publish reports on the project blog (feed), and post short but more frequent updates on my @amoroso@fosstodon.org Mastodon account under the RC2024 hashtag.

This idea is a crazy frankentext but it can work. I look forward to clicking the start link.

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