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Abora is an ongoing project to implement and nurture
information systems that enable individuals and groups to create
a rich literature of long lived works. The interconnected nature
of documents will be supported from the core up through quoting
and fine-grained typed links. Collaboration of individuals
across time by concurrent modifications, strong versioning,
refined change notifications, and external commenting.
Extensible first-class document types from text to movies to
structured research data. Resilient, adaptive and relevant
implementations that will cope with and last for a lifetime of
use. All-in-one solutions and generic server with API will be
released under open-source licenses.
Current work on the project is strongly influenced by the
ideas of Ted Nelson as articulated in his Xanadu
hypermedia project, and also the design and implementation of
Udanax-Gold by XOC.
A number of sub-projects exploring these aims are documented
on this website. A limited demo was written in Summer 2002 that
gives a flavour for some of the core features.
David Jones
david_jones@night.dircon.co.uk
http://www.night.dicon.co.uk
New Readers Introductory Trail
If you are a first time visitor to this website, you may want
to consider stepping through the following links. This should
provide a reasonable overview of the Abora project.
- Features of the final
Abora server.
- Applications and uses
for a finished Abora.
- Screen shots from
finished Abora elements.
- Tech Report for
the Dolphin Demo recounts some of the implementation details
of the server.
- Xanadu Uses links section
describes scenarios where xanalogical servers such as Abora
may be beneficial.
Sub-Projects
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Udanax-Gold2Java [In Progress 2001,2003,2005]
Command line
application to auto-translate the Udanax-Gold
Smalltalk source into Java source code. The resulting Java code is compilable, and
a small number of tests run, but it is still a long way from being a production grade
system. The generated Java, with hand crafted supporting code, is being called
Abora-Gold for the moment until a final name is resolved.
Overview - Abora-Gold
JavaDoc - Download
Source
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Dolphin Demo [Paused 2002]
Smalltalk
implementation of a simple text editor that supports fine-grained
typed links, transclusions, versions, backlinks and viewing
differences. Written to explore aspects of the Udanax-Gold design
and gain a feel for the capabilities a xanalogical system provides
users. Extensive Technical Report on the mechanisms used to
implement the core features of the demo. MS Windows
executable demo available to play with.
Overview - Tech Report - Download
Demo
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Abora-White [Aborted 2003]
Another java port of the
Udanax-Gold server. This started from the result of a far earlier
version of the Udanax-Gold2Java translator, that at the time only
generated "approximate" java (7000+ compliation errors). Starting from
this non-working Java code, the goal was to create a compilable, working
version that aligned with standard Java idioms. With the significant
progress subsequently made with the Udanax-Gold2Java translator, the
Abora-White project has been abandoned. The hand code test cases, and
porting of the primitive array classes may still be useful for the
translator.
Overview - Port Details - Download
Source
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Udanax-Gold2Dolphin [Aborted 2001]
First attempt by the
author to investigate the Udanax-Gold code. The source was loaded
into Dolphin Smalltalk and tweaked enough to allow most of the
existing tests to run a little. Major roadblocks were from missing
code, and the guesses that were made to make for those gaps. The
result of this project was never packaged up for distribution, but
source could be made available on request.
Overview
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