Introduction

This chapter describes what Hyperbole is, lists some of its potential applications, and then summarizes the structure of the rest of the manual.

• Hyperbole Overview
• Manual Overview

Hyperbole Overview

A Hyperbole user works with buttons; he may create, modify, move or delete buttons. Each button performs a specific action, such as linking to a file or executing a shell command.

There are three categories of Hyperbole buttons:

explicit buttons

created by Hyperbole, accessible from within a single document;

global buttons

created by Hyperbole, accessible anywhere within a user's network of documents;

implicit buttons

created and managed by other programs or embedded within the structure of a document, accessible from within a single document. Hyperbole recognizes implicit buttons by contextual patterns given in their type specifications (explained later).

Explicit Hyperbole buttons may be embedded within any type of text file. Implicit buttons may be recognized anywhere within a text file, depending on the implicit button types that are available. All global buttons are stored in a single location and activated by entering their names, rather than by direct selection, the means used to activate explicit and implicit buttons.

To summarize:

Button Category   Active Within        Activation Means      Managed By
========================================================================
Explicit          a single document    direct selection      Hyperbole
Global            any document         specifying its name   Hyperbole
Implicit          a matching context   direct selection      other tools
========================================================================

Hyperbole buttons may be clicked upon with a mouse to activate them or to describe their actions. Thus, a user can always check how a button will act before activating it. Buttons may also be activated from a keyboard. (In fact, virtually all Hyperbole operations, including menu usage, may be performed from any standard character terminal interface, so one need not be anchored to a workstation all day). See section Smart Keys.

Hyperbole does not enforce any particular hypertext or information management model, but instead allows you to organize your information in large or small chunks as you see fit. The Hyperbole outliner organizes information hierarchies which may also contain links to external information sources.

Some of Hyperbole's most important features include:

• Buttons may link to information or may execute procedures, such as starting or communicating with external programs;
• One simply drags between a button source location and a link destination to create or to modify a link button. The same result can be achieved from the keyboard.
• Buttons may be embedded within electronic mail messages;
• Outlines allow rapid browsing, editing and movement of chunks of information organized into trees (hierarchies);
• Other hypertext and information retrieval systems may be encapsulated under a Hyperbole user interface (a number of samples are provided).

Typical Hyperbole applications include:

personal information management

Overlapping link paths provide a variety of views into an information space. A search facility locates buttons in context and permits quick selection.

documentation and code browsing

Cross-references may be embedded within documentation. One can add a point-and-click interface to existing documentation, link code with associated design documents, or jump to the definition of an identifier by selecting its name within code or documentation.

brainstorming

The Hyperbole outliner, See section Outliner Operation, is an effective tool for capturing ideas and then quickly reorganizing them in a meaningful way. Links to related ideas are easy to create, eliminating the need to copy and paste information into a single place.

help/training systems

Tutorials containing buttons can show students how things work while explaining the concepts, e.g. an introduction to local commands. This technique can be much more effective than written documentation alone.

archive managers

Programs that manage archives from incoming information streams may be supplemented by having them add topic-based buttons that link to the archive holdings. Users can then search and create their own links to archive entries.

Manual Overview

section Glossary, provides definitions of Hyperbole terms for quick reference, so in some cases terms are not precisely defined within the text. Be sure to reference the glossary if a term is unclear to you. Although you need not have a keen understanding of all of these terms, a quick scan of the Glossary should help throughout Hyperbole use.

section Button Concepts, and section Hyperbole Views, lay a conceptual foundation needed before the material in section Using Hyperbole, can be utilized. See section Smart Key Reference for reference documentation on the innovative, context-sensitive mouse and key handling offered by Hyperbole. See section Questions and Answers for responses to a number of frequent questions.

Developers comfortable with Emacs Lisp will want to continue on through section Developing with Hyperbole.

section Ongoing Work describes future directions in Hyperbole's evolution.